Mark Hemming interviewed by Ian Reynolds 19th December 2018
I was born in India in 1944, because my father was in the Indian Army. My grandfather was Indian police. So, as it was wartime, I was born in Bombay. By 1947 when partition, when India became a separate country, most of the ex-patriots went home. My father and my grandfather included. My grandfather retired and my dad went on to do other things. He went on to work for the Foreign Office after that. My schooling was a bit erratic to say the least because we were always moving around. I originally went to school in Australia I think it was. After that I was at school in England for a while and then finally my dad settled down in Eastbourne and I went to school there.
I came to the village because I worked at Ashmores, as it was then. I was always travelling around. I spent three years in South Africa; that was slightly before I bought this place. And then four years in New Zealand and about six months in Canada. I was always on business trips of one sort or another.
I started life as a metallurgist but I seem to have descended into process engineering and other things at Ashmores. Basically, we were designers of process plant mainly for the steel industry. They did do other things as well. It was a big company at the time but unfortunately the steel industry is on its back and nobody wants to build anything. Design and commissioning really, that was the two things, with the possibility of other odd jobs.
Originally, I lived just off Sunningdale Drive but about two years after I moved there I came to the village, so that would be in 1981. When I bought the house, it was in rather poor condition but I tidied it up quite a bit at that time. Just recently I’ve done a major modification to the house because there was an unused roof space and also because the bathroom and the toilet were on the ground floor and it was very inconvenient coming down the stairs to use them. So, the house has been radically modified recently. If you look around this room, one of the interesting things is that we kept uncovering doors which we didn’t really know existed. To my left there was a door through into the next-door property. There was a door in the middle of the wall behind you Ian, that door was sealed up. There was another door to the right which I had to have moved because otherwise it would’ve caused problems on the outside. Also, there was a door which I’ve reopened leading to the front door, so the place has been heavily modified.
Originally this house was the workhouse. It appears to have ceased to be used as the workhouse about 1919 because at that time it was split into two properties. Originally this was called Eastside House, and that is number 8 and number 7 together. But at that time the owners decided to divide it into two. I’ve got a complete list here of everybody who has lived in the house for the last hundred years. There are a number of names which are familiar local names. There’s a Martin Richmond, original owner. Then it passed on to Elizabeth Anne Birdsall. Then onto Clara Marshall, who died in 1961. Then Gordon Brooks and Beryl Brooks; John Raymond Clark and Heather Clark; Bruce Nicholson; and the last owner before I bought the place in 1981 was Doreen Anne Townsend. It’s also interesting to note the prices of these properties over time. In 1919 this place was transferred for £165. In 1947 it went for £2,600. I bought it for £28,500. Just shows what escalation does for you.
What I’ve got here are some photographs of the interior of the loft. Originally my property and number 7 were joined together with a door. You can’t see the door but it was actually behind this
fireproofing to stop the drafts going from one property to another. So that’s yet another. I think I counted up that there were actually eight new doors, or eight doors that we found in various places. You can see here when my builder was in that that entrance was blocked up and basically we put this blockwork on top of a steel beam which runs across the house now. That stabilises the chimney and also supports these beams here, and just seals the place up. You can see here in this photograph the steel beams being lifted into the roof. I think I counted there were ten beams altogether put into the roof. None of them were of any great size because they had to be manoeuvred by hand so they only weighed about 80kg each. They weren’t particularly deep beams, but anyway, it just shows what has to be done to modify the house. Anyway, that’s mostly about the house.
Well, my next-door neighbour was Daisy Napier at that time. She was a very old lady at that point. She apparently had been gifted the cottage next door by one of her relatives, it may even have been her sister. She lived there till about 2002 and then unfortunately she died. Then the property was empty for quite a while, even though it was owned by her son, Nigel Napier. Then eventually it was sold two or three years ago, before it was redeveloped. On the other side was Brian Jopling, who used to work for Teesside Bridge and Engineering Company, and also his wife and their son and daughter. Unfortunately, they all died except for the daughter Sarah, who lives out in Worsall.
There was one incident here which nearly cost me the house. I was away at the time but according to Brian Jopling there was a [bon]fire on the green. At the time there were [bon]fires on Guy Fawkes Day. Somebody released one of these maroons and instead of going up in the air it went more or less horizontally and hit my house. Fortunately, it didn’t hit the window because if it had that would’ve been the end. So shortly afterwards they stopped having bonfires on the green. I think because of the insurance problems. Apart from that there was a fire in one of these houses over here, which I think was a chimney fire; that caused a bit of excitement.
