Blood, Sweat and Scones

by Keith James Bell

  The experts suggested we needed to line two more flues. I questioned this, thinking of the expense. They invited me to have a look down the chimney for myself. I would need to go up on a cherry picker and, being scared of heights, this was not something I was keen to do. Nevertheless, I clambered on board and with shaking legs I was hoisted up to the top of the chimney. Clinging on for grim life, I peered down into the cavity of the chimney. It was bad news. As the builder had explained, all the feathers (that is the bricks between each chimney flue to you and me) had completely disintegrated. We did need both chimneys lined in order to stop the smoke. We just had to find the money.

  Thus, the beginning of 2015 was a very sooty, cold, dusty and expensive three months for the two of us. We were living in one room in the top of the building, in the garret I had used as a paint room when we had first arrived twenty years earlier. All our prized possessions and our clothes were under dust sheets. The heating was not working. We felt like students again. Impoverished students at that. Spirits were low.

  By April all was sorted. The building work was complete. We had warm, clean accommodation. Moreover, we could gaze out of our refurbished living area and see the newly completed café at the bottom of the meadow.

  We turned to each other and chorused with feeling, “The last major building project we are ever doing.”

  Now all we had to do was to generate enough cash to pay for it.

  * * *

  While we have metaphorically moved above the shop we are still keen to keep the place as close to a family home as possible. When we have friends round, provided there is no function on, we have a choice of rooms to use. We still have dinner parties in the Medieval Hall or the dining room. It is good to know the house is still used as intended when it was designed and built. Feasts and celebrations have brought people together in this house for centuries. When sharing an evening with friends I sometimes look around the table and wonder who has sat here before us in times long gone and what were they celebrating?

  11

  Our Team

  Our staff have been fantastic. We have always been fortunate in having a group of people who have not only worked hard, but have also bought into Crook Hall’s ethos; every visitor is treated as a friend you would welcome into your own home. There have been some staff members, it’s fair to say, who have not made the grade but I usually felt they were lovely people who happened to find themselves in the wrong job.

  One of our students was continually arriving late for work. It culminated in him arriving half an hour late, dressed in the same clothes that he had left in the previous evening. Hmmm… He looked tired out and we suspected he had been out all night. He blamed his lateness on the trains. Kelly, our general manager invited him into the office. He knew what was going to happen.

  Kelly, “Please would you come in to the office?”

  Student; “Don’t want to.”

  Kelly, rather more forcibly, “Come into the office.”

  The student shuffled in through the door.

  Kelly, “Please take a seat.”

  Student, “Don’t want to.”

  Kelly, exasperated, “Take a seat.”

  Student, “It's OK I know what you are going to say and I do not want to work here anyway.”

  A case of jumping before he was pushed.

  Kelly is often called upon to deal with challenging situations. One evening she was overseeing a wedding when the staff alerted her to a drunken intruder who was stumbling around the gardens. The man could barely stand. He was getting alarmingly close to the moat pool. She tried to persuade him to leave. He was having none of it. She was worried that he could fall into the water.

  Kelly’s partner is a member of the local police force so, in desperation, she rang him. He was on duty and Kelly began to explain the situation. Suddenly the man stepped towards the moat pool and teetered on the edge of the water. Kelly, though petite, is very brave. She rushed forward to save him, dropping her phone in the process. Her partner, fearing the worst, burst into action. Within five minutes four police cars arrived. They entered the premises like a SWAT team. Within minutes everything was sorted and the uninvited guest was helped off the premises. I wonder what he remembered of the incident when he woke up the following morning.

  * * *

  We always aim to be five-star in everything we do and we know if someone cannot give a five-star service we cannot continue to employ them. Maintaining our reputation for excellent service is sacrosanct.

  Input from our customers has been vital in helping us to operate at this level. We always welcome feedback. When we do fail to reach the expected standards we are all disappointed. We try never to promise things we cannot deliver.

  Some people, like Beth and Georgia, started working here when they were fifteen and are still with us. Georgia works during her holidays from university, while Beth is now one of our senior managers. Three of Georgia’s sisters have worked here. We are a family affair. Gary, one of our team, has frequently been asked whether he is my son and during one exchange was given a hearty handshake and congratulated on the fine work he has done in opening the Hall and Gardens. He acknowledged the compliment, adding that he had found it all extremely hard work. He says that all these comments about his parentage have sometimes led him to go home questioning his own identity.

  Mark was an extremely flexible member of the team. He came back from college one Easter and helped me move a few logs. At least I think that is how I sold the task to him. Our tree surgeon had brought down the sycamores surrounding the Silver and White Garden. He had logged the trees and left half the orchard filled with timber. I had never seen so many logs. Neither had Mark.

  Three days later we slumped against an apple tree completely exhausted but triumphant. The logs were now all neatly stacked in the log store near the house. I could see from Mark's face that he preferred moving tables and chairs for weddings to moving logs, but he never complained. We congratulated each other on an amazing log pile that would keep the fires going for many seasons. I think we still have some left.

