David Bate interviewed by Arlene Ellis 26 November 2018.
I can’t say I know a huge amount [about Richard Clark], but possibly more than you do. We first came to Yarm in 1965, we have always lived in Yarm and have never been village residents, but we have attended Egglescliffe Parish Church more or less since we got here. For various reasons we found it more amenable than Yarm. Very soon after we had come, I was asked if I would become secretary of the PCC. I was actually asked by a guy called Dennis Huguenot who was church warden and he was my boss, in fact he was my boss’s boss’s boss and you don’t refuse him. So, I became PCC secretary and that entailed having a list of the members of the Parochial Church Council and distributing the notices of the meetings, there were no e-mails or anything in those days, and Richard Clarke’s house was one of those among many where I deposited letters of a meeting, and of course I was in the meeting to take the minutes and he was in the PCC. I think he was also a sidesman at church although I don’t have any written evidence of that. He and Sadie were both very active in the church, and Sadie was certainly very active on the catering side. She could always be found in the kitchen when there was a function on. Digging out from various “Find my Past” and other things to put some flesh on what I already knew, Richard was born in 1902 and died in 1977. His wife Sadie was born in 1907 and died in 1995, their cremated remains are both buried in the churchyard, to the left of the path as you are walking up the path from the Butts Lane entrance. In the addition to that, the processional cross in the church was donated by Sadie in memory of Richard, and there is an inscription on it to that extent.
Now, what it is I knew of the man I think he was probably largely retired by the time I knew him. Just backtracking a little bit the records show he married Sadie in 1930 in Castleward in Northumberland, so he was born in Bellingham, she was born in Castleward and they were married in 1930. They appear to have had one daughter called Anne. I neither knew her nor traced any record of her. What I do know is that by 1939 they were living in Stockton just off Bishopton Lane and he was then listed as an engineering draughtsman. That’s perhaps interesting because his father-in-law was a draughtsman, that may have been some influence. I think the fact that he was a draughtsman fairly soon led to the fact that when he retired and had some leisure time, he took up painting because he obviously had those skills. So, he took up painting largely as I remember in watercolours. I believe there are probably people in the village who still have some of his paintings. By 1975 I think he had become quite a lot less active and I do have a photograph showing him sitting at a presentation that was made to a temporary curate that we had, a gentleman called Mike Nelson. He was actually put in place for a short period to cover the period after the previous rector, Leslie Nelson, had died in office in 1975. So, the picture was taken in 1975 or 1976 because Richard died in 1977. That puts the picture together, it’s not the best of pictures but it’s the only one I’ve got. As I say he is listed as an engineering draughtsman and I suspect that he may well have worked for either Head Wrightson or Davys, but I have no concrete evidence of that. Living in Stockton it’s more than likely it was one of those two engineering firms. Because there were a large number of people who were draughtsman and a lot of them would have lived in that quarter of Stockton where he lived in 1939 because it was a convenient bus route into Stockton. Don’t know when they moved to Egglescliffe, I do know the house they lived in was called Greenside and is down on the south side of the village green. The house is still there but I don’t know if it still says Greenside over the door, I could go and look but haven’t. A lot of his paintings I think he did to commission so I think therefore there are probably people around in the village who have paintings. Sadie lived a little bit longer and I still remember Sadie being in the kitchen and doing things like that into the 1990s. Yes the population of the village was smaller and less mobile so people were more easily integrated I suppose than they are now. He was a fairly quiet individual and perhaps expressed himself through his paintings. I think he did some scenes of the village and whether you can track any of those down I don’t know, you’ll have to look round and ask other people.
Certainly they were both involved with the church. I can’t remember what function it was, there was some meeting or another and I remember Sadie being told by whoever was the priest at the time “would she please come and take part in the meeting, her job was not solely in the kitchen” but that was the way she saw it. So, if there was tea to be made Sadie would be making the tea. It probably got her out of taking part in a boring discussion, I don’t know.