Talking railway scandal George Hudson – The Railway King – will be returning to inspect the family vault at St Peter and St Paul’s Church, in Scrayingham, this summer – and helping to raise funds for the village at the same time.

Actor and storyteller Chris Cade will be presenting An Evening with George Hudson on Friday, June 19, at 7pm at the church.

The evening will chart and celebrate Hudson’s varied life as a millionaire, bankrupt, celebrated personality, outcast, railway visionary and discredited trickster.

The evening will have a special resonance for the village, because Hudson was born in Howsham and is buried in the churchyard in Scrayingham.

Tickets are limited and cost £9.50 for adults and £6.50 for children aged seven to 16, and include a light supper.

They are available now online from georgehudson.eventbrite.co.uk or by post from The Old Rectory, Scrayingham, York, YO41 1JD. Please include a cheque made payable to Scrayingham PCC.

The event is raising funds for The Friends of Scrayingham and Leppington.

George Hudson was born at Howsham on March 10, 1800. At about the age of 15 he went to York to work in a draper’s shop. He inherited £30,000 in 1827 from a distant relative and used this to buy shares in the North Midland Railway Company. By the mid 1840s he controlled more than 1,000 miles of railway track, earning him the nickname of The Railway King.

But Hudson’s business practices were, to say the least, rather dubious and eventually these malpractices caught up with him and he was forced to repay. Thus in the late 1840s, from being one of the richest men in England he was bankrupt and forced to flee to France to avoid his creditors.

At 65 he returned to England and, after a short spell in York Gaol, he moved to London where he died on December 6, 1871. On December 21, his lead-lined coffin, which weighed half a ton, was buried in the family vault at the church of St Peter and St Paul, Scrayingham.