A source of learning for the whole community
High drama in Sir Walter Scott’s The Fortunes of Nigel, one of the books in Hunstanworth library’s collection in the 1860s.
Central to much of village life in the North Pennines lead mining communities was the library and reading room, a place where workers could read and learn about distant lands, different customs, world events. Apart from the big family bible, this would often be the only access ordinary people had to books, newspapers and periodicals – and a way of life outside their own.
Hunstanworth estate owner the Revd Daniel Capper established a library in the parish some time before 1857, as an entry in William Fordyce’s History and Antiquities of the County Palatine of Durham published that year mentions: “A library is kept in the vestry of the church, for the use of the parishioners.”
We’re fortunate enough to still have the ledger book which faithfully records more than a century of book-borrowing and newspaper reading in the community. It was kept safely for many years by former resident Irene Baugh, and in October 2007 was deposited in the Durham County Record Office (DX/1607/4). It shows the reading material that people had available to them, the books that interested them, and (in this age of information overload) perhaps gives a better appreciation of just how limited horizons were only a century ago.
The ledger begins in 1859 with a list of library subscribers and the reference numbers of the books they borrow. Members paid twopence a month – or a penny in today’s coinage – to borrow from an initial collection of around 200 books.
Listed at the other end of the ledger are the book titles which formed the initial library collection. Unsurprisingly – as this was probably Revd Capper’s own collection and it’s located within the church – these first books would hardly be described as a ‘light read’, being mainly theological works, studies of divinity and lengthy religious tracts. Among them are such worthy titles as Watts’ Ruin and Recovery of Mankind, MacGowan’s Dialogue of Devils and Simpson’s Plea for Religion.But books on history and biography also feature, including The Life of George Stephenson, A History of Durham and The Plague of London. There are also works relating to the sciences: Henslow’s Botany (Darwin was Henslow’s protege), Newton’s Chronology and Williams’ Mineral Kingdom. And of course, where families kept their own livestock and costly vetinary care was out of the question, there was British Husbandry, Cattle Doctor and The Horse.
Library members could also find out about far-off countries such as China, Mexico, Italy and the West Indies – although I guess we wouldn’t regard the Victorian authors as being particularly politically objective these days.
As time goes on, the library offers increasingly popular titles, including many of the classics we would recognise today, such as Dickens’ Dombey and Son, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre by Currer Bell – Charlotte Bronte’s nom de plume.
It was a momentous year in 1900 when the Hunstanworth Literary Society and Institution decided that there should be a reading room linked with the library, where members could sit comfortably in the glow of a blazing coal fire and read of the day’s events in the newspaper.
To raise money for the plan, it was resolved that: “an entertainment be got up for the good of the reading room.” This was to be “a social at Townfield on Easter Monday” and there was a note “to ask Mr Little to come with his gramaphone”… was this the world’s first disco?
Enough money was raised for a coat of fresh paint, some new tables and chairs, and the room – situated at the back of the same building as Townfield’s shop and next to the school – opened on Friday July 13 1900 with three papers: The Daily Journal and Daily Leader, The Strand, and Farm, Field and Fireside.
Villagers must have been keen to read the latest news. The ledger sets down the reading room constitution, which states: “That no member be allowed to retain a paper for more than ten minutes, unless the room is vacant.”
Children under 13 are not allowed in, and two or more members of one family and from the same house (because some families were large enough to range across several different houses) could use the room on payment of half the fee each – a sort of Victorian ‘Buy One, Get One Free’ arrangement.
The reading room and library served the people of Hunstanworth for more than 100 years, but inevitably as newspapers, radio and television broadened our horizons and cars, trains and planes enabled us experience new cultures for ourselves, the reading room was no longer the parish’s window on the world.
A page in the old ledger book, written in modern blue Biro instead of the swirling inky script of the Victorian entries, concludes the story of Hunstanworth’s reading room and library:
“A meeting was held at High House Farm, in the home of Mr Edward Jameson on January 6th 1971, for the purpose of deciding what to do with the money left in the account of the Townfield Reading Room. The meeting was called by Mr E Jameson who was the only person left in the parish whose name was on the Bank Book as trustee for the account.
“He had informed all previous members who still lived in the parish of the meeting. The members who attended the meeting were: Mr Edward Jameson, Mr W Jameson, Mr E Heppel, Mr F Everitt, Mr F Dowson, Mr E Limmond and Mr J Lonsdale.
“For the purpose of opening the meeting Mr Lonsdale was elected to take the chair and thus for to make a constitutional meeting had elected Mr E Jameson (chairman) Mr W Jameson (Treasurer) Mr J Lonsdale (Secretary). The treasurer read the accounts balance, and explained that as the Reading Room was no longer in existence, and hadn’t been for some 15 or 16 years, and that it was time that the account should be closed, and it was up to this meeting to decide what to do with it.”
The money was divided between Baybridge Chapel, Hunstanworth Church and Hunstanworth Village Hall… and the reading room was no more.
Memories of the Reading Room
The members’ preferred brand of tobacco
Hunstanworth resident Hilda Everitt, who died on New Year’s Day 2009 at the age of 93, remembered that by the 1920s the reading room also served as a kind of village hall, where Whist drives and other social activities were regularly held.
She said: “Our teacher, Mr Dewhurst, was very keen on Whist and he taught me the game so that I could partner him at the drives in the reading room. I remember the room being unbearably smokey because smoke from the fire blew back down the chimney when it was windy.”
The fire wasn’t the only source of acrid fumes in the room. Cecil Davison, who lived with his Grandmother Elizabeth Wilkinson in Townfield House as a boy in the 1930s, said:”Grandmother sold War Horse baccy in the shop, and I remember the men would cut a piece of thick, black tobacco off with their knives, rub it round in their hands to break it down and then stuff their clay pipes with it. That was the overpowering aroma I remember in the reading room. And there were spitoons at intervals around the room, and a billiards table.”