There was a smash and grab down the corner here where somebody tried to steal a vehicle from the farm. Off the top of my head that’s the things I can remember that were odd.
Really, I started off collecting books. That was my main interest. Unfortunately, I just got to a point where there were too many books. It might seem very strange because I’ve increased the foot area of the house substantially, but actually I haven’t got enough room to store them now, because the shape of the rooms is not right. I had every little nook and cranny of the place filled with books and those nooks and crannies have gone. So, I had to switch to postcards. Basically, I collect postcards of Eaglescliffe and Yarm and Stockton, those are the main things I’m interested in. But anything to do with North Yorkshire and Durham I’m also interested in. I was lucky enough to buy a very good collection of Eaglescliffe/Egglescliffe cards about three years ago when a friend of mine who had an enormous collection, he died and it was all auctioned, so I bought his Egglescliffe cards. That supplemented cards I’d already got. I’ve got about 200 Egglescliffe cards, I would think something like that.
I still find them occasionally, there’s one here I bought this week which I’ve never seen before, of the green, it’s a nice card, very nice card. It’s obvious the photographer knew what he was doing because he made a good job of it, but unfortunately, we don’t know who he is. I might be able to infer it by the number on the front because probably the others are in the collection somewhere.
I would think the majority have been used. Unfortunately, it means that the quality is sometimes not as good and you have to watch it because the stamp mark where the postage stamp has been cancelled sometimes comes through onto the front. They’re definitely not as valuable if that has happened but this one is in pretty good order really. I mean there’s no obvious marks on it. The postmark is dated 1937, so it was obviously printed slightly before that. And judging by the car, that’s definitely a pre-war car by the look of the back of it.
Well, I get cards from a number of sources. At the moment the easy source is eBay, I mean there’s plenty of cards on eBay. Massive lot of cards. There are postcard fairs, of which there are two quite big ones locally. One is in Durham city, and that happens about every six months, and there’s another one at Leeds, which happens about quarterly, I would say. You also see cards sometimes at antique fairs, although they seem to be declining a bit at the moment. I think those are the main sources. People know that I’m interested so they ask me if I would want to buy a particular card.
There are a number of people, a number of dealers in this area. I suppose the nearest one is Andrew Stoves who lives at Hartburn, and he’s into stamps and ephemera and postcards. And there’s Millston cards, I’m forgetting his name now, but he’s in Hartlepool. He’s got a lot of very good cards, especially strong on Hartlepool of course because he lives there. Those are the two nearest, and there’s a guy at Preston-under-Scar, he has a big postal business as well. There’s not a lot of dealers. You see it’s a bit different from books because the postcards basically were like the emails are today. Certainly, up to the First World War, extremely popular. Then unfortunately the Chancellor of the Exchequer put up the postal rate from half a pence to a penny, and that sounds laughable now but that was actually quite a lot of money in those days. That pretty well stopped the postcard trade in its tracks. From 1920 onwards the number of cards issued declined quite sharply. So, it’s really the pre-First World War cards which are valuable, of course they’re not being printed any longer. They do go up in value. I think that’s really the situation at the moment. I try and collect the ones before the First World War if I can.
As I said before I collect Yarm, Eaglescliffe and Stockton but I also collect some by the printers. In Stockton there were three printers who I chase after if I can. The main one is Brittain & Wright. Now Brittain & Wright lived in Wharf Street in Stockton. They had a big printing works there, which in addition to postcards used to publish posters and things for the North East railway. The business was in existence right up to the 1960s. In addition to Brittain & Wright there was Armstrong, now Armstrong seems to have been a dealer in Stockton. I think somebody printed the cards for him. We think it’s one of the other major printers in the area but nobody’s been able to prove it exactly. And then the third printer I collect is Heavisides. Henry Heavisides and his son Michael Heavisides had a works in Finkle Street in Stockton. Henry Heavisides wrote a large number of books which are becoming rare now. In addition to that they did quite a lot of postcards. Those are also quite rare. I suppose I’ve got about 50 Heavisides cards. Unfortunately, none of Egglescliffe village although there is one of Yarm bridge, and there is a few of Yarm itself. Those are the main ones but there are printers around the area that used to do things: Ross at Whitby, Stevens at Thirsk, all high quality stuff. There’s a few at Darlington as well.
