En route to Heritage Park, Bishop Auckland on Saturday where Darlington FC are in temporary accommodation, I spent a couple of hours in the local studies room at Darlington Library picking up where I left off in March with my research into The Swaledale League.
My enquiries had taken me to the end of the 1964 when the league had six clubs: Gilling West, Scorton, Browns, Middleton Tyas, Northern Echo and Hutton Magna. Browns were a works team from Darlington but who played their matches in Catterick where the Catterick Garden Centre stands today. The Northern Echo, the Darlington based morning paper, had joined the league in 1963 but had not created much in the way of headlines winning just three games in '64 and finishing second bottom. The fourth estate were not deterred, however for in the following season they were joined by the now defunct Northern Despatch, an evening paper out of the same stable. Other newcomers were NESCO, another Darlington based works team and Barton II. NESCO were I think a furniture manufacturing business specialising in equipment for schools. They had an unhappy season finishing bottom without a win and on least one occasion defaulting on a fixture. The arrival of these three sides was offset by the departure of Middleton Tyas to the VOM* and meant that eight clubs started the '65 campaign but their distribution meant that the title 'Swaledale' was hardly apt.
The Darlington and Stockton Times, on which I rely for this research, covered the league somewhat patchily at this time but most weeks the fixtures and results were published and less frequently the league table. The final table printed on the 4th of September showed a three way tie for first place with Gilling, Browns and Scorton all having 24 points and a play off was arranged with a game between Browns and Scorton fixed for the 11th. Scorton, however could not raise a team leaving Gilling and Browns to play off at the Barton ground the following week which 'despite heavy overnight rain provided an excellent wicket'. Sadly the match did not justify the efforts of the Barton groundsman for Browns were all out for 45 and worse was to follow when nine man Gilling were all out for 13.
That one of the three best teams could not turn out a side for a title playoff and that Gilling entered the decider two men short is, I think, indicative of the league's travails at this point and I strongly suspect that further research will reveal that Gilling's 13 runs were the last scored in the league's 44 year history. Help in the shape of a player from that era may be at hand for tucked away in the report of a match between Northern Despatch and Brown's the bowling figures for the former include 'Siddle 5 for 20' and this may well be Frank of that ilk, the sage of Allens West, and well known to pcws at The Riverside and Headingley. Further support for this idea is that one F Siddle took 4-34 for Northern Despatch against Scorton.
Two contrasting shots of the Gilling West ground, the first taken during the winter of 2012-13 and the second the following summer. I learned yesterday that the ground will be vacant again next year when the current users Richmondshire CC will transfer their IV and V XI matches to a pitch at Richmond School.
* Vale of Mowbray League which served clubs in the Catterick and Thirsk areas
And finally the unidentified player in the photograph of Lancashire in 1950 which provided entertainment at Arthington yesterday was Alan Wilson, a long serving wicketkeeper and still alive at 94. Thanks to Tony Hutton for this missing piece of information. Tony actually saw Wilson play for Lancs at Edgbaston in 1951.
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