DAVID and Barbara Mawer have just returned from holiday in Capetown, South Africa, and were delighted to find an article about Darlington's local history in the Cape Argus newspaper.

It is about the Backhouse family, in particular James the nurseryman and Sir Edmund the sinologist. Hopefully you will be able to read each leg by clicking on it. If you scroll down on this blog you'll find lots more on Sir Edmund the sinologist - a fantastic fraudster/conman. I've done bits and pieces on James the nurseryman. He was very much into the Teesdale assemblage of rare plants and I think a room to this day in the High Force Hotel is named after him, as that is where he stayed while foraging. His York company specialised in rock gardens - I think that the copy of the Matterhorn rock garden that graced ex-Beatle George Harrison's garden was a Backhouse of York. His company also built the brilliantly out-of-place rock garden at Aysgarth - it is a stunning oddity in the North Yorkshire village that is well worth a visit (admission by donation) if you are ever a couple of miles down the road at the more famous falls. James the nurseryman also gets a mention in my latest book, The Road to Rockliffe. He was a cousin of Alfred Backhouse who created the hall which has just been turned into the North-East's only five star quality hotel, and I speculate that James the nurseryman must have had a hand in it. There was a rock garden at Rockliffe, largely disappeared now, but over the road at Hurworth Grange - Alfred's wedding present to another cousin - there is a bigger, more dramatic rock garden that the people of Hurworth have recently rediscovered. Now I've written articles about South Africa before and, from my desk in Darlo, I have probably inserted some local geographical howlers. But as David Mawer says: "I can't recall Darlington ever being in Yorkshire!"