The Eddie Stobart Story. Hunter Davies

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СКАЧАТЬ Newmarket, just over a mile away from Caldbeck, is very small, with only a few dozen houses. It is quieter, quainter than Caldbeck, a leftover hamlet from another age, one of the most attractive villages in all Cumbria and very