There’s a large collection of his [Heavisides] photographs in Preston Park. He was an extremely clever guy. That business continued on until the early ‘70s. Then it was sold. There’s also locally, I’m very interested in postcards from the Robin Hood’s Bay area near Whitby. Not because I have any particular connection with the area but there was a guy there, an artist called J Ulric Walmsley. Now Walmsley is a very well-known painter, and some of his stuff is absolutely beautiful. I can’t remember the name of the company but they produced a series of postcards of Robin Hood’s Bay using his paintings. They are absolutely beautiful, they’re really outstanding. I’ve got probably about 20 of them. They’ve become incredibly expensive now. I think £100 for a postcard is getting a bit expensive. I mean mine, I didn’t spend that sort of money, I don’t want to lock up that sort of money in those things, but regularly they go for £100.
Well, they vary quite a bit. Most postcards are not worth more than about £10. A church, which is a mark of them because everybody produced postcards with churches, they would go for about £5. Really, above £50 you’re talking big money in postcard terms. It has to be special to do that. Strangely, some of the industrial ones are very expensive. I collect also postcards about blast furnaces. Of course, there are a large number in this area and I acquired a collection of industrial cards when my friend died. Also, elsewhere, and those are incredibly expensive now, they go up to £25-£50, each card. I just pick those up because I was in the steel industry. It’s the most prominent thing on most steelwork sites. If you see a picture of an open hearth nobody really knows what’s inside it. It’s not very photogenic. Inside of the steelworks there are also some photographs and postcards but the lighting conditions probably weren’t very good and flash photography isn’t like it is today, so some of the definition isn’t as good on some of those cards.
Titanic photographs or postcards fetch thousands. Yeah, because it’s a craze at the moment, because of the film and so on. Especially if it was posted from the Titanic on the fatal voyage. I believe Titanic went to one of the southern Irish ports, I think it was Cork. So, people sent cards back, you see. If it’s got the imprint of the Titanic on it it’s absolutely amazing. So, I mean it’s of little interest to me except one of my relatives was on the Titanic. He was in the crew. Amazingly, he survived. And he gave evidence to the US Congress and also to the Board of Trade. I hate to say it but I don’t think he was telling the truth on some of the things he said! It was an interesting episode. I’m deeply into family history in fact, and I wrote a little pamphlet about my granddad, who was killed in the first war. Got all the things together. I’m still involved because I’ve just very recently got an email with about sixty photographs which we didn’t know about because they were over in Canada with some distant relatives of mine. They are absolutely marvellous, they show my father when he was about 5, and my aunt and numerous other people who we lost contact with. In fact, there’s one photograph there, which I believe (this is still to be proved) but I believe it’s my father when he was about one year old with my grandfather, who was killed, and my grandmother. The photograph is so blurry that it’s a bit difficult to be sure, but if so, it was printed in 1915, because he was killed in 1916. That took up a lot of my time. I’ve got about seven or eight volumes of stuff, all family history together. In recent years, the last three to four years I haven’t really done much on it.
It’s a very narrow area that I collect in. Temptation comes your way and you see another nice card – it’s difficult to refuse sometimes! Ah well, what I do is, particularly with Brittain & Wright cards, there were 2,700 produced, and I’ve got all the numbers on my mobile phone so I can check it off, before I put my hand in my pocket, as it were. The others, well they’re not so much being produced from Eaglescliffe and Egglescliffe and Yarm, I pretty well know what those are like. Stockton’s more difficult because there are far more of those. If I saw a Stockton card, I’d have to be pretty sure I hadn’t got it before I purchased it. Of course, on eBay it’s simple because you just look at your album and check it off but when you’re out at a fair it gets more awkward.
I have in the past bought at auction but it’s not very satisfactory because I really want to cherry pick them, I want that particular card but I don’t want the rest of them, so if I buy them I’m left with a load of cards I need to dispose of. It’s all right for the dealers. The best thing I’ve found is to chat up the dealers and find out who is bidding for what and then go back to them later and say, “Can I have that card?” because they’re happy they’ve made an immediate sale and I’m happy because I don’t have a load of cards that I can’t do anything with. It depends, I mean if there was a really, really good selection or a lot of cards I might put my hand up and bid for them, but these days not really. Same with books, I find I end up with a load of books I can’t dispose of. That’s the situation.
