Letter to the Bishop Auckland Guardians (NZ208290)

In September 1895, the Poor Law Officers' Journal newspaper reported:

A MINER IN SEARCH OF A WIFE – AMUSING APPLICATION TO THE BISHOP AUCKLAND GUARDIANS

At last week’s meeting of the Auckland Board of Guardians, the following letter was read from a miner:

Having noticed that you have some orphan children and other class of people you want rid of from your Workhouse, I thought it a likely place to get a wife. I am a respectable working man under 40 years of age, a widower with no encumbrance, a good set-up house, a coal-hewer by trade, and wants a wife, as I am completely sickened of housekeepers, having had no less than 18 in as many months. If you can fit me up with a respectable lassy between 30 and 50 I would be glad, and would be glad to take an orphan girl into the bargain free of charge. I prefer a single woman before a widow, as widows won’t do for me. I have no particular fancy for beauty; a plain girl will do for me, only she must be clean and industrious. If you have one please let me know and I will come with a trap and take her away free of charge to the Guardians. Let me know soon, please.

The reading of this letter caused much amusement, and Mr. Leonard (Crook), moved that a committee of bachelors be appointed to consider the matter, but this was not seconded. Mr. Todd said they should try to accommodate the man (Laughter). The Chairman: I cannot answer that question. Mr. Leonard: Let him come and have a look round the Workhouse and see if he can find a woman suitable (Laughter). The letter was ordered to be handed over to the Workhouse Master.

[taken from ‘The Workhouse’ website – specifically here]

Auckland Castle Deer House (NZ215304)

© Copyright Paul Buckingham and licensed for 

reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

With its lofty social connections, Bishop Auckland and environs is blessed with many historical highlights and curiosities. One such item is the extraordinary Auckland Castle Deer House a little to the north of the town.

Bishop Auckland is, of course, the home town of the bishops of Durham. And in case you have ever wondered why these guys chose to live here instead of Durham City, well, you need look no further than Auckland Park – a magnificence expanse, purpose-built for hunting more than 800 years ago. It provided a means by which the famous Prince Bishops could entertain both themselves and their guests, as well as giving them an income by various means and a handy supply of timber, etc.

Included among the sumptuous mix of bits and pieces that adorns the park is the extravagant Deer House – built during Bishop Richard Trevor’s tenure in 1760 in the Gothic Revival style. It existed to provide shelter for the deer, and doubled as the animals’ dining area, too. The complex also had a resting/viewing area for the bishop and his guests, and the whole construction was built to impress, doubling as a sort of landscape folly for aesthetic purposes. It is essentially a courtyard surrounded by an arcade, with a gateway on one side and a tower on the other.

It is clear that these Prince Bishop chaps had far too much money, though the resulting extravagance that is Auckland Castle Deer House is a particularly fine – and, indeed, rare – example of its kind in the UK.

Thomas Wright & Westerton Tower (NZ223341 & NZ240310)

© Copyright Hugh Mortimer and licensed for reuse 

under this Creative Commons Licence.

Thomas Wright was born in the little village of Byers Green, near Spennymoor, in 1711. He disappeared for the duration of his working, adult life, before returning to the area in his retirement, where he set about building the still-existing Westerton Tower. He died before it was completed, meaning that his planned observatory became little more than a folly adorning the Durham landscape.

Wright had his fingers in a lot of pies. He was schooled in Bishop Auckland, before being apprenticed to a clockmaker in the town. In his working life he began as a teacher of mathematics and navigation at his own school in Sunderland in the 1730s, before moving to London to work for several wealthy patrons. He dabbled in garden design, was a bit of an architect and designed scientific instruments – famously building a huge working model of the solar system (an orrery) for one of his clients. Indeed, Wright is best remembered as an astronomer.

Despite what you may have read elsewhere, it was Thomas Wright who first speculated that the Milky Way was most likely a flat disc of stars, and that the blurry blobs of light we see in the night sky (nebulae) are actually distant galaxies. These ideas are often attributed to the brilliant German philosopher, Immanuel Kant, but they first appeared in Wright’s An Original Theory or New Hypothesis of the Universe in 1750. He also helpfully (and correctly) postulated Earth and humankind’s relative insignificance in the ‘grand scheme of things’, and was the first man to coin the phrase ‘galaxy’ to describe a large group of stars.

Retirement sent him back to his homeland in Co.Durham, where he set about work on his pretty little observatory (though construction may have begun earlier in his lifetime). His death in 1786 preceded the tower’s completion, so his planned observatory rather unfairly became a mere folly. It has been used, periodically, as a reading room and more recently as council offices. A commemorative plaque was placed there by Durham University in 1950 to celebrate the 200^th anniversary of the publication of his famous treatise.

Bob Paisley of Hetton-le-Hole (NZ351475)

Bob Paisley, the man who was so famously associated with Liverpool FC at the height of their powers a generation ago, was born in Hetton-le-Hole. He was a servant of the club for more than half a century.

Paisley was born in the County Durham village on 23^rd January 1919, leaving school in 1933 to become a miner. He later became an apprentice bricklayer, and soon forced his way into the famous Bishop Auckland non-league team – winning the Amateur Cup with them in 1939. Just prior to the outbreak of World War II he was snapped up by Liverpool FC, but had to wait until 1946 to make his full and proper debut for the Merseyside club. He served as a ‘Desert Rat’ during hostilities.

He played for Liverpool until 1954 – for many of those years as club captain – before moving behind the scenes. He was first a physio, then a coach (under Bill Shankly), being finally promoted to the post of first-team manager in 1974.

During his nine-year tenure in charge, Liverpool dominated the sport both at home and abroad. He won six League Championships, three League Cups, one UEFA Cup and, most notably, three European Cups (the latter being a record for a manager). In 1983 he was succeeded by Joe Fagan, though he later returned to work for the club as an advisor and director.

He was married to Jessie (in 1946), with whom he had three children, and finally left the club in 1992. He died in 1996, aged 77. In 2008 a grand memorial was unveiled to him in his home town – see here.

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