A country childhood

2:55pm Thursday 24th April 2008

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THE pursuit of ancestors has held my interest since the mid-60s. It is a compulsive pastime and reading about the subject or watching related programmes on television, this kind of research seems to be becoming more and more in vogue.

Tracing back as far as possible is but one aspect and can in fact be a little dry.

Simply listing names, occupations and dates of significance is, of course, important and can quite possibly provide a trumpet to be blown by those discovering descent from the rich or famous.

However, there is much to be found in Victorian, Edwardian and more recent times. Research, (together with sheer nosiness), puts excitement into each adventure, along with the exhilaration of reaching a detective's conclusion.

Driving down the narrow road along the Esk Valley from Danby, past the Moors Centre, the route skirts Duck Bridge, thereafter to weave through Houlsyke.

Later, the road dives steeply to an S-bend beneath a high arched railway bridge then up, over and above the beautiful Esk Valley line.

Ahead is the drop into the attractive village of Lealholm. Halfway down the bank and looking beyond, there stands Station House on the far moor side - home to my maternal grandparents and family between 1928 and 1935. Fronting it is another house, once two railway cottages where Number 1 was an even earlier home to the same family between 1907 and 1928.

On leave from the First World War, my country grandfather sang this army song to his three children. I have mentioned it before, but not the tune, which follows "Under the Bridges of Paris": "Apre la Guerre fine . . . Soldier Anglais parti . . . Soldier Anglais from the YMCA. . . Apres la Guerre fini."

Apres la Guerre our Robert was born - in September 1919 - his birth some 10 years after that of my mother, his eldest sibling.

A photograph of Robert which used to hang on the living room wall at Rose Cottage in Lealholm shows him at a tender age. My future godfather sports a mass of curls and cuddles Nettle, a muchloved dog of the period.

My mother and her sister became responsible for the late youngster, Bobby as he was known. They took him everywhere, pushing his pram up the steep roads out of the village in summertime, and in autumn too, a basket between them for gathering brambles.

Robert's childhood was full of activities.

He owned a cinematograph, kept canaries, angora rabbits and collected cigarette cards, mounting them in special albums. He could draw well, like his father, and also like his father, was a natural mathematician. Keen on push bikes, here was an interest which led to a lifelong passion for motorcycles, which became, apart from trains, his chief mode of transport.

Robert had a happy life at Lealholm as a child and in 1931 was accepted at Middlesbrough High School. This involved daily train journeys up and down the Esk Valley just as my mother had done 10 years previously.

So how come I am aware of all this?

Anyone interested in family research should listen to the stories older relatives love to tell - oral history in other words.

Also, the study and interpretation of family photographs is useful, plus the keeping of all family ephemera. Some day that old receipt or letter most folk would have binned years ago will connect with a piece of research; and to strike lucky as I did, with the discovery of a diary.

Towards the end of his high school days Robert bought a 1935 Scribbling Diary from Boots the Chemists. Most folk kept diaries on and off years ago, together with a yen for autograph books. Dairies can make devastating reading but Robert's simply gave insight to life within a North York moors village and a north-east industrial town, adding much to notes of my own.

Robert enjoyed senior school. Football being an enduring passion, he took keen interest in the Boro's progress at Ayresome Park, recording his trips to Middlesbrough on many a Saturday to watch them play. Yet his snippets of Lealholm life during the 30s were of equal importance to my mind, entries concerning our family there and village local history, as it has since become.

Following one Saturday at Middlesbrough, Robert returned to chop sticks, get in the coals and fasten up the hens. He drew the line at dealing with the earth closet however, for as I have mentioned before, that was my country grandfather's special task, and from mother's hearsay, how he hated it!

The next weekend Robert helped saw up some old railway sleepers which made excellent kindling. Sleepers had another use in their entirety as components in the construction of pig sties.

