Dim views

It will light the way to memories of teeming train trips to Redcar, to the present-day work of Little Dumpling Hamster Rescue – “hamster” is from the German verb amstern, to store; not many people may know that – and to recollections of the infamous One Armed Bandit murder back in the 1960s.

Once Toc H was active on all fronts. Now Steve Smith confirms that there’s just one “active” branch in the North-East, the next nearest at Bramley, Leeds, and at Great Harwood, near Blackburn.

“It’s a great pity,” says retired teacher John Bayes, former chairman of the now-defunct Guisborough branch. “Toc H offered a chance for those who dreamed dreams to put them into action. It influenced my life tremendously.”

TOC H was formed in 1915 by the Rev Tubby Clayton, an Army chaplain, its work initially concerned with the military, but soon with the needs of the wider community. Its headquarters was at Talbot House in London, near the church of All Hallows-by-the-Tower, where Clayton became vicar for 40 years.

It was at Talbot House that Janice Bray, from Peterlee, East Durham, stayed during her student days, paying low rent in exchange for some voluntary work – mainly with the homeless. She greatly enjoyed it.

“One night, however, I recall being taken aback by one of the men, knowing that I was from County Durham, telling me all about the Angus Sibbett shooting in South Hetton in rather more detail than had appeared in the press.”

She thought the whole thing brilliant.

“Thanks to Toc H, I learnt more about many other worlds than I could ever have experienced.

“It’s sad to hear it’s disappearing but maybe it’s served its purpose.

Time to move on.”

INDEED. Peter Sotheran recalls that Redcar’s Toc H met in a “fairly large but rather battered”

wooden hut on the long-gone excursion platform near the central station.

Remember it? “Redcar Special”

some called that single platform, though “extraordinary” might have been yet more appropriate. Five or six trains might disgorge there every summer hour, chiefly workmen’s club and Sunday School trips from County Durham.

They were wonderful days, days with half-acrown – untold wealth – in one hand and a carrier bag with egg and tomato sandwiches in the other.

Peter remembers it well.

“The mass of humanity was akin to a football match leaving a stadium.

The mothers and children would head straight for the beach and the Esplanade while the dads diverted to the workmen’s clubs around the town centre.

“Virtually every shop on Station Road seemed to sell buckets, spades and plastic windmills, regardless of what they sold during the rest of the year.”

How on earth did the railways do it? Where did they put all that rolling stock? Further memories welcomed.

THE region’s only “active” Toc H branch is down the line at Saltburn, though it has but five members – one in his late 90s, none of the others this side of the pension.

A Google search reveals the Toc H hall to be home to organisations as varied as the Lighthouse Full Gospel Church, the town’s photographic club and, until recently – yes – to the Little Dumplings.

Clearly there’s more to hamsters – hammies they call them, right in your face – than may be supposed.

“They are your friend, your partner, your defender, your dogs,” says a Facebook page. “You are their life, their love, their leader. They will be yours, faithful and true, to the last beat of their heart. You owe it to them to be worthy of such devotion.”

We’re talking hammies here?

Alan Peacock’s chairman of Saltburn Toc H, now chiefly concerned with letting the hall at £4 an hour.

Only last week he presented a £2,000 cheque to Toc H’s national chairman.

“For years we ran a youth club for boys and girls who’d been refused membership to all the other clubs,”

he recalls. “Now it’s really just the lettings.”

Like Janice Bray, he’s philosophical.

“All organisations have a certain lifespan. This one started in World War I, but believe you me, we’ll keep that lamp burning as long as possible.”

Little Dumpling Hamster Rescue, meanwhile, appears to have scurried off to Hartlepool. Wheels within wheels, we may have found them by next week.

SPECIFICALLY, last week’s column recalled Toc H in Bishop Auckland, carried a photograph of Canon Neville Vine with the lamp once in the Market Place premises.

“Down a passage on the far side, next to the Kings Arms,” recalls Margery Burton in Shildon, who many years ago rehearsed there with the Sylvians Singers. “There was a lamp but I knew nothing about lamps, Toc H or anything.”

John Rusby’s dad did. He was a prominent member until killed in a road accident in the town in 1947, aged 44. Toc H asked John’s mother if his ashes could be interred at All Hallows church – “a great honour”.

John still keeps his dad’s Toc H cufflinks and badge. The lamp still burns in his heart and in many other places; thanks to you all.

WHAT else? We’ve also been getting stroppy about gent’s hairdressing, prompting Melvyn Carter – and this may have to be the barber shop quietus – to recall Slasher Shaw from Sedgefield.

Mel was a police cadet in the 1960s at the training school in Sedgefield.

Slasher had a shop facing the green, a haircut ninepence in old money.

“The only style he knew was short back and sides, and I do mean short.

The cadets all looked the same.”

Something for the weekend? “I never dared ask. We got them for 3/9d from the underground gent’s on Darlington High Row and then off to the Magic Stick to spy on the totty.”

He means the Majestic, fondly remembered.

As many an anxious mother might have told her daughter, we’d better not go there.

WE’D also recalled a barber who was an umbrella maker – a common combination, insists John Heslop in Durham.

John Thirkell, his great grandfather, did it in Bishop Auckland – not just something for the weekend, but for a rainy day as well – and also had a reputation for simple surgery.

The family legend that he once reattached a severed thumb the wrong way round may be a precursor of the digital revolution.

The business passed to John’s son, Fred, who in the Great War became a barber at Fenham Barracks, in Newcastle. Short back and a bit on the side, he’d leave a little more than regulation length for an extra tanner.

“The soldiers used to be sent back for another trim, which cost them anther sixpence,” says John. “The profits were shared with the sergeant major.”

HOWEVER crepuscular the lighting, readers remain wonderfully vigilant. In one of last week’s television previews, John Heslop spots: “Glenda in EastEnders has an announcement to make and where better to tell all and sundry than the Rovers?” Or even the Queen Vic.

Harry Bunting in Darlington suspects that someone may also be barking up the wrong tree in a report of a court case in last Friday’s paper. “The dog called the farmer to ask whether he had asked anyone to carry out work on his land.”

Toc it or leave it, the column returns next week.