This is a delightful card I found on the internet. I mean the postcard itself is nothing, but it’s the message, and it says, ‘Miss Doughty, Egglescliffe Village, Durham’. And then there is a message from her, to her sister, I guess. And of course, she lived just over here. I’ve shown this to Janet, because she’s related to the Doughtys. There’s a copy of the message and things. It’s not a very nice card but anyway, this lady at that time, which was 1917, was living in Darlington. This one is such a beautiful thing. Everybody seemed to be delighted to see it, Janet in particular.
Of course, the Doughtys suffered rather badly in the First World War. This is a map of all the people who died in the First World War around this area. You see the Doughtys here, there’s David, Christopher and Robert, Thomas Doughty who lived where the shop was. And then the others in this area who were killed, there was the Cordingleys who lived in the house that’s now where Astrid Merritt and her husband live. There’s Richard Willis who lived up here in the Hollies. There’s the Dingles of course who lost two sons. Dingle was the priest in the village, the Rector. There was somebody over here, Wiles. And then of course the Smiths lost one of their relatives, Frederic Smith.
There’s also this thing that I have a copy of, this is not the original, which at the moment I mislaid, but it’s most unusual because it’s an account of everybody in the village and Eaglescliffe who took part in the First World War. So, it isn’t just a memorial of people who died, it’s actually the people who served and where they were sent. And the beauty of it all is that this was published in about 1919, so it’s just as memories were fresh. Absolutely wonderful document, but it also lists all the people who died as well.
That’s the beauty of postcards, they are social history and also, it’s amazing looking at the pictures of the green. How little it’s changed in a hundred years. Tiny changes really. A lot of things you see on postcards that no longer exist today like the pump and the pen that used to be out the front here. The cross was moved, of course. Those are the things that come immediately to mind. The shop down on the corner there, that’s had the front taken off it, but apart from that you’d recognise it.
I believe there was a deadly rivalry between the two shops. Everybody was watching who’s going into the other shop. I think Janet or somebody told me that. I think these trees that you see now are relatively modern, in fact I think if my memory is correct that they were actually quite small trees when I came. Because I think the Smiths had planted the whole of the green with new trees around 1980.
The other things that may be of interest to you – there’s a very nice picture in this book of the village. It’s a little bit fanciful, but… this picture. Now, that’s by this guy, Heaton Cooper. I believe he’s moved the cross a little bit, it’s not really there, although it might have been like that when he painted the picture. Heaton Cooper seems to have been something of a commercial artist, but there’s a shop over in the Lake District at Grasmere which specialises in Heaton Cooper pictures. Because he did a whole lot on the Lakes. I’ve been in there several times but this particular picture never seems to come up.
There are a number of other pictures painted of the green and the village. The best one by far is the one taken of the viaduct, and it’s taken probably from the memorial cross looking across the valley, and it’s a lithograph done around 1850, 1860. It’s got some super things on it; one is the windmill that used to be over, Mill Field is the name of the place it was at. Mill Field is just when you go to the Cleveland Bay and go on towards Urlay Nook. Mill Field was just on the left, that’s where that windmill was. There was another one of Yarm, where there was a mill right on the top. It’s a little bit skewed, I think a bit of artistic license had gone into it, but it’s a fantastic thing. I used to have a copy of it but I just got bored with it, really, and sold it. [I have a postcard of the mill as viewed from] West Street. The mill was obviously not operating at that time because the sails were off it. There seems to be a book in publication at the moment about the mills in North Yorkshire because one of the authors came to me about that particular postcard. I used to have quite a nice picture of the Pot & Glass. There’s loads of little booklets and things of the village which you’ve probably seen. Obviously, there’s Dingle’s book, but there’s also a very nice, very nicely produced book of little sketches of Eaglescliffe which I presume you’ve seen. They’re very high quality, the actual sketches, they’ve got the dovecote, they’ve got the Grange, and so on. I keep looking. I used to have quite a nice one of the Bluebell painted from the other side of the river. Apart from postcards there’s some beautiful pictures been taken of the area. I’m trying desperately to remember the name of the photographer – ah, it’s come to me, Ellam was the name. He had an absolutely wonderful picture of the bridge taken from the Yarm side. It shows the vinegar brewery and so on. Absolutely beautiful picture.