This Was Their Life

If the hills are alive with the sound of music, then for more than half a century Cockfield Fell - between Bishop Auckland and Barnard Castle - has fair reverberated with it. "The aim was to propagate the Gospel of Jesus Christ in song," says Edwin, the only survivor among the original members. "The system may have changed, the aim never has."

Musically it's called part singing, and Edwin's part has been quite extraordinary. "I'm afraid it will be rather an emotional evening," he says. "I just wanted to fade away, but the choir insisted on going out properly." Effective? "Well, that's for other people to say. Financially I'm well out of pocket, but it's always been for love, not money."

Cockfield has always had a musical tradition, though a pioneer of Primitive Methodism wrote 200 years ago that the village had a lawless reputation and that its marauding inhabitants were greeted with the alarmed cry "The Cockfielders are coming." These days, of course, the Cockfielders have completely changed their tune.

Edwin's father had been a lead miner at Booze, in Arkengarthdale, moved to Cockfield to work coal, was blessed with a musical ear which he bequeathed to his family.

Edwin, the youngest - two older sisters still survive - remembers singing in Cockfield Methodist chapel when he was seven and learning the accordion 20 years later on an instrument borrowed from Bill Gypp, a local legend for rather different reasons.

Bill, recalls Edwin, would come to be converted every few weeks, usually after a good afternoon in the workmen's. The accordion arrangement continued until Billy missed one payment too many and the pawnbroker repossessed it. After that, Edwin gave up smoking in order to buy his own. It's the accordion he still uses.

Twice mentioned in despatches as a Flight Sergeant during the war, he become a Methodist local preacher - "people would follow him round, he was better than any minister," says Neville Kirby, his nephew - and also helped form the Pleasant Hour, an appropriately named gathering after Sunday services. "People would queue into the street to get into the Pleasant Hour. Our church had a wealth of male members in those days."

The choir made its formal debut after a Sunday service in the autumn of 1947 and has never missed a performance for reasons of weather or illness.

In North Yorkshire villages like Tholthorpe and Slingsby, they've appeared for 20 successive years, often stopping in Northallerton on the way back to give an impromptu performance in the High Street.

It's folding partly because of the leader's failing eyesight - "I've always been the world's worst sight reader, anyway" - partly because repeated appeals have failed to produce new members.

"At one time you could go into any church or chapel and hear people singing tenor or bass. These days I'm afraid you can't. It's very difficult to get people for engagements. Somebody has to worry about it and unfortunately that somebody is me."

"It's a very hard decision and I'm really going to miss the fellowship. We didn't just turn up every week to sing, but to put the world right as well."

The last bow will inevitably be in Cockfield Methodist church, the final song The Old Religion. Now as always, it's been good enough for them.

COCKFIELD choir's This Is Your Life appearance was to serenade Hannah Hauxwell - they sang How Great Thou Art - in 1992. Two of the members, she recalled in Hannah's North Country, had never previously been to London; one had never been apart from his wife nor slept in a hotel bed. The good lady, what's more, had been left in charge of "100 sheep and a bed-tempered ram". It's possible that Hannah meant bad-tempered, but quite possible that she didn't.

She'd first heard Edwin Coates's merry men at Baldersdale chapel anniversaries, loved them ever since, was delighted when they were invited to appear with her on This Is Your Life.

"I would go anywhere, any time, to hear them," she said in Hannah's North Country - and she will be there, of course, on the wet-eyed evening when they sing the last Amen.

THE choir's Golden Jubilee programme in 1997 included a list of some of their most performed numbers - God Be With You Till We Meet Again, Amazing Grace, Stand Up For Jesus and so on. There's also something inexplicably labelled "There Is a Land of Pure Delight (Blackhill)" Blackhill's near Consett, no doubt affectionately regarded by locals but seldom seen hitherto as a land of pure delight. Can anyone explain it?

LAST week's note on that wonderful Bishop Auckland Grammar School reunion recalled a "youthful entrepreneur" who'd sell lunchtime doughnuts on the playing field. "It was me," says Dave Smith from Ferryhill, still sufficiently entrepreneurial to make a living from the pressurised world of steam cleaning.

It was 1950. He'd nip out of class, buy 30 or so doughnuts for three ha'pence each and sell them from his ex-army rucksack for twopence. "Quite a good mark up," he insists.

Dave, known at school as JD because the class had a WH Smith as well, also recalls the first in a promised series of "sex" lessons given by Lez Rawe, the sports master. "A very uncomfortable Mr Rawe assembled us all in the gym and spent an hour telling us in great detail about the amoeba. That was it. After that, the idea was abandoned."

JD, too, would love to help organise a reunion of the class of 1946-51. Email davesmith17, in which Jesus gives the brothers James and John the surname Boanerges - "which is, the sons of thunder".

Why Anne's old feller should want to name his battered old car Sons of Thunder is another matter, of course, but perhaps he wished he'd never clapped eyes on it.

...and finally, those who read the On This Day bit on the leader page may have noticed among other notable anniversaries the 57th birthday of Mr Alan Archbold from Sunderland.

Alan is an occasional and a valued contributor to these columns. His mate picked the wrong chap, therefore, when betting him ten pints that he couldn't get his name among the birthday honours.

That Alan promised us 50 per cent of the winnings was, of course, of no consideration whatsoever.

Published: Thursday, November 15, 2001