The Police Helped Me With My Enquiries

JOHN GRUNDY has found that, in Wooler, if you want the answer to a historical question, ask a policeman.

IN my admittedly rather limited experience, Wooler seems to me to have been pretty lucky with its policemen.

Recently I wanted to film the town’s police station for a little piece I was doing for BBC Look North so, since it’s no longer regularly manned, I had to arrange to meet a policeman there. It all went very smoothly and my colleague and I (I nearly wrote “my partner in crime”, but that would have been inappropriate in the circumstances) were admitted and warmly greeted by our constabulary contact, who unfortunately was almost instantly called away to a road traffic accident. He hurriedly pressed coffee upon us, showed us how to switch things on and off and leapt away on his mission of mercy, leaving us alone and in charge of the station.

Well, we were very good. We didn’t misbehave at all: we just got on with our task of conveying the historic qualities of the building. And let me tell you that they are manifold. It was built in 1850, which is very early for a police station, and it still has its cell with barred door and hard wooden bed.

It still has a little exercise yard out the back, surrounded by high walls and with an iron trellis over the top of it, barring the escape route between the prisoner and the sky. Upstairs it still has a plain, simple and quite unaltered magistrates’ court with all of its furniture intact; a near-perfect historic police station.

Anyway, we did our job and left, grateful to our trusting, kindly and friendly PC. Unfortunately, as we left the building, I walked off with (some would say stole) a file containing information about the history of the building which our chum had shown me. A week or so later a plaintive letter arrived asking about this mysterious disappearance, so I looked in my clip board and found the offending file and we wrote back.

Well... how convincing did my letter sound? “Dear Mr Policeman, I can’t remember exactly what happened but I must have slipped your folder into my clip board...”

Even as I wrote I could imagine him raising his eyebrows in a quizzical manner and licking his pencil, but in fact a charming letter arrived and instead of being banged up without the option I was left with a warm glow of affection for our boys in blue.

I mention this story at such length because it accords with my first ever professional visit to Wooler. In 1984, on my very first day as a Listed Building Fieldworker, I called at the same police station (manned in those days) to announce my presence in the area and warn the police that I would be lurking suspiciously around historic buildings and knocking on the doors of isolated farmhouses.

The policeman on duty that day was immediately interested in my story and started to tell me stuff about the history of the area. He pointed south and told me about the ruined house on the A697 which stood on the site where the Earl of Surrey’s troops had camped before the Battle of Flodden. He also told me about the battle of Homildon Hill, fought about a mile north-west of Wooler in 1402, when Harry Hotspur’s troops lost no more than five men but slaughtered as many as 8,000 from the army of the Earl of Douglas.

“Ay, we’ve had lots of trouble with the Scots,” he said, as if the Scots in question were a bunch of Celtic supporters and the bother had just happened, and he had personally been involved in sorting it all out. He was great. He was my perfect introduction to the history of the Wooler area.

And he told me another story. He told me about a house at the far end of the main street, next to the Roman Catholic church, which had been built by a most remarkable man.

He was called Count Horace St Paul – well, he wasn’t born with that name, he acquired it. He was born in 1729 and in his youth he was trapped, apparently against his will, into a duel which took place in Whitehall. He killed his opponent and had to flee the country.

He entered the service of the Hapsburg Emperor, Maria Theresa, and had an extremely distinguished military career which ended with him (a) becoming a Count of the Holy Roman Empire and (b) being pardoned for the original killing.

He came home, settled at Ewart just outside Wooler where he designed and built a mansion for himself and he built the house by the Roman Catholic church as his town house. Isn’t that a remarkable story for a small Northumberland town?

A small Northumberland town, I might add, which has tended over the years to receive less attention than it deserves. Its position, nestled on the eastern slopes of the Cheviots looking out across Glendale towards the beautiful Kyloe Hills, has always received due attention, but the town itself has been strangely taken for granted.

The reason for this may be that it doesn’t have all that much that’s very old. There are a few early 19th century buildings (particularly the nice row of little shops on the terrace in the centre of the town) but the main street, for example, is an almost unbroken run of Victorian and even early 20th century buildings.

Not one of them, though, is out of place; not one of them spoils the view, and some things about the town’s buildings are really quite noticeable. The pubs are pretty splendid to look at: the Red Lion is big and traditional, the Black Bull a handsome and richly decorated arts and crafts building. The Wheatsheaf has a fine rounded corner, pretty glass and a well painted pub sign.

The shop fronts... well, I’ve got strong views on shop fronts in traditional settings. You’d be bored rigid if you had to read all about them, but let me tell you that none of the Wooler shops breaks my rules. They fit their buildings, they reflect the time they were built and they are pretty in their own right. One in particular (you can’t miss it) has the most delicate art nouveau glazing bars.

And speaking of art nouveau, the United Reformed chapel on Cheviot Street was built in the 1700s, refurnished in the 1870s and delicately given art nouveau details by the excellent Alnwick architects Reavell and Cahill in 1904.

Do I sound a touch enthusiastic? I am enthusiastic about Wooler, partly because of its location, because there is not one single road by which you can leave it which does not take you to exceptionally interesting or beautiful places.

But I am enthusiastic about the town as well. It has just enough to offer for its size. When I first visited it in my official capacity as a listed building man 30-odd years ago, I found a place that, like so much of Northumberland, so many towns, and villages, looked tired and teetering on the verge of being a bit run down. Not any more.

It looks well, there are nice shops, decent pubs and caffs... and there are canny coppers too.