About Rockliffe
Park & Rockliffe Court
After the River Tees leaves Croft, it makes a very large loop around some excellent park land, before passing below the cliffs of Rockliffe Scaur and on to Hurworth and Neasham. This park land is now known as Rockliffe Park but in the early 19th century it was called Pilmore. In 1863, Alfred Backhouse, a Quaker banker, built Pilmore Hall on this land for himself and his wife, Rachel, a member of the Barclay family, also of banking fame. Pilmore Hall was an elegant mansion with magnificent facilities for hunting and fishing and ornamental gardens for the pleasure of the ladies. It stayed in the Backhouse family until 1897, when it was bought as a sporting estate by a Captain Forester, then by a Colonel R. Clayton Swan and finally by the Earl of Southampton, who lived there from 1918 to 1948. The estate switched names from Pilmore to Rockliffe during the ownership of Captain Forester.
Lord Southampton was a colonel in the Green Howards so the estate’s proximity to Richmond was obviously in its favour. He was a keen horseman and Master of Foxhounds and an even keener cricket fan. He had a pitch laid out on the estate so that his workers could play the locals from Croft Cricket Club. Croft and Hurworth cricketers and the Rockliffe estate workers eventually merged to form one club, Rockliffe Park, of which Lord Southampton was the first president. Rockliffe cricket club still exists and the team plays on the same pitch to this day. Backhouse had a private bridge built from the Yorkshire bank of the Tees across to Pilmore Hall, to enable carriages to have easy access from the Great North Road, but it had to be demolished in 1960 on safety grounds, having been practically useless since 1914.
Pilmore
Estate Cottage (now demolished)
The estate went up for sale again in 1948 when Lord Southampton moved back to London and it was bought by the Hospitaller Order of St. John of God, who opened a hospital for tuberculosis patients there. Rockliffe House became known as St. Cuthbert’s Hospital. After a few years, TB became less prevalent and it became an orthopaedic hospital. The Brothers took many very seriously disabled people into their care, including some very young men. It became obvious that there was a need for friendship and support for these patients and a group of local ladies founded the Friends of St. Cuthbert’s Hospital. They ran trolley service for all the wards, providing the opportunity to buy papers, sweets etc and soon made friends, particularly with the younger element around the ages of sixteen to seventeen. They also decided on various schemes to raise money to buy a bus so that these boys could go out together.
The Brothers had their hands full with these young men. Although they were seriously disabled, they indulged in all sorts of antics. They formed a pop group called “The Spinning Wheels” -this being a reference, I believe, to their cycle chairs which they used to get down to the village to the pub and also into Darlington. They even made a recording — enough said! John Tinsley was seriously interested in writing and edited the hospital magazine “Rockliffe”. He learned to type and used a Standard Underwood machine, as he found an electric typewriter too responsive.
(Article included by permission of Jean Kendall, Editor of ‘The Two Hurworths’)
Subsequently, the Hospitaller Order of St. John of God organised the building of the Rockliffe Court (see below) and then sold the remaining land to the Middlesbrough Football Club in 1996 for a Training Ground.
Rockliffe
Court
The concept of Rockliffe Court was born in the spring of 1984 after the Hospitaller Order of St. John of God identified a need to re-accommodate a number of people residing at its hospital for the physically disabled, St. Cuthbert’s in Hurworth Place, near Darlington. The Hospitaller Order of St. John of God formally requested the Hospitaller Housing Association to pursue a development to meet the needs of the residents of St. Cuthbert’s who no longer required hospital care.
At a later stage of the development applications for Rockliffe Court were also referred for physically disabled people who were homeless or living in unsuitable accommodation. Referrals were made by Social Services, Housing Departments, hospitals in the Northern Region and in person.
In September 1987, the Earl of Stockton cut the first sod of turf on the site for Rockliffe Court and in January 1989 the first tenants moved in. Today Rockliffe Court is fully occupied and houses residents with an extremely wide range of physical disabilities. The needs of some residents have been satisfied merely by providing good housing, whilst others now live in a high degree of self-contained accommodation with care-support, rather than in highly institutional hospital wards. The scheme is quite unique in the area. Thirteen of the bungalows are registered as a residential care centre in order to provide a level of care - staff primarily to meet the needs of these residents. The remaining residents are tenants and live in sheltered bungalows. The range of accommodation for residents in this scheme is far beyond that normally found or required. The residents do in fact live in a home of their own and families who have been separated by disability and inadequate housing have been re-united.
(Article included by permission of Jean Kendall, Editor of Rockliffe Roundup, 1993)