Gold standard

JOHN WILKINSON left Weardale when lead mining was on its knees, returned from the Yukon with a fortune in gold. They called him Klondike Wilkinson after that, though Midas might almost have been as appropriate.

Not least because everyone’s biffing on about early Easter deadlines, today’s column might thus be considered a rush job. As old Klondike might himself have said, we shall just have to see how it pans out.

Wolsingham lad originally, he sailed for North America in 1896, a coal miner in Iowa before the Yukon began to yield its stream of alluring and untold riches.

When he returned, says a contemporary account, he carried a leather grip containing $50,000 in gold.

Though it was fastened with three straps, it broke open as he struggled along the deck.

John Wilkinson’s boat really had come in.

His story is told, chiefly by delightful animation, in a lovely new exhibition of Weardale emigres at the North of England Lead Mining Museum at Killhope Wheel, top end of the dale.

Accompanied by the Captain Pugwash music, and by that sea shanty from Last Night of the Proms, it also tells the story of Tow Law lad John Hillary, who set sail to find his fortune in New Zealand.

A map helpfully shows the relative locations of Tow Law and New Zealand – it’s even further than Crook – a caption records that Hillary had rats in his bed, though whether that was in Tow Law, in New Zealand or simply on the ship isn’t entirely clear.

At any rate he didn’t think much of it and, Tow Law’s lure being irresistible, he sharp came back home again.

It’s all cheerfully and splendidly done, principally by a young lady called Rachel Clarke, animator and researcher.

Precious rare, we stood there and laughed our heads off, striking it rich… The Killhope museum has just reopened after its winter hibernation, a couple of miles this side of the Cumbrian border and operated by Durham County Council.

Banners outside proclaim “It’s dark, it’s wet, it’s great” though the poor tenyear- old kids who’d work perilous 12- hour shifts there might only have agreed with the first two.

There’s always been lead in the north Pennines, Windsor Castle roofed with it in 1365. Killhope turned its last in 1910, its 34ft diameter water wheel restored to working order in 1991.

They do underground tours, too, these days only under-fours forbidden for reasons of health and safety – a consideration which seemed not greatly to bother the Victorians.

These days it’s all fairly tranquil, the peace broken only by Weardale’s magnetism for every motorcycle this side of Brands Hatch.

There’s a “a large classifier”, a crusher, a jigger house. The workers’ quarters, restored, indicate the wretchedness of the miners’ existence, three or four to a bed and TB even more likely to kill them than a fall of stone.

Now Killhope’s avowedly green.

Only the squirrels – there’s a trail – are red.

The little cafe, hospitably run by Pip Gill and her stepdaughter from Nenthead, promotes ingredients all said either to be locally produced, organic or fairly traded.

It’s marred only by a smoothie-making machine which sounds like half-adozen motorbikes heading up the A689. This may be what’s known as taking the rough with the smoothie.

Home-made soup comes in three sizes, £2.60 to £4.60. The Boss thought her lentil and vegetable (small) appealingly blended, the cream of mushroom (medium) would have benefitted from a little more warmth. Bread was excellent.

The usual embrace of sandwiches, paninis and what have you was augmented by three specials – macaroni cheese, beef stew or a full-of-flavour lamb pilaf (£6) which strongly suggested that the poor little things really didn’t have far to come.

Best of all was a tremendous plum pie with a cinnamon crust, manifestly home-made. “I’m glad you like it,” said Pip, “it’s the first one I’ve ever done.”

Klondike Wilkinson, to return to the gold standard, is said to have invested his money in property in St John’s Chapel, down dale. He died in 1936, aged 76, and is buried in the village churchyard there.

Though his daughter-in-law was a founder of the Weardale Museum at Ireshopeburn, little more is said to be known about him save, unsurprisingly, that he had “a long and interesting life”.

We looked in on his grave on the way back. Dust to dust, as probably they said on the Yukon.

BILLY and Barbara Weeks, recently familiar in both the Otter and Fish in Hurworth and the Beeswing at East Cowton, have taken over from Enterprise Inns the Vista Mar, overlooking Saltburn beach. “We’ll be offering wonderful a la carte meals and bar meals,” says Billy, a former Darlington newsagent. The building was formerly known as Bankside, Rosie O’Grady’s and goodness knows what else. A trip to the seaside shortly.

LAST week’s column dipped a toe in the sea at Whitby, prompting a note from Yvonne Benn in Burneston, near Bedale in North Yorkshire. Last time they were there, she says, they went to a rather nice-looking Italian restaurant on the east side. The response surprised them: the chef had gone for lunch, they were closed.

WE’D also noted an invitation to the opening of Bishop Auckland’s first “champagne and cocktail” bar, the dress code said to be “sassy”. The dictionaries here would have nothing to do with it; others did.

Geoff Howe, Darlington’s Scrabble king, consulted Collins’ Official Scrabble Dictionary. “Sassy” is defined as insolent or impertinent – not perhaps what had been expected in Bishop Auckland – or as a West African leguminous tree with poisonous bark.

Compared to the simply insolent, the bark may be worse than the bite.

Eric Gendle in Middlesbrough even recalls the word from a song in Oklahoma, the musical, which he thinks starts “I’m just a girl whose sweet and sassy”.

It’s about a girl who can’t say no, adds Eric. They don’t have those in Bishop, either.

ASPIRE, a bar just down the road from here, has windows promoting champagne and cocktails, too. I’d a pint of Cameron’s Smooth, by day a remarkable inexpensive £1.35.

Whether it’s sassy is for others to suppose, but food’s cheap enough, too.

While simultaneously writing the column, it seemed appropriate to have a “Hero sandwich”, an enormous thing with chips.

It all seems just about to have crept beneath the deadline’s door. A 22-carat hero to the last.

…and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew why black cats rarely shave.

Because eight out of ten cats prefer Whiskas.