Amongst my uncle's many teenage pastimes, one was the killing of rats. The detested creatures crept out of the woodwork in a neighbour's pig sty to sit upon the trough edges, waiting for leftovers.

Robert waited too, after shooing the pigs into an outside enclosure and sensibly tucking his trouser bottoms into his socks (having once been lectured with lurid tales as to what might happen if he didn't). So by way of a stout stick and the silent but deadly company of Pat, a fearless terrier who gained special place in the annals of our family, he disposed of a good many.

Middlesbrough High School must have been a cold old spot for on February 25, 1935 Robert wrote that he was frozen stiff in his classroom. But, one school day in March he felt a good deal warmer when treated to a slap-up lunch at Sparks cafeteria by my mother. "Quite a change!" he remarked in his diary.

My country grandmother was a lovely lady, yet never afraid to voice criticism of "lang-winded sermons" for instance, within her beloved church. She often amused her grandchildren with charming observations such as "Pon my wod - a little bod!"

if a feathered friend put in a sudden appearance.

Around 1935 she was ever into fancy dress and dancing. In the spring of that year Robert made note of a Conservative fancy dress ball to be held in the Shepherd's Hall at Lealholm. His mother won second prize for an idea based upon 'washing day'. Mother and son stayed on for the whist drive and dance and all finished on the midnight hour. Robert's final entries were made as he thought about joining Lealholm's tennis club with a lad called Dick Darnbrough. So, after yet another Saturday trip to the Boro, there purchasing a suit for church, he and young Darnbrough became members.

And they played for hours. The following day Robert wrote that he was, er - tired out shall we say, and ached something chronic after such major exertions.

Robert later qualified as an engineering draughtsman and was employed by Dorman Long & Co. Lodging in town during the war years, he went to see the devastation left after the bombing of Middlesbrough Railway Station on August Bank Holiday Monday, 1942, the same day Kirkbymoorside came under attack by an enemy aircraft. He served in one of the town's Home Guard platoons from 1943 to 1944 and told many stories about the bedlam of those times.

He was a skilful craftsman. I recall a toy submarine - its details of construction contained within a junior encyclopaedia - which Robert made to work perfectly.

And he resurrected a model barge, fitted miniature steam engine, driveshaft and propeller and it chugged merrily across a side pool of the River Wear near Eastgate station circa 1948, much to my delight.

Despite two career moves by his father (Eastgate being the last), Lealholm was ever home. Ultimately Robert gave up his job and, after a period at Whitby, plus a spell at Ugthorpe, the family came back to Rose Cottage in 1961, my grandparents in retirement and Robert to do his own thing.

What he always found difficult was the driving of a car; he just couldn't master that co-ordination of gears, footwork and steering. After a series of motorbike accidents over the years, the results of bad luck rather than bad management and as he was, by 1985, finding winter biking a touch unpleasant, he decided to try a car one more time.

So he bought a Del-Boy type three wheeler (same colour too), but in spite of many a concentrated effort paired with an equivalent amount of dire comment along the Rosedale road, he gave it up as a bad job and bought a scooter instead.

Robert lived in Rose Cottage for 33 years, the last 15 alone. He had existed by mending clocks and watches, selling garden produce to Lealholm visitors and keeping poultry.

He was a gifted plantsman, the garden and yard at Rose Cottage evidence of this, ablaze with colour each summer through.

Knowledgeable about ornithology, he identified and fed numerous wild birds which readily alighted on the garden wall in front of the cottage window.

And so he carried on, washing his clothes, baking, doing household chores and trying to give up the weed. He avoided any suggestion of having a telephone installed, enjoyed playing his many musical tapes and tended his garden until he could do no more. . .

"The end of an era", the auctioneer announced whilst arranging the sale. And he was so right. Kinfolk on my mother's side came to Lealholm around 1883. My grandparents began a family there in 1909.

All four children were born and raised in the village, but three flew the nest.

Having eventually returned to base, our Robert was the last.