The corner of Richmond with the intriguing name St Trinian's

The name is deeply intriguing, if only because St Trinian is more usually associated with saucy schoolgirls and jolly hockeysticks because of cartoonist Ronald Searle’s stories about the naughtiness at an Edinburgh girls’ boarding school. We believed it was named after St Ninian, a 5th Century Scottish saint, whose name in Gaelic was Trinnean.

(Ninian Park, the home of Cardiff City FC, is named after Lord Ninian Edward Crichton-Stuart, a Scotsman who became MP for Cardiff in 1910 and backed the football club financially until he was killed in the First World War.)

Historian Jane Hatcher explains that a corner of Richmond has been borne this unusual name since at least the 1530s.

“Among the documents drawn up for the dissolution of Easby Abbey is a reference to an aged former canon 'lying feeble in a certain chapel there called St Trinians, having no help save only of the special grace of the lord king',” says Jane. “It is not clear whether this St Trinian’s Chapel was in the abbey itself, or at the site of the present St Trinian’s, which was one of the abbey's granges.”

The land around St Trinian's Hall includes a copse of willow trees planted to make cricket bats for Yorkshire. Picture: Hewetson & Johnson

This feeble fellow, known as John of Richmond, seems to have been being nursed in the abbey.

Henry VIII’s government wished to whisk away all the wealth of places like Easby, but it recognised it had a duty to those such as John who depended on the institutions it was getting rid of, and so he was granted an annual allowance of 60 shillings to find alternative care.

DURING much of the 20th Century, St Trinian’s Hall was the home of Sir Everard Radcliffe, a 5th baronet from Devon who became a Newcastle stockbroker. He was a keen amateur cricketer, and captained Yorkshire during the 1910 season. In his 64 first class matches for the county, he made only 826 runs at an average of 10.86, took just two wickets at an average of 67, but clung on to 21 catches.

He bought St Trinian’s during the First World War and lived there until his death in 1969. It is said that in a low-lying corner of the St Trinian’s estate, Sir Everard planted a copse of willows and used their Yorkshire wood to make cricket bats for the Yorkshire county team.

Inside St Trinian's Hall, near Richmond. Picture: Hewetson & Johnson

ST TRINIAN’S is on the B6271 from Scorton into Maison Dieu in Richmond. A little nearer the town is an interesting carved stone in a gateway. “Easby Road Ends Here”, it says.

This is a late 18th Century stone and marks the parish boundary between Richmond and Easby – the cost of upkeeping the road swapped from one local authority to another at this point.

This boundary, though, is much older than the stone as it follows the line of the Scots Dike, which can be clearly seen running north to south here. It is a ditch with an embankment that was dug in the 6th or 7th centuries and runs from the Swale to the Tees.

"Easby Road Ends Here" says this late 18th Century stone on the road between Scorton and Richmond. It is beside the Scots Dike, which is a boundary dating from the 6th Century

It was probably the dividing line between the British kingdom of Rheged in the west, which was based on Carlisle, and the Anglian kingdoms of Bernica and Deira in the east.

Just as the stone is a fascinating stone as far as stones go, so the ditch is a fascinating ditch as far as ditches go. Any further information on Scots Dike would be very welcome – doesn’t it run through Gilling West and Melsonby on its way to the Tees?