September 3, 1966

THE big news in the D&S 50 years ago was that J Fairfax Blakeborough, the author of the Country Diary which is now written by his successor Nicholas Rhea, had received replies to the fascinating query he had posed the week before.

In Bedale, Mr Fairfax Blakeborough had bumped into a visitor from Kent who “had been impressed by the fish on the church weathervane”.

The visitor told him he had "asked many inhabitants if there was any significance in the fish, which he thought completely out of character with Bedale, but found that many had never noticed the unusual vane and others could give no explanation. The district has long been famed for its trout fishing but this seems hardly likely to have anything to do with the vane”.

The visitor then asked: “What is your theory?”

But Mr Fairfax Blakeborough admitted: “I'm afraid I haven't one and would be interested to hear from those who have.”

He went on to admit a measure of surprise that St Gregory’s should have anything that wasn’t a cockerel on the vane because "so long ago as the 9th Century, Pope Nicholas the First ordained that a figure of a cock should be placed on the topmost spire, steeple or pinnacle of every abbey, cathedral and parish church throughout Christendom as a reminder of the denial of his master by St Peter”.

Many erudite readers replied, including the Reverend Fred Swan, the former vicar of Burneston, who wrote: “The sign of the fish was much used as a secret symbol by early Christians. If you take separately the letters in the Greek word for fish, ixous, they represent Jesus, Christ, of God, the son, the saviour. The spire of Gillamoor church also has a fish vane.”

Bedale is still looked down upon by a golden fish, and Gillamoor, in Ryedale, has a veritable whale spinning round in the wind above its steeple. Are there any other fish in the district?

September 2, 1916

IN Thirsk 100 years ago, the D&S reported that there had been two prosecutions for supplying alcoholic drink to wounded soldiers, in contravention of the Defence of the Realm Act.

The first defendants were Gladys Parkin, barmaid at the Fleece Hotel, and Mr WW Hall, the landlord of the Market Place establishment.

The auxiliary military hospital was run by the Voluntary Aid Detachment in the Town Hall, where Sgt F Ellis, of the North Staffordshire Regiment, had been a patient. “While there, his mother and sister came to see him and put up at the Fleece for a few days," said the report. "He occasionally went to see them at the hotel. On August 3, he did so and went into a private sitting room, and he then asked Miss Parkin if Mr Hall would let him have a glass of stout,” said the prosecutor.

Sgt Ellis was wearing his blue and red hospital uniform – designed to be distinctive enough to prevent such situations arising. Mr Hall assented, and two policemen spotted Miss Parkin taking the stout and two glasses of lime and soda into the private room.

In his defence, Mr Hall’s solicitor, CFP Edmondson, said that he had run the hotel since his father’s death 30 years ago and his grandfather had run it before that – the grandfather, then, must be William Hall, who became landlord of the Golden Fleece in 1840 when he was just 21. Mr Edmondson reckoned there must have been Halls at the hotel, a Tudor coaching inn, for 100 years.

“In the period of a century, it was the first offence ever committed in the house by a member of the family, and he asked the bench not to place a record against this house which had not had one in a hundred years,” said the report. “If they convicted, then the record went down and stood for all time.”

Although the magistrates dismissed the charge against Gladys, they felt they had to find Mr Hall guilty. “They took into consideration the extremely good character of that the Fleece Hotel had borne for all these years and at a time like this it stood the occupant in good stead, but if any other case similar to that occurred, they wanted it to be known that the licence would be jeopardised and a very heavy fine imposed.”

And so Mr Hall was fined £2.

Next up was George Neal, the former caretaker of the Conservative Club, which was also in the Town Hall – the hall never was a municipal building, but was built in 1910 by the Conservatives to act as their base and a community facility.

Mr Neal, though, was selling liquor on such a regular basis to soldiers that even in their beds they smelt of alcohol.

He claimed he was doing it “out of charity”, but he said of the soldiers: “Some of them are fools. They are not satisfied with one pint, they want more. One day I supplied them with 11 pints.”

He was fined £5 plus £2 16s 6d costs. If he couldn’t pay, he would be sent to prison for a month.

It is interesting to note that he was described as “the former caretaker” – the Conservative Club had obviously taken its own disciplinary action.

September 1, 1866

THE D&S doesn’t have a reputation as a red-top scandal sheet, yet 150 years ago it printed this morsel of salacious gossip: “A little excitement has been occasioned at the Hartlepools by the elopement of a young woman, belonging to Middleton, with a married man, well known in sporting circles in the Hartlepools.”

There are no names, but anyone in the know would recognise the naughty couple.

“Some time ago, the Middleton beauty was engaged to a sporting gentleman from West Hartlepool but their chain of love snapped and her lover got speedily married to another,” continued the item. “However, the match did not prove a happy one, and, soon after the honeymoon, a row took place, and a separation followed, the wife now being housekeeper to a gentleman at Seaton Carew.

“Much to the surprise and scandal of the ladies of Middleton, the separated husband began to pay attentions to his old flame, and one morning last week, the couple were missed, and a letter has since been received staying that the sporting gentleman has made a second venture in matrimony, regardless of the fact that his original spouse is hale and hearty.”