Below is David Smith’s written history of his recollection of living in Egglescliffe. You can follow what he says in his oral history by simply clicking above and sitting back and enjoying what he says.
David Smith interviewed by Arlene Ellis March on 15th2017.
I was born in the Manor House, Egglescliffe, in 1939. The Smith family came to Egglescliffe when my great-grandfather, John Joseph Smith, married Jane Law in 1852. He was a ships’ broker and owner and he became a gentleman farmer as the tenancy of Manor House passed on to his wife, as she wouldn’t leave the Manor House. There’s a pane of glass in a bedroom window with her name, written with a diamond, bearing the name ‘Jane Law 1842’. John Joseph Smith commuted to Middlesbrough by train every day, where his office was, and he had a granite path laid from Manor House to the Yarm station. In other words, Stoneybank. The east window of the Aislaby aisle of St John’s Church reads ‘Mistress Jane Smith has caused this window to be dedicated to the glory of God, also in the memory of her husband, John Joseph Smith, who was, for many years, Church Warden of this Parish and died in August 1886’.
My grandfather, Frederick Walton Smith, born in 1859, would take over the tenancy of the farm from his mother, because the tenancy would be in Jane Laws’ name. He married in 1894, a Maude Hutchinson from Bamburgh. He also took over Grange Farm and Home Farm, which are the buildings in the middle of the now Eaglescliffe golf course. He ran a mixed farm, a dairy herd supplying milk to the village. Horses took up a large part of his time as he was a great hunting man and had race horses and was a remount buyer for the Army during the First World War.
After the First World War there were fourteen men or so employed on the farm. One of them was a young Luke Marshall, who worked on the farm for sixty years. But, as a young man in the early ‘twenties, he was sent down to Hauxwell’s, which was the engineers in Yarm, and he was sent with a horse and a plough and he was told by my grandfather to ‘see Mr Hauxwell and get the share of the plough moved a shade to land’. He found Mr Hauxwell, gave him the instructions and said ‘the guvnor wants you to move the share a shade to land, please’. Mr Hauxwell put his hand on Luke’s shoulder and said, ‘young man, we work to thousandths of an inch, not shades!’
My grandfather had a hunting accident from which he didn’t recover and my father left school in 1928 and had to run the farm, because his elder brother, Frederick Foster Smith, was killed in the War. My father married in 1937 and his father had died in ’34. He carried on the horse tradition and he trained and rode his own horses in races as an amateur jockey, being much in demand and riding for Sam Hall, a trainer from Middleham.
I arrived on the scene in 1939. War declared in September ’39. During the War I can remember the sirens and spending one or two nights in the air raid shelter on the farm, and several nights in the cupboard under the stairs on the farm with my mother. But I can never remember father spending a night out of his bed in either the air raid shelter or under the stairs. I can remember going to see an unexploded bomb which landed next to the pond on Village Farm. During the War there were Canadian airmen stationed at Thornaby aerodrome and they sometimes came to the Pot and Glass, which is, of course, where this Luke Marshall also went quite a lot of the time. When they found out that he worked on the farm they asked him who made the potato rows on the farm and he said it was him. Because they were so straight the airmen set the sights of their guns before they went on raids by his potato rows! And so they all bought him drinks! It was all done with a horse.
After the War there would be eight or so men employed on the farm. Two tractors, I remember, but the horses still did much of the work. As a young boy I enjoyed doing most of the farm work with the horses. A favourite job was on a thrashing day when the thrashing machine used to be brought, pulled by steam engine, and then driven by a steam engine owned by a Mr Preston of Potto – you’ve seen the lorries? They brought the steam engine into the village pulling the thrashing machine and all the men on the farm and Mr Preston’s men used to have two days thrashing. That was in the winter. Harvest time was in the summer, which was done with a binder that made stooks and stacks. That’s why the thrashing machine came in the winter, to thrash the corn, because you weren’t so busy in the winter, but in the summer time, when you were harvesting, it was just getting it all in out of the fields. I was doing this at age six, seven, eight. When I was working with horses I would be eight or ten. I was allowed to have a horse and I would be in charge of it. I used to love that, sitting on a machine with a horse pulling the machine.
My father took over the tenancy of the Village Farm in the late ‘forties, and then he bought it as a sitting tenant in 1960 and we moved in in 1963 when we got married. All the work horses, by the mid-fifties, went and on the farm now there was three tractors. The latest tractor was a little grey Ferguson tractor and that had hydraulics and a three-point linkage which meant that it could pick up an implement, then you could take it to the field and put it down in the ground to work. Up till then, all the other tractors you just pulled them – like a horse – it just pulled implements – you couldn’t pick the implement up unless you put it on wheels. But the racehorses were still a very big part of my father’s life and I can remember going down to Yarm station, because a lot of the horses arrived by train, taking them off the trains and walking them home. Yarm station then was just behind the traffic lights at the top of Yarm bank, underneath the bridge that goes over to Aislaby.
Up to the early ‘fifties we had a dairy herd at the farm and they supplied the village with milk which was delivered from a tricycle with a big box on the back, which held about eight crates of milk. And it took a lot of pedalling up the village. The order that it was done, the only way to do it, you went up on the right-hand side of the bank, delivering those houses up there. When you got to the top you turned right round and went down to Eastbourne Avenue, back up and then round to the top of Butts Lane then round the back of the church and then it was easy down from the Pot and Glass all the way back down to the farm. They were delivered in long, thick glass milk bottles with our name and telephone number on it. But in the early ‘fifties they associated human tuberculosis with milk and so all the cattle had to be tested for TB and all milk had to be pasteurised before it was drunk. And that killed the local ‘straight from the cow’. So we stopped and we changed to beef. That was the end of the dairy herd.
