September 29, 1866

“MURDEROUS assault at Gainford”, said the D&S Times’ headline 150 years ago. Four English navvies, building the Forcett mineral railway which crossed the Tees to the east of Gainford, had been drinking in the Queen’s Head one afternoon when four Irish reapers had entered.

Landlady Mrs Fenwick had refused to served the reapers, and one, of them, John Tonnay, had shouted at navvy William Spence: “You are one of the men that drove my countrymen off Trowsdale's (Forcett Railway) works."

Tonnay immediately struck Spence with a sickle.

“The whole company then fought themselves to the back door,” said the D&S, reporting the evidence of pub washer-uperer Jane Gasper. “She saw Tonnay strike William Spence again and knock him down with a sickle and when he was down strike at him seven or eight times on the head with the sickle.”

The village doctor, Dr Humfrey, was called. “He found him suffering from five distinct lacerated wounds on the back of the head, which must have been produced with a blunt instrument. He considered the injury done to the brain to be of a very serious nature and his recovery was doubtful.”

Tonnay and a co-accused, Andrew Carr, were sent to Durham Assizes for trial.

September 30 1916

ON page two, the D&S reported on a concert held in Hawes Market Hall to raise funds “for providing Hawes soldiers at the front with weekly supplies of cigarettes”.

“The Market Hall was well filled and those present were privileged to hear one of the best concerts given in Hawes for many years,” it said. “The quartets were a special treat, the voices blending in perfect harmony and complete balance.”

In the column beside was a report that Corporal Tom Walton, of Hawes, had been killed on the Somme. His widow had received a letter from his commanding office in the Yorkshire Regiment, stating "that death was instantaneous, the young soldier having been hit by a shell".

Cpl Walton enlisted in December 1914 and “was the first married man from Hawes to join the colours, as he has been the first married man to pay the great sacrifice”.

The report said: “He was for several years one of the mainstays of the Hawes Football Club, and was well known in Allertonshire and Westmorland as the clever Hawes goalkeeper, and the spirit of true sportsmanship which he always showed won him a host of friends.”

It doesn’t say whether he smoked, but it does say that he had been married for eight years and he left his widow to care for their four young children.

October 1, 1966

RICHMOND Town Council was discussing the Victoria Fountain which was erected in the lower Market Place in 1904 to commemorate the late queen’s 63 years on the throne. The drinking fountain had been homeless since the re-cobbling of the Market Place in 1958.

There was a plan to place the fountain outside the council’s new offices at Frenchgate House, and although several of councillors wished to preserve this piece of the town’s heritage, Cllr F Dickinson warned that they would be committing themselves "to spending an unknown amount on what might turn out to be a completely worthless object".

The fountain, which was originally paid for by public subscription, remained homeless until 1987 when it was erected outside the Richmondshire Museum.