  We have had some great staff whose devotion to the cause has taken my breath away. Biddy, who came from Worcester, graduated from Durham University but travelled all the way back the following October to be our witch at Halloween – she had so enjoyed the role the previous year. She was such a good actor. Superb.

  Hannah, another student at the university, played a pivotal role in the early years when our wedding business began. She, too, demonstrated total commitment: she had to travel home to Edinburgh one Friday evening after work to visit a sick relative. She spent the whole night sitting at a hospital bedside but she was back at the Hall to manage a wedding the following morning at 8am. She was a very talented singer and graced the stage at many of our events, including our candlelight nights, and returned after graduation to sing again. What a star she was.

  Since leaving, Hannah has gone on to be a professional singer and actress, she is incredibly talented.

  Look her up. Hannah Howie.

  James, one of our current students, is ‘Mr Flexible’. He has been a waiter and barman but has also excelled as an actor. Each day I see him he seems to be in a different outfit; elf, army officer, pirate, bunny rabbit, snowman, Prince Charming, big bad wolf. You name it, give him a costume and he is away. No role except those more feminine ones are beyond him. He is such a good sport and he is very good with all the children.

  It seems that every year the university provides us with some excellent staff.

  Some of our staff have had embarrassing experiences. One of our young lads, Jack, was working at a twenty-first party one evening when he spilt a quantity of prosecco down the front of his shirt. Unbeknown to us he called his father, who arrived at the Hall with a new shirt. Jack swapped shirts in the car park and rushed back to work. One of the guests arrived late, saw him ba
re chested in the car park and thought he was a stripper. An excited ripple went through the Hall when this news was reported to her friends. There was disappointment when Jack’s clothes stayed on him for the rest of the evening. The buttons were tightly fastened.

  * * *

  Malcolm worked with us as a gardener for many years. It’s thanks to him that I was introduced to the beauty of the camellia and his knowledge of hydrangeas has made such a difference to the gardens. He re-laid the brick paths in the Shakespeare Garden making them more symmetrical and more in keeping with the period.

  We had no shortage of bricks. In the 1800s and early 1900s the Durham Brick and Tile Company was operating in close proximity to the Hall. Nearly all the larger towns had their own brick making facilities. Durham was not alone. Bricks were manufactured in their millions to provide building materials for the thousands of back to back housing and finer dwellings which were springing up all around the county.

  Once the Brick and Tile Company closed, probably due to foreign competition from Mackems or Geordies, the bricks were just left in the ground in and around the old site. We have salvaged hundreds of them and to our delight discovered three bricks which have Crook Hall printed on the end. These special bricks were made to identify the recipient of each particular production batch. I gave one of these bricks to the gardener and asked him to put it in the wall just outside the courtyard so our visitors could see it. Fortunately the cement was still wet when I discovered he had put it in the wrong way round so that the Crook Hall name was not visible.

  An advert for Specsavers, I thought.

  More recently we found local bricks stamped with the names of the brickworks where they had been produced, such as Lumley and Newburn and we have used them to make an interesting edging around the gravelled area.

  * * *

  We have a vine in the greenhouse. It was the one we brought with us from our previous home. One year we took off thirty kilos of grapes and turned them into wine. We had special bottles made. The alcohol was there, the colour was there, the bottles certainly looked good. The taste? What a disappointment. Maggie actually spat out her first mouthful. I laid a few bottles down – for ever. It was a bad vintage. No other years were planned. On reflection I do feel the colour is very reminiscent of the paraffin my dad used to use in our old heater.

  * * *

  John joined us to work in the gardens a few years after Malcolm started. John is a devoted Manchester United fan. For many seasons he travelled down to Old Trafford to see the good games as well as the bad ones. He did not renew his season ticket once Ferguson left or was it because there were more poor games than good ones?

  In the garden, he transformed the scruffy vegetable patch into a well organised kitchen garden and he has added to the autumn colours by introducing dahlias. One year our Christmas event coincided with the worst snowfall we have had while we have lived here. All our opening days throughout Christmas were affected. Deep, deep snow. John dug a path all around the gardens so the treasure hunt for the children could still go ahead. It looked like a winter wonderland. Who needs Lapland? Despite the weather only one family did not make it to the festivities which were truly magical.

  John and Malcolm worked well together. They laid the new stone path which runs down to the gate. With some hired help they put the large pergolas into the meadow and planted the roses which now scramble over the structures. It was a sorry day when Malcolm retired but he often pops in to see us. His wife, Margaret, brings her walking club along to The Garden Gate, continuing the support she gave us when she used to come along and volunteer in the gardens.

  Roger, our Australian gardener was a very interesting character. He began as a volunteer and shortly afterwards we had a Gardeners' Question Time visit. John and I were put in the shade by Bob Flowerdew’s knowledge of plant names. Fortunately for us Roger was a good match for him. He joined the permanent team soon afterwards. Not only was Roger a knowledgeable gardener but he also had an interest in carpentry so he was a great help in repairing many of the structures which were showing their age, having been built years earlier by my dad or past gardeners.

  Roger was instrumental in solving the long standing problem of the leaking pond. It had gone on for years. In dry weather the water level would drop alarmingly, exposing the ugly black liner. Both John and Malcolm had put it down to evaporation which was a credible explanation as the surface area was very large. However, Roger had other ideas. His background included a good deal of knowledge about trees and he had noticed the hawthorn above the pond was dying. With two volunteers he excavated the area above the waterfall and discovered our pump had been pumping water into the field for years. There was an area of luxuriant growth in the field and the hawthorn had died because its roots were continually wet. Problem solved. The pond level has stayed fairly constant ever since. Roger also reshaped the water features in the two ponds and created the fernery out of a gravelled drive at the bottom of the walled garden. We now use that area as an entrance for our weddings and events. John has widened the path in the walled garden so that couples can stroll up or down together. The path looks as if it has been there for hundreds of years, the original part probably has.

  While John and Roger were here we purchased a huge stone bench. What a day that was. We bought it from a reclamation yard and loved it, although we felt we had paid over the odds. Little did we know it would cost more to transport it and put it in place than the initial purchase price. The bench is stone, curved with a carved back and sides. It is over ten feet in length and stands over five feet high. We needed to hire specialist moving gear just to get the pieces from the top of the lane to the middle of the garden. Brute force was then required. Six men were needed to move each part of the seat into place.

  It took well over six hours for us to do the job and we had lined it up brilliantly. Maggie arrived to survey our work. She stood there and, with her eye for detail, suggested it just needed moving a few inches to the left.

  Her suggestion was met with a dismayed chorus of “No way”.

  So if you sit on that seat enjoying the view just think how much better it would be if moved just a smidgen. Maggie always does.

  While I am on the subject of benches we had a couple visiting from the States. They were celebrating their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. They would be the first to say that they were rather large people. Anyway, they came to see me and told me they were sorry but they had broken a bench. He said they both thought the earth had moved as they gave each other a celebratory embrace. The whole bench gave way and they ended up sprawled on the grass amidst splinters of wooden legs and slats. The reputation of litigious Americans was not in evidence as they were both howling with laughter. Such a lovely couple who left in a good mood and in better shape than the firewood they left behind. They offered to replace it but I told them not to worry.

  We were disappointed when Roger left but his ambitions took him to the Lake District to be a head gardener. We were pleased for him so it was a bitter sweet farewell. Again, it’s great that he has been back to see us and we have bumped into him on one of our visits to the North West.

  * * *

  Our head gardener, Anne, who joined us more recently is the first gardener here who has previously worked in a tourist attraction and her experience is paying dividends. She and John have become a formidable team and are supported by our largest group of volunteers to date. Together they are transforming the gardens, building on the beauty that already existed and adding to the planting. The major objective being to display the gardens to their best, with colour throughout the year. We are delighted with the results of their hard work. After twenty-one years I think we are finally on top of the gardening work. Well at least for now.

  * * *

  One morning we had an impromptu team-build exercise; a large branch of a tree had fallen into the pond. Six of us went to pull it out. You could se
e who, out of the team, led Nicola, who led from the back; me, who preferred to observe and shout words of encouragement; Maggie; and who the team workers were – everyone else. That huge branch was out of the pond very quickly. What a team.

  * * *

  Jayne, one of our children’s entertainers, always used to go that extra mile by creating her own costumes and bringing in all kinds of props, including her pet rabbit, in order to make her contribution that bit more special.

  One enduring memory which involves Jayne is of a near-death experience. She was helping me clear the attic of all kinds of clutter. Such random things. There were just the two of us in the room. I was standing with a tray of ebony elephants as she reached for an assegai spear which then fell from the beam it was perched on. I leapt to the side and only just managed to avoid it going right through me. We were shaken but we were able to laugh about it. We imagined the court case and Jayne’s defence.

  * * *

  The team have always been willing to take on a whole variety of chores including helping in the Gardens and painting in the house as well as decorating the rooms for all our events. Everyone has been willing to do whatever has been required to keep the show going and our guests happy.

  The sleeping giant, a sculpture in one of the gardens, is another example of our team work. I explained the overall design of the giant, which would be a huge reclining female figure, to the team. Rio, our volunteer, shaped out the soil. Mark, Jayne and others working at the time helped put down the rubble, bricks and stones collected from around the garden. John, our gardener, helped to shape these and put mesh over the entire figure. John and I shaped the cement to create the figure. As the job progressed this reclining female seemed to look less feminine and increasingly masculine – certainly hermaphrodite. It did not matter. The figure was created and, with some cosmetic surgery over the years, has gone from strength to strength. Today, surrounded by aromatic planting, the giant is to be found fast asleep in the area of the gardens called the Quiet Corner.