Chris Lloyd looks at the man - and family - behind Scarth Hall in Staindrop as £500,000 refurbishment project comes to an end

ON February 16, 1872, Teesdale was in mourning. “All business in Staindrop was at a standstill, and general dumbness prevailed,” said The Northern Echo.

It was the day of the funeral of Thomas Freshfield Scarth, and the Duke of Cleveland was so grief-stricken that he sent his private carriage to take pride of place in the long procession – without anybody inside it.

“Although it contained no occupants, it was sent as the last tribute of respect His Grace could pay to his long tried and faithful steward,” said the Darlington & Stockton Times, as Mr Scarth had been the duke’s chief agent for nearly 40 years.

More than 300 people joined the mournful procession, walking behind the horsedrawn hearse and another dozen carriages, as it snaked down the A688 from Mr Scarth’s home of Keverstone Hall past the gates to Raby Castle and into the village church.

“It is said to be the largest funeral that ever took place in Staindrop, excepting perhaps that of the late Duke of Cleveland,” said the D&S, quickly remembering that nobody in Teesdale was bigger than the duke.

Despite this impressive show of sorrow, the dale quickly turned its mood around. It threw itself into raising money to open a working man’s hall in memory of Mr Scarth. When the South Durham MP Joseph Whitwell Pease, laid the foundation stone in 1874, The Northern Echo said: “Yesterday was a fete day at Staindrop, one which had long been looked forward to be the inhabitants of that quaint old place and the locality.”

And by 1876, the Staindropians were excited to bursting point as the massive hall rose and was finally declared open by Mr Pease in a day of great feasting and speech-making.

Today, there is a similar buzz in that quaint old place, as a £500,000 restoration of the Scarth Memorial Hall nears its end. This Friday, September 30, 2016, will see the formal reopening, and on Saturday, the hall will be open to all for a family fun day. There will be a local history exhibition, and guided tours of this “simple and massive” structure.

The hall ensures that the Scarth family still looms almost as large in village history as the dukes themselves. The first Thomas Scarth, a Quaker, had become the duke’s agent – in charge of his day-to-day affairs in the dale – in 1803. He had died in January 1835, enabling his son – Thomas Freshfield Scarth, who had his mother’s unusual maiden name in the middle of his name – to take over the lofty position.

In turn, when he died in 1872, aged 85, he was succeeded by his son, William Thomas, who held the post until his death in 1898 – so between them, the three Scarths served for 95 years, dominating the dale as the hall dominates the Staindrop skyline.

Thomas Freshfield gained “universal respect by the uniform integrity and amiability of his character, and by his excellent business qualities among which may be mentioned as one of the most striking, his remarkable promptitude and punctuality, the conscientious exactness of his habits being so great that when he made an appointment he almost invariably kept it true to the minute”, said the D&S Times.

He pioneered the introduction of steam ploughing into the Duke of Cleveland’s farms, and he was renowned for his love of country sports. “The neat and wiry figure of the octogenarian on his milk white pony, and surrounded by his stud of perhaps a score of greyhounds, was well known, as he coursed the locality during the season,” said the Echo’s obituary.

On his death, the Peases rallied, with Joseph Whitwell – the head of the family whose father, Joseph, has a statue in the middle of Darlington’s High Row – throwing £80 into the pot to start the memorial fund. Their associates also donated, and the Teesdale people held galas, bazaars and fetes, so that Mr Pease could lay the foundation stone on November 13, 1874.

He was presented with a “handsome silver trowel and ivory mallet” with which to do the honours, and placed a copy of that morning’s Echo inside the stone.

Henry Stobart, of Wilton Tower, “had kindly lent his private band” for the occasion, but unfortunately, not only was the village en fete, but it was also very wet. Pouring rain forced the dignitaries into the schoolroom to make their speeches.

A year-and-a-half later, on April 18, 1876, they had another go when Mr Pease returned to open the hall. This time nothing was going to put a dampener on their speechifying.

Mr Pease began proceedings by declaring the building open which enabled more than 200 people to fill the inside where a luncheon had been prepared by Mr Jackson, of the Queen’s Head.

Once their appetite had been satisfied, the speechifying began in earnest. Mr Pease made at least three addresses that august afternoon and, despite being the local MP, was greeted with “general and prolonged cheering” each time.

His cousin, Henry Fell Pease, the mayor of Darlington, also made a speech , and lots of local men – Mr Lax, Dr Brunskill, young Mr Scarth, “an old inhabitant” Mr Hanson, the Rev HC Lipscombe – were also called upon to say plenty of words.

And practically each of them was printed in the following day’s Echo in a dense report running to many thousands of words in total.

By contrast, that week’s D&S Times printed just a couple of hundred words about the occasion, noting the “high tributes” that the speech-makers paid to the late Mr Scarth.

Why the difference? Could it be that one of the speechifiers was John Hyslop Bell, the proprietor of the Echo. What he was doing there is not explained, but his words – “the event of the day brings us into close intercourse with a name that has also been for more than one generation intimately associated with the well being of the district, and with the most pleasing and honourable of personal reminiscences…” – went down so well that another speaker toasted the “ability, honesty and patriotism” of the Echo which encouraged Mr Bell to give a second speech about the brilliance of the press.

Eventually, there were no more words left to be said. “Mr John Ross proposed ‘The Ladies’, which, having been duly honoured, the company dispersed,” reported the Echo.

Mr Ross was the architect who, with his partner Robert Lamb, had designed the hall. He was well known in Darlington, having built the Pease mansions of Brinkburn and Mowden Hall, although his biggest project was Grey Towers (also known as Poole Hospital) in Nunthorpe.

Indeed, that same afternoon, back in Darlington at the same time, the foundation stone of another Ross contract – Cockerton Methodist Church – was being laid by another Pease – Mary.

Perhaps the reason that Mr Ross toasted “the ladies” as he could see them all sitting there squirming – the only toilet he had designed in the hall was a soakaway for the men to use.

That omission was probably because the hall, with its club room and reading room, was intended as a place for working men to go to meet, read, learn and improve themselves without the delicious distraction of women and without the alcoholic temptations of one of Staindrop’s many pubs.

Equality arrived at the hall when it was brought into the 20th Century after the First World War, as the extension that was dedicated to the memory of the men who had lost their lives in the conflict included, for the first time, a convenience for “the ladies”.

Now, with the help of Lottery money, the Scarth Memorial Hall is being brought into the 21st Century, and is open for all to see next Saturday.

WILLIAM THOMAS SCARTH served the duke for 25 years before he retired, aged 77, in 1898. A special dinner was arranged at Raby Castle on August 9, and, as guest of honour, he sat in an easy chair on a platform as the tables were arranged, the food was prepared and the guests – his friends from across the dale – filed in.

All of them remarked upon how contented he looked calmly sitting there.

When the meal was ready, he was called to the table and everyone applauded him – but he didn’t move from his chair.

Then the awful truth dawned: he had died.

FINALLY, on the day that TF Scarth died, The Northern Echo carried this bizarre story about life in Teesdale: “Mrs Newton, of Barnard Castle, the other day cooked some potatoes for dinner which she had purchased in the market. Previous to eating her dinner, she put a knife into one, and found, much to her astonishment and disgust, a small frog embedded in the centre of it.”

WITH thanks to Sheila Wylie for her help.