From this newspaper 50 years ago (August 21, 1965)

“Giant puffball filled a wheelbarrow”, said the slighty alarmist headline in the D&S Times.

“For the second year running a number of giant puffballs (calvatia gigantea) have grown in the stockyard at Mill Field Farm, Swainby, which belongs to Mr FB Watson. They are growing on damp, rotting chaff. One of the biggest measures 23x24x16 inches and weighs about half a hundredweight. When one of them was cut, it completely filled a wheelbarrow, and the repulsive smell filled the surrounding air.”

Although, in giant puffball terms, the dimensions don’t appear staggeringly large, if it really did weigh 50lbs – more than 20kg – it was a veritable monster.

Continued the D&S Times: “It has been calculated that one puffball of this size produces 32m spores, and if each were to develop to the same size as the parent puffball, they would cover an area of 4.5 sq miles.”

On reading this, residents of North Yorkshire must naturally have become very concerned that the whole of the Stokesley area was going to disappear beneath a bloated blob of white fungus.

Reassuringly, the D&S said: “There is, however, no need for alarm on this score as records show the puffball population does not noticeably increase.

“If they are picked when the flesh is still firm and white they are good to eat, sliced and fried like a veal cutlet.”

From this newspaper 100 years ago (August 21, 1915)

A SOLDIER drowned in the River Tees while on his weekly bathing parade. Private Victor Edward Exley Bentley, 18, of Seaton Carew, had marched out from camp in Darlington to Cleasby Deeps, which appears to have been a regular bathing place for the 3/5 Battalion of the Durham Light Infantry.

Major Plant, who was in charge of the newly-formed battalion, had marked off a section of the Tees which he felt to be safe, although beyond the shoreline there were notoriously deep pools. Earlier in the day there had beena thunderstorm and so the river was swollen.

However, Major Plant “understood this man was a strong swimmer and bathed in the sea every day before he enlisted".

The coroner, though, said: “It seems to me men were being allowed to bathe in a place where it was out of their depth six feet from the shore, and many of them could not swim.”

The jury disagreed, and “returned a verdict of accidental death from drowning and asked the coroner to communicate to the proper authority the recommendation that a board should be erected at the dangerous point of Cleasby Deeps”.

From this newspaper 150 years ago (August 19, 1865)

There had been a “singular accident near Saltburn-by-the-Sea” at Hole Hill ironstone mine which was worked by Darlington’s Pease and Partners on land owned by Lord Zetland.

“A number of men were employed as 'barers' whose duty it was to clear away the layers of soil etc preparatory to the stone being hewn,” said the D&S Times.

It had rained incessantly for weeks during the summer of 1865, and on the day in question, a downpour caused “Robert Hastings, Henry Bucknell and Little Joe to take shelter in a hole dug in the banks, commonly called an earth cabin. They had not been there long when, without warning, the roof, owning to the saturating rains, fell in and buried them.

“Robert Hastings was carried to Marske, when he now lies in a most precarious position, very little hopes of his recovery being entertained. Bucknell and Little Joe are almost well again.”

In contrast to the breezy way in which the unfortunate Mr Hasting’s demise was reported was the respectful manner in which the great grief of Eleanor, Duchess of Northumberland, was handled.

Her ladyship’s husband, the 4th Duke of Northumberland of Alnwick Castle, had died six months earlier on February 12, 1865, and now Eleanor – still in deepest mourning – was making her way to the family’s secondary home at Stanwick Hall, between Richmond and Darlington.

“Her Grace arrived at Bank Top on the Scotch Express at 4.15, which for her special service stopped in the centre of the station, in order that she might quietly alight,” said the report. “That train usually merely rests at Darlington to take in water, and no passengers are either booked from or to that place.

“Her grace was attired in the deepest weeds, and wore a plain widower’s cap. She drove off to Stanwick in her brougham with a single pair of horses, and was received at her favourite home, which will be her future country residence, with the respectful and silent greeting of her tenants in the quietest and most unostentatious manner possible.”

Eleanor’s husband had been 28 years older than her, and so she lived as a widow at Stanwick for 46 years until her death, aged 90, in 1911.