Great Smeaton: Revealing the ups and downs of life as a village cricketer

The houses are inspired by their site on an old cricket ground just off the A167 between Northallerton and Darlington and, a few weeks ago, we asked if anyone could tell us anything about the club that once played there.

Tom Briddock, in Swainby, recalled playing there for Great Broughton against Great Smeaton in the Langbaurgh West league in the 1980s, and Simon and Tim Catterall, who grew up in the village in the early 1970s, also remember playing on the wicket.

“The development behind East House is in a field which was the cricket ground with its own green wooden pavilion,” they say. “In those days all the local villages played in leagues and the pitch was used every weekend in the summer where the game was played to quite large crowds.

“The president of the club when we were boys was Stan Fawcett from Hornby and he was a cricket enthusiast and a real gentleman.”

Today, the keeper of the cricket club’s memory is John Morton, who was man of the match in what might have been Smeaton’s finest hour when, in 1979, they beat favourites Loftus in the Kerridge Cup final, John carrying his bat with 64 not out.

He has the oldest document relating to club: a scorebook from 1912, in which Smeaton played against Welbury, North Cowton, East Cowton, Blackwell, West Rounton, Neasham Hall, Swainby, Hornby and Worsall.

The scorebook from Great Smeaton's innings against North Cowton in 1912

It records some remarkable achievements. Against Worsall, G Ward scored 50 and retired, presumably to give the others a knock; against Welbury, J Fawcett took eight wickets and F Fawcett two, all ten of which were bowled.

Perhaps the most remarkable was the match against West Rounton, in which Smeaton were all out for 71, with RM Horsfall top scoring with 33 in ones and twos, and Rounton were skittled out for just six, with F Fawcett taking a seven-for.

John also has a minute book recording the meetings from when the club reformed after the war in 1947. It restarted with a dance in the village hall to Bert Waller’s Band, which cost £8 10s. The committeemen had to provide the raffle prizes: first, a dozen matches; second, a dozen eggs and third, 20 cigarettes. They also had to provide the spot prizes for the dances: half a pound of chocolates and three packets of 20 cigarettes (perhaps the matches were the first prize in the raffle because by the end of the evening they would have been the most valuable commodity as everyone would have been wandering around looking for a light for their prize cigarettes).

Ella Moody, whose late husband had been a stalwart of the cricket club, presents a club cap to Dennis Smith at an end of season ceremony in the late 1960s. Back row: Arthur Clark, Bill Haughton, Ian Dodsworth, Gilbert Turnbull and Jack Walker. Left on

The minute book shows that by the 1950s, Smeaton had two teams and they travelled to away fixtures on Winns buses (fare: 2s each). There were the usual problems about the teas rota, leasing the ground from the owner of East House, finding a heavy roller and keeping rabbits out of the pavilion, but by 1972, the club had progressed to holding a “beat dance” to the hot and happening sounds of Richmond’s Just Before Dawn. Unfortunately Just Before Dawn appear to have split up before the “beat dance” and the New Sound Five were called in.

It was a success, and helped fund the club’s new pavilion, which was opened on June 10, 1973.

A 1950s picture of East Cowton Cricket Club which won the Wellshood Cup with so many players from Great Smeaton that the picture was on display in the Smeaton pavilion. Back, from left: Pat Morrison, Artie Kay, Mark Marley, George Kirkbride, Harry

The last entry in the minute book is dated January 14, 2002, and shows the perfect storm which had hit Smeaton.

“In the year 2001, there was a foot and mouth epidemic and the Langbaurgh League was postponed as most clubs were not allowed onto their grounds,” wrote the secretary. “Great Smeaton still played in the Middlesbrough Mid-Week League, playing their home fixtures at Maltby, who charged us £150.”

Then the minutes say: “As the pavilion had been flooded during the 2000-01 winter and had not been cleaned since because of the lack of access, it was agreed to meet for a clean-up as soon as weather permitted. Meeting closed at 9.08pm.”

