Moment of weakness

IT WAS as epochal, and as potentially calamitous, as the ravens leaving the Tower. The Britannia, it was announced, had stopped selling Strongarm.

The Brit, just off Darlington town centre, has long been my favoured pub. The near-legendary Strongarm – Strongarm of the lore – was the favoured pint.

That Camerons of Hartlepool first brewed it in 1955 to assuage the thirst of the town’s near-molten steel workers, not some journalistic Johnny-come-lately, may be considered neither here nor there. It was brewed “specially for men who work hard.” That’s all right, then.

At the Brit, birthplace of the Everyman publisher JM Dent, a pint of cask conditioned Strongarm was oft inspiration, oft restoration, always refreshing.

News that after more than half a century it had been “discontinued”

from the list of beers on offer to the pub came to many like a sock from the sinewy arm long featured on the pump clip.

It also upset Brendan Boyle, longtime Campaign for Real Ale member and editor of the CAMRA newsletter, the Darlington Drinker. The “outrageous”

decision, said Brendan, also affected many other long-time Camerons pubs in the region, including the Talbot, in Bishopton, near Stockton.

Worse still, Heineken – big brewer – also stopped producing cask conditioned John Smith’s Magnet on December 31.

“It’s disastrous from a Darlington and Teesside perspective as Magnet and Strongarm have long been the traditional ales of choice, particularly for more mature drinkers who look for familiar names on the bar counter rather than ever-changing guest ales from the other end of the country,” said Brendan.

“Both were beacons of local distinctiveness and long associated with heavy industry.”

Next morning I emailed David Soley, Darlington lad originally and now Camerons managing director.

Notwithstanding that he was on a skiing holiday in Austria, David – good bloke – began to ask questions.

The email was forwarded to his son Christopher, the brewery’s general manager. “What’s this all about?” said David. My emails often produce that response.

Answers flowed quickly, nonetheless.

There’d been a breakdown in communication, apparently, over a change from ten-gallon casks – used when Strongarm was brewed in Castle Eden – to nine gallons now that it’s back in Hartlepool. The misunderstanding affected other pubs, too.

“The availability of Strongarm is unchanged to all tenants and managers,”

says Chris. “We’d be delighted if you could help make the position clear.”

Problem identified, communication cord reconnected, Camerons expect very soon to have cask conditioned Strongarm again available in all the usual places – especially the Brit.

David Soley, indeed, is so grateful to have had his card marked that he has promised a reward. Doubtless it will be liquid, pint-sized and ruby red.

Now that’s what you call muscle.

THE legend, of course, is that the Tower will crumble and the monarchy fall should the ravens fly that particular nest.

Though it predated him, Charles II is said to have decreed that at least six of the birds be given formal lodging. When the astronomer royal complained that they were mucking up (shall we say) his observations, they moved the observatory to Greenwich.

During World War II, however, the ravens were said to be so shocked by the bombing that only one, Grip, survived.

Now there are again ten – names like Gundulf, Baldrick and Bran – looked after by a Ravenmaster yeoman, wings painlessly clipped to deter flights of fancy.

The Tower, in which a 12th Century Bishop of Durham was the first prisoner, still stands. Britannia rules the waves. Strongarm remains, too.

MAGNET has had its attraction, too. This week, as our picture shows, the cask conditioned version became a stretcher case.

Regulars at the Tapas Bar in Darlington, just across the road from the Brit, solemnly carried the last cask into the pub where it’s long been a favourite.

“We sell twice as much of that as we do of John Smith’s Smooth, despite the way that Smooth’s promoted,”

said licensee Peter Turnbull.

“It’ll be a real loss to many of the lads in here.”

Brian Inglis, who wore a lugubrious T-shirt with the message that if found he should be returned to the pub, was chief among those crying into his beer.

“It’s a fruity, hoppy beer with a bitter aftertaste and it suits my palate just fine,” said Brian. “It’s what they call a session beer, and I’ve had some very good sessions on this.”

A spokesman for Heineken said that falling demand for cask conditioned Magnet, coincidentally brewed under licence by Camerons at Hartlepool, no longer made it economic to produce.

Brendan Boyle’s left with a bitter aftertaste, too. “So little publicity was given to this that apparently even Heineken’s own PR boss wasn’t aware of it until CAMRA told him.

“It’s another blow from the big boy bullies of the beer world.”

PUBS are having a hard time. A note from Tow Law FC secretary Steve Moralee reports the forthcoming closure of the Station, aka the Black and White, leaving just four licensed premises – including the football club itself – on Windy Ridge.

The railway station from which it took its name closed to passengers in the early 1960s. The local historical society’s website claims that neither the town’s “unpromising”

location nor the 20th Century had been kind to Tow Law.

Burgeoning on iron and coal, the population in 1881 topped 5,000.

Now it may be little over 2,000.

Back then there were all manner of shops, two banks, two doctors, a solicitor and goodness knows what else. The number of inns and beer houses? In 1900 there were 46.

Passing refrences

PAT LISLE was one of life’s characters, a 27 stone railway signalman who drove to work in a Bentley, a Labour parliamentary candidate who campaigned on the slogan “Never fear, Patrick’s here”, a man who was forever tilting at windmills and who could talk, could talk, for England.

He died last week, aged 80, the long-promised autobiography never realised. This part of the column is again something of a memorial.

Pat was born in Gateshead, attended a special school for kids who had rickets, remembered a visit from the Prince of Wales in the early 1930s when the future king stood on his foot.

“I thought it was a game,” said Pat.

“I stood on his back.”

He was evacuated to the Northallerton area, became an artificial inseminator, joined the Labour party and the railways, was for 11 years the only Labour member of Northallerton Rural District Council and for seven years branch secretary of the NUR.

He was demoted from Welbury signal box to Northallerton station porter, however, after being found guilty of allowing two trains onto the same section.

Pat wasn’t happy. “They might as well have put me in a glass case and paraded me up and down the High Street,” he said.

He fought Richmond, a Tory fiefdom, in the 1966 general election, pursued by Trevor Philpott and a BBC television crew as part of a programme called The Losers and accosted by a Swaledale farmer.

“Will I be getting your vote, sir?”

asked Pat, remembering his manners.

“Will thoo hellers like,” replied the dalesman, forgetting his.

A half-crown bet was struck – Pat gave the old boy 500-1 – that he’d forfeit his deposit. He didn’t, gaining almost 25 per cent of the vote and professing himself glad not to have won.

“The way they drink in parliament, I’d be dead,” he said.

He became a bookmaker while still a £10 9s a week goods porter, owned a bakery and a baby clothes shop on Catterick Camp, had pubs including the Tan Hill Inn, the Rookhope Inn at the top of Weardale – where he held a harvest festival service – and the Queens Head at Thornley, near Peterlee.

In 1970 he was declared bankrupt, blamed fast women, slow horses and drink and, in time, gave up all three.

After his pub in Gloucestershire burned down, he returned to the North-East, lived near Heighington, fought vainly for permission to turn his farmhouse into a hotel, contested a parish council seat – “Wear a smile, Vote for Lisle” – and reported six rivals who’d failed to include the name of printer and publisher on their election leaflets. They were warned after a police investigation.

Pat and his wife Julia finally moved down to Piercebridge, west of Darlington, where he’d suffered serious illness and had gone uncharacteristically quiet. His requiem mass is at St Augustine’s church, Darlington at 2.15pm today.

TOM Dobbin draws attention to a Times obituary of yet another hero from Willington, the former colliery town in County Durham.

Back in 2008, the column helped gain greater local recognition for George Burdon McKean VC MC MM and for Thomas Barton.

Captain McKean was a military scout in World War I. The computer suite in the Willington Partnership offices is now named in his memory.

Tom Barton was a miner who, in 1908, gallantly tried to rescue a child from an early morning fire, suffered serious injuries, finally returned to the pit and was killed in a stone fall a few days later.

The inquest jury was so moved by the story that they clubbed up to pay for the funeral. The memorial in Willington cemetery was restored and rededicated 18 months ago.

Flt Lt Leslie Stephenson was born in Willington in January 1921, his father a pit worker and his mother in the drapery business.

He won a day boy award to Durham School and subsequently a place to read chemistry at Durham University, but joined the RAF on the outbreak of war.

He was twice awarded the DFC for shooting down ten aircraft in his two-seat night fighter, most notably – says The Times – downing three Junkers Ju88s in a single sortie off the Tunisian coast in May 1943.

Hostilities ended, he returned to Durham University, became a research scientist at ICI on Teesside and in 1951 moved to Glaxo in Middlesex.

Willington is truly a town of heroes.

AUDREY Oliver, who has died aged 83, was the widow of the no-less affectionately remembered Bill Oliver, old soldier and for many years the Echo’s photographer in the Bishop Auckland area. Had Bill lived, he’d have been 100.

Audrey, ever courteous, worked for the long-established Edkins estate agency in Bishop. Right until last week, says Jill, her daughter, she remained an avid Echo reader.

Back in 1996, she’d sent here a 16- page journalists’ guide produced in 1950 by Reginald Gray, then the editor.

Some of his counsel, like remembering that it was black tie with dinner suit and white tie with tails, may no longer be in fashion. Other Gray areas – he is unlikely to have appreciated the pun – remain timeless.

“Between the reporter and the sub-editor is a great gulf set,” said Reggie.

Though it’s been proposed many times since, he probably wasn’t the first to suggest that Americanisms should be avoided like the plague.

Particularly he urged simplicity.

“Don’t use a long word when a short word or perhaps two or more short words will convey your meaning with equal clarity. Don’t try to be clever. Don’t show off.” Quite.