COATHAM GRANGE is a derelict 17th Century farm to the north of Darlington beside the original trackbed of the Stockton & Darlington Railway. It is lost in farmland between Whessoe and Coatham Mundeville, its only access being from Patches Lane, an old drovers route which is now a popular footpath.

As Memories 520 told, when the railway steamed through the countryside in 1825, the farm was called Myers Flat and the area was so boggy that all of the workings – the soil embankments and the iron tracks – just seeped away overnight as if fairies had stolen them.

George Stephenson, though, defeated the fairies by devising a ground-breaking method of stabilising the land so the first steam engines could go over the bog.

He also built an “accommodation bridge”, which still stands, so the Myers Flat farmer could move his animals across the tracks without any accidents.

The farm has been derelict since the 1980s and photographer Peter Giroux, who is drawn to such evocative out-of-the-way places, has kindly sent in his pictures of it taken last year.

He discovered that in the late 19th Century it was the home of George and Elizabeth Boyd and their eight daughters. George had been born in Church Street in Darlington town centre in 1840 but he worked as a farm labourer around Wensleydale before running his own little place at Myers Flat.

The Boyds had retired by 1911 when Audrey Chapman’s mother, Annie, came to live there.

“She had been born in Walthamstowe but when she was 20, she came up to Myers Flat to help her cousin Ann Smith, who lived at the farm and was expecting a baby,” says Audrey, who lives in Dalton-on-Tees.

“She had never been out of London and it took her eight hours on the train and cost 15 shillings. She had never seen a cow in her life and yet within a few weeks she was milking and feeding the calves.”

The city girl obviously took to the country life because in 1922, she married Edward Biglin, from Whiley Hill Farm, just a mile or so up the track.

It was after Annie had left that the name of Myers Flat was changed to Coatham Grange.

The new residents at the farm were Dorothy Soulsby’s parents, and she was born there in 1938.

“I was only there a couple of years as my family moved to West Thickley Farm at Shildon,” says Dorothy, who, after being educated at Timothy Hackworth School became a languages teacher and married law lecturer John Longmire.

Dorothy has returned to her birthplace on several occasions and has seen it slide into dereliction. “The last time was 2010 when I came up for the centenary of my old school,” says Dorothy, who now lives in Stockport. “I was so saddened to see it.

“There had once been a mounting block in the garden, and the house had two staircases because it had been a miniature country home with one end for the family and the end for the servants.

“My mum and dad, though, used the servants’ end for storing the prolific apples that grew on the trees.”

Perhaps Dorothy has a unique claim to fame: for at least 250 years, Myers Flat/Coatham Grange had been the substantial home for large farming families with plenty of children, but she could have been the last of the line to be have been born there.

Because the farm doesn’t have any direct vehicular access from the A167, it has proven impossible to restore it. However, the current owner tells Memories that one day he hopes to get round to it.