Keld comfort

KELD’S at the far end of Swaledale, the Dales and District bus from Richmond squeezing down the narrow road behind us and then going no further.

It was a place, said the walks writer Alfred Wainwright, where the hours were told by a sundial but time was measured in centuries.

Probably the name’s Anglo-Saxon for sheepfold or something, but on a brisk-breezy morning like last Saturday, it could simply have been misspelt as cold.

Once it was lead mining country.

Now it’s half-hidden and, until recently, half-forgotten save by walkers on the Pennine Way and the Coast to Coast, who fall exhausted upon one another thereabouts.

The best Keld tale, narrated before, was of the Cat Hole Inn’s auction in 1954. It was bought by the local Methodist preacher who, aghast at what went on there, de-licensed it forthwith.

Now, however, we hear of yet more heinous happenings. James Wilkinson, the Congregational Church minister, had in 1854 set up the Keld Mutual Intellectual Improvement Society, its aims leaving little to the imagination and its meeting place to be the Literary Institute. By 1913, however, the society was organising whist drives and, worse yet, dancing.

The trustees promptly closed it.

When, three months later, it reopened, it was to be run in “a more responsible and respectable way.”

In time, the building became derelict. On Saturday it was formally reopened as the Keld Countryside and Heritage Centre, a development innovative, enterprising and quite likely intellectually improving, an’ all. It’s been achieved by the Keld Resource Centre, who’ve also created a “wellbeing garden”, with views towards magnificent Kisdon Hill and plan to provide further holiday accommodation, including at the Methodist church, which closed in 2006.

The garden area, said local councillor Ernie Whitfield, had been an absolute wilderness. “The only losers are the rabbits. They enjoyed themselves no end there.”

Coun Whitfield also recalled attending the little village school, to which five-year-olds would walk in all weathers from three miles away.

“Fortunately, Miss Marshall had retired by the time I got there,” he added, enigmatically.

Mostly, the trustees have links to the village’s United Reformed Church, though there are Methodist members, too.

The Congregational church, now URC, was built by Edward Stillman, a hitherto itinerant preacher, who arrived in 1789 and stayed for 48 years. He walked from Keld to London to raise the £700 for its building, begged a bed each night, repeated the exercise when the church needed to be extended. The glorious buiilding was complete by 1861, the manse next door. A packed service celebrated Saturday’s opening.

“Lovely to see standing room only,” said the Reverend David Peel.

The centre, telling the story of Keld, will be open every day.

Muker Silver Band played close to home, the Public Hall and Reading Room – clearly the old place was very literary indeed – served coffee and wonderful biscuits. If there were whist drives and dances, none dared breathe a word.

THE previous evening to Whitworth, that lovely little hamlet near Spennymoor, to toast a remarkable organ transplant.

The pipe organ, 125 years old this month, is in the parish church most closely associated with Bounder Bobby Shafto. I wasn’t half way up the path, however, before someone mentioned Ronnie “Rubberbones”

Heslop, local boy made bad.

The instrument, Grade II-listed for similar reasons that churches may be, was just about blown. Harrison and Harrison, the great Durham organ builders who’d installed it for £150, recommended intensive care.

The church, one of the few with no saintly dedication and with only one congregation member resident in the parish, launched an appeal almost three years ago to raise £40,000.

A little exhibition showed time’s trials: “Moth-eaten felt… rusted steel pins… worn ebony and ivory from the keyboard.” The woodworm, it was said, had feasted like William George Bunter on one of those rare occasions when a cake really did arrive from home.

“To be honest, I never thought we’d be able to do it,” admitted Verna McEneny, a churchwarden. They made it, remarkably, a flower festival scenting success.

Harrison and Harrison’s folk came in numbers, as if on a wayzgoose, to listen once more to the sounds of 1886. The flowers were magnificent.

There was a display commemorating the Bounder, another to salute Robert Gray, a 19th Century curate who became Bishop of Cape Town, a third to acknowledge Thomas Wright, who’d have been 300 in September.

Apparently known as the Wizard of Durham, Wright – born in Byers Green, baptised and buried at Whitworth – was astronomer, architect, mathematician, garden designer and much else.

His observatory still stands at Westerton, between Bishop Auckland and Spennymoor; an exhibition at Durham University library until July 3 marks the tercentenary of his birth.

Ronnie Heslop became, in 1961, the first man to escape from Durham Jail and may similarly have been suspected of wizardry. Though he was actually a pretty decent bloke, there seemed not to be a flower arrangement in his memory.

It all appeared a tribute to community spirit and to dedication.

Mark Venning, Harrison and Harrison’s head lad, had himself played the restored organ and suggested they join in a hymn. They chose Now Thank We All Our God: it seemed entirely appropriate, really.

Wembley way

FINAL thoughts: last week’s column, with much gratitude, told how Phil Adams’s plea for an FA Cup final ticket had been answered by a Newton Aycliffe reader who drove from County Durham to Staffordshire, handed it over and wouldn’t even take pay for his petrol.

Phil’s the Stoke City supporter who’s devoted many thousands of hours to researching a history of the 160th (Wearside) Brigade of the Royal Field Artillery and who gave up his Potters season ticket because every Saturday was being spent in the record office at Kew.

Wholly coincidentally, there’d been a similar plea from Dave Morgan, who’d begun the Wembley trail with a preliminary round game at Tow Law and then, always by public transport, followed the winners to the next round.

Wembley seemed the tie that bound. Two days to kick-off, surely not even John North readers could help? Of course they could. The paper was barely through the letterbox before – just the ticket – Kate and John Dowson, in Willington, were in touch with Dave, who’s in Durham.

The story had also appealed to one of the national newspaper lads, until Dave got lucky. “My story fell, papers generally prefer misery to success,” he laments.

Dave had a great day, probably better than Phil Adams had. “For your next trick,” he adds, “I don’t suppose you can find someone who’ll give me a million quid, or offer me a job as well?”