At the end of the ‘fifties my father retired from race riding and I became the stable jockey. At the same time – when I was eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, I played rugger for Middlesbrough. So I found it very difficult to do both and the weight was a big problem. But I got injured playing rugger so that put an end to that so I concentrated on the racing life. But every year I had to lose two stone in weight from January 1stto March 1stfor the racing season. The horses were all trained in the fields here, they came through the village every morning with riders. It was our life and the race horses were a very very important part.
My father retired having ridden seventy or eighty winners and then the highlight of his training career, of course, was the winner at Cheltenham, winning the Foxhunter’s Chase, in 1982. The National press described him as a genius with horses and he often turned a sow’s ear into a silk purse. I rode and then in ’84 or ’85 I decided to retire, having ridden seventy or eighty winners and my son took over the stable jockey. And so I trained horses for my son. And he retired five years ago. Old age! But he rode seventy or eighty winners as well. It’s in the blood.
I went to Cleveland School, which started at a house called Greatney, which was on Yarm Road, fairly close to where the electric cables go over. It was nearly opposite the entrance to Sunningdale Estate. I was there for two years and then the school moved to what is now Teesside High School. So I was an original pupil down there for a year. This was during the War. Then I went off to Scotland to school.
After the War we celebrated on the village green with a huge bonfire, the effigy of Hitler on top strung on a rope with a sword straight through. As a young kid I thought that was marvellous. The sword was going to be mine next morning because I was going to get up very early and get it, which I did…I got up very early and went to the bonfire but no sword. Somebody else had beaten me to it! Every year after that there used to be a big bonfire on the village green until health & safety stopped it. But as kids, next morning we were straight there with our potatoes in the ashes and we’d have baked potatoes. Mrs Faber always lit the fire to start with. Then mother did.
I can remember the village green being scythed by Mr Butler, who lived on Rose Terrace, and made into hay. I can remember the quoits pit on the village green – but I can never remember an organised team game. As kids we used to throw quoits in but I can never remember grown-ups doing it properly. There was supposedly a building at the bottom of the green, but I can never remember it. I think it was a cow byre or cow shed or something but it was before my time. And I don’t know where the village shelter was. I think probably everybody had their own shelters in their gardens. We certainly had one down at the farm.
The school, of course, was in the Parish Hall, and the building on the left side of the school, which is now the new school, was a farm. And Mr Bretherton was a coal merchant and delivered coal. But I think all the land must have been owned by Glebe Farm, which sold it at the same time as Sunningdale, so it all got built up – Sunningdale, the school and all the other houses on Butts Lane. I can remember the bottom house on Butts Lane (the Spinney) being built but the other four were there. And the house at the other side of the school, which is now the Glen, was where Miss Crisp lived and it was derelict for years and years and the garden overgrown and as children we used to go and play in there, but it was haunted – we had a lot of fun in there.
The church fetes were always in the Rectory garden. There was a mini steam engine train which went round the garden and you paid your money and children rode round on it. There was lots of stalls, coconut shies, pony rides – my pony, I had to lead people around the garden for a penny a ride. It was a complete day out.
Egglescliffe Hall, that’s the big house behind the wall, that used to be owned by the Jones family during the War. And just after the War they moved and a Miss Thompson lived there. She had the first mobile chair that I can ever remember. It was a three-wheeler and it was all enclosed. It was quite big and there was a leaver came up from the front wheel right along and she steered it by this leaver. And she rode round the village on this thing quite a lot. As children it was the best place to go for Carol singing. We knew which were the rich people, where you got money and a piece of cake and probably a drink of lemonade. She always invited us into the kitchen and we had a glass of lemonade, a bar of chocolate and some money. After she left, Ashmore’s bought it and turned it into offices.
We used to have a chap worked on the farm called Leo. He was a conscientious objector. As a little boy I didn’t understand what a conscientious objector was. Leo was very very religious and one day he was working with all the men down the field at the bottom hoeing turnips. At the other side of the river, Clockwood House on the Leven Road, they had some peacocks. They used to call and this chap Leo thought it was the Gods calling him. He dropped his hoe, and he went off, arms in the air and nobody ever saw him again!
They put three pylons on the farm while we were there and one day, before they put the wires up, one of the workmen climbed up this pylon and hung his bait bag on the very top. When they put the wires up they found this bait bag and my father got into very serious trouble for letting this man climb up.
Another funny story – on Stonybank. The children used to sledge down Stonybank, though we sledged down Yarm Bank field as well – where the pill box is. You could get a run and when you got to the bottom you ducked under the barbed wire, through the fence and you could hit Yarm bridge if you were really going. But then the children thought it was better to go down Stonybank although there was a post at the bottom. People went down on bikes as well and the Council got really shirty about this and they thought they had better put some barriers in to stop them. We were a bit sceptical about whether they were allowed to put the barriers on a bridle path because horses could not get down. But a girl who had a pony at livery once went out riding and she went down Butts Lane and she was going over the bridge at Yarm station on the Aislably road, when a train went underneath and the pony took fright with her on. It set off and turned round and galloped straight across the main road and straight up Stonybank. And it jumped both barriers, round the church and into the stable yard with her still hanging on, as white as a sheet.