20 gardens open to the public in the pretty village of Croft

One part of the village belonged to the local landowners of Croft Hall while the other part was owned by monks in York and administered from five miles down the road in Great Smeaton.

But next weekend, the gardens of both halls are open to the public, along with nearly 20 more as the village unites to raise money for its church – a church which, for 800 years, was not in Croft but was over the border in a place called Monkend.

An Edwardian postcard of Croft Spa Hotel beside the A167

Research by villagers and historians Dr Adele Sykes and Dr Kathryn Streatfield, which has recently presented to the Croft Lecture Society, explains how shortly after the Norman Conquest, William the Conqueror rewarded Count Alan Rufus of Brittany for his loyalty by giving him much of North Yorkshire. Alan began building Richmond castle as a massive statement of his arrival, and assembled a loyal team to rule the county.

One of those was his brother-in-law, Enisant Musard, who also came from Brittany. Alan made him the first Constable of the Castle and gave him 12 carucates of land – a little more than two square miles – at Croft.

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Perhaps to salve his conscience after being involved in the brutal invasion, Count Alan also set up St Mary’s Abbey in York, where monks could pray daily for his soul.

Enisant, probably realizing that it was good to support your father-in-law’s pet project, donated a quarter of his land in Croft to St Mary’s around 1086. This included the church and practically all of the land on which the modern village of Croft now stands, but back then it was known as Monkend – it was the most northerly end of the York monks’ territory. The monks might have had a domestic property where Monkend Hall is today.

So the village of Croft was two parcels of land: there was the Croft estate, which came to be owned by the Clervaux family (later the Chaytors) who lived in Croft Hall (below), and Monkend.

As the centuries rolled round, the monks left the running of Monkend to whichever local big wig would give them the most money. By the 14th Century, this was the Vincent family of Great Smeaton, who looked after the monks’ land in Smeaton and down the road in Hornby.

In 1539, Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries and took control of their lands. He wanted money and sold off whatever he could. Richard Vincent gave him £339 9s 1d for Great Smeaton and Hornby, but didn’t he want to buy Monkend – perhaps it was too far away for him.

So Christopher Place of Halnaby Hall – a third hall, now demolished, that was equidistant between Croft and Middleton Tyas – bought Monkend. Over the centuries, pieces of Monkend land were sold off for house-building, a process that accelerated in Victorian times when Croft developed as a spa resort with people coming up by train to bathe in and drink the eggy water that came gushing out of local springs.

Above: An Edwardian postcard showing Monk's End at Croft, now known as South Parade. On the left is the schoolhouse that Lewis Carroll's father built

Below: An old postcard of Monkend Terrace which leads to Monkend Hall. The terrace was built in the 1860s to accommodate visitors to the village's spas

Old maps, though, refer to Monkend as being a “detached” part of Great Smeaton, and it seems that the owners of those new houses in Monkend were liable to pay their dues to the village five miles down the road rather than to Croft, which was on their doorstep.

All such confusion was tidied away by the 1888 Local Government Act, which created new council structures across the country, including placing Monkend back where it belongs as part of Croft. Now the identity of Monkend has been subsumed into the village of Croft, although the hall at its heart still bears its name.

Monkend Hall, here in the 1950s, is one of 20 gardens in the village to be open to the public next weekend

The gardens of the two halls, plus about 20 other properties in Croft, or Monkend, are open from 10am to 5pm next Saturday (June 10) and noon to 5pm next Sunday. The starting point is the village hall (DL2 2SF) for tickets, toilets and refreshments, plus plant sales and a raffle. St Peter’s Church will also be open.

A postcard sent from Croft to Benwell in Newcastle in 1912. "It is a bonnie little place and we like it very much," says the writer

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IF there ever was a monastery in the grounds of Monkend Hall, it is said that it was lost in a terrible earthquake that shook the Darlington district in 1179. Indeed, old stories say that the hall got its name because the monks met their end there when the quake destroyed them.

King Henry II was celebrating Christmas at Winchester when the dread news arrived that in the south of the diocese of Durham, the ground had risen up “with such vehemence that it was equal to the highest tops of the mountains and towered above the lofty pinnacles of the churches; and at that height remained from the ninth hour of the day to sunset. But at sunset it fell with so horrible a crash that it terrified all who saw that heap, and heard the noise of its fall, whence many died from that fear, for the earth swallowed it up, and caused in the same place very deep pits”.

The hills that the earthquake created on the Yorkshire side of the River Tees are to this day known as Monkend Hills, and the deep pits, which still confound geologists, are today known as Hells Kettles on the Durham side of the river.

Hells Kettles, near Darlington, by John Mannick, of The Northern Echo Camera Club. It is the only site in County Durham where there is a body of water fed by springs. 

They are at Oxen-le-fields, beside the A167, and are known as Hells Kettles. Two of these bottomless pits survive, a third having been filled in by road-builders in the 1960s, and a legend lives on about how they are connected to the river by a secret subterranean passage.

This is known to be true because when Cuthbert Tunstall was bishop of Durham, between 1522 and 1559, he procured a goose on which he placed a mark known only to him. The poor bird was then rammed down one of the kettles. It disappeared for some weeks when it popped up half-a-mile away in the Tees next to Croft bridge.

The bishop himself took one look at his secret mark and confirmed it was the same bird, thus proving the existence of the tunnel.

Another story confirms this confirmation. It says that one day a mystical Indian diver, “a man of colour”, was passing through Croft looking for a circus. The villagers grabbed hold of him, rammed him down one of the kettles and he, too, disappeared only to pop up some weeks later half-a-mile away in the Tees next to Croft bridge.

They asked him where he had been, but as he was of foreign descent and unable to speak the language, he couldn’t tell them.

But they knew he had been living in the bishop’s passage deep beneath the surface of the earth.

Croft’s most famous son is, of course, Lewis Carroll, and the story of a hidden underground world beneath the A167 south of Darlington is said to have inspired his story about Alice who tumbles down a hole and finds herself in a strange subterranean world – just like the bishop’s goose and the Indian diver.

An aerial view of Croft bridge taken by Jimmy Blumer in 1949. Directly beneath the plane is Bridge House, an early 19th Century property where the gardens are open today. On the right is Croft church and in the centre is Croft Spa Hotel, complete with its circular swimming pool. The Rectory is on the right behind the church

IT is entirely appropriate that the gardens of Croft are going to be drawing large crowds next weekend as the village was the centre of a horticultural attraction when Lewis Carroll was a nipper in the 1840s.

Because the Rectory, where he grew up, opposite the church, had a very rare cereus cactus growing in its grounds. A native of central and southern America, the cactus only bloomed at night once a year – usually on Croft’s latitude, this was around May 31.

The night-blooming cereus would open at about 1am, filling the air with its sugary scent, but by dawn the flower would have withered and dropped off.

Seeing the bud open was described as a religious experience – to some, the cactus is known as “Christ in the Manger”, although to others it is “the Princess of the Night”.

But hundreds, if not thousands, came on the railway out of Darlington to Croft to see, and smell, this one night only annual occurrence.

There will surely be lots of floral flourishes amid the open gardens of Croft next weekend.

A diesel calls at Croft Spa station in February 1968 when the closure of the line from Richmond to Darlington was threatened. Trains brought hundreds of people to see the night-blooming cereus in the grounds of Croft Rectory

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