The only known picture of Great Smeaton Cricket Club pavilion that survives, and it shows it underwater in 2001, probably because a drain had become blocked

And the club closed soon after: the younger players had drifted to other clubs and the older ones had turned to golf, and with the pavilion in such a state, Great Smeaton was bowled out after at least 90 years of existence.

Nature reclaimed the ground, and now developers are building cricket-themed houses where once the cricketers played.

TWO surnames feature heavily in the Great Smeaton club books throughout the 20th Century: Fawcett and Sample.

The Fawcetts were originally the village blacksmiths and Stan Fawcett, a long-standing club chairman, was the landlord of the Bay Horse, where committee meetings were held.

The Samples were saddlers, and were associated with the village for 200 years. Herbert and his son Harry appear in the club records. After Harry died in 2008 aged 95, the Samples’ famous corner shop shut.

Great Smeaton archive

THE cricket club leased its ground from East House, which is the large house on the green in the centre of Smeaton. It dates back to 1735 – apparently, inside there is a large, wooden bible chest from the same date.

Its outbuildings include two game larders, a dog kennel and a coach house, and when it is sold – it was on the market in 2019 for two lots at a combined £1.1m price – the title of Lord of Great Smeaton goes with it.

East House, Great Smeaton: behind it is the cricket ground, and on its front is a Sun firemark

As does the Sun fire insurance plaque on its outside. Last week, we were searching for these “firemarks” in Richmond – they are metal plates issued by an insurance company 200 years ago to show that the property was covered. In the days of private fire brigades, in the advent of a fire, the firemen would check the firemark before extinguishing the flames because its presence meant they would get paid.

No firemark and they rode off leaving the building at the mercy of the flames.

The Sun Fire Office is the oldest documented insurance company in the world, founded in London by Charles Povey in 1710. It invested some of the premiums in a well-equipped fire brigade based in London – perhaps not much use if your house was in Great Smeaton (exactly 228 miles away, according to the milepost opposite East House).

The Sun – now part of the Royal & Sun Alliance Insurance Group – issued firemarks until 1839.

We aim to return to firemarks in the near future, so we’d love to hear from you if you can tell us of any locations. Please email chris.lloyd@nne.co.uk

Sun firemark, like the one on East House at Great Smeaton

ALEC ATKINSON’S uncle, Arthur Clark, played cricket for Smeaton until he retired aged 60 in the late 1970s. “The best I managed was a few, very unsuccessful, games for Welbury when I was still at school,” says Alec. “I don’t think I have a fast-twitch muscle in my body. Much more success playing lawn bowls where they aren’t required!”

Alec points out Smeaton’s great claim to fame: “The church is believed to be the only one in the country dedicated to St Eloy,” he says.

St Eloy Church at Great Smeaton, the only church dedicated to the patron saint of blacksmiths in the country

Eloy, or Eligius, was a 7th Century French goldsmith who was given a throne-sized lump of gold by King Clotaire II and told to make a king's chair out of it.

Eligius was an honest man. Not for him the parings, the scrapings and the meltings by which other goldsmiths secretly stole the king's gold. So honest was he that he fashioned two thrones out of the lump of gold.

Clotaire made Eligius his master of the mint, and then he became a bishop, converting the heathens of Flanders to Christianity. Eligius died in 660 and, because of his profession, became the patron saint of goldsmiths, blacksmiths and metal workers – particularly hammerers.

Great Smeaton owes its existence to its position on the Great North Road, between London to Edinburgh. In the great coaching era before the railways, eight coaches a day passed through Smeaton, often stopping at one of the four inns – the Black Bull, the Bay Horse, the Blacksmiths Arms or, down the road at Entercommon, the Golden Lion – for a change of horses or refreshment.

Before that era, the village’s name in the 11th Century was “smithstun” – the settlement of the smiths, who must have serviced travellers on the road. The forge was next to the Blacksmiths Arms, beside the church, although there seems to have been a bad fire there in the 1840s, and so the pub became known as Phoenix House when it rose from the ashes.

Therefore, in the cricket team, the blacksmithing Fawcetts and the saddle-making Samples were following centuries of Smeaton tradition of assisting travellers who called at the smithstun, with its church dedicated to the patron saint of blacksmiths, when they needed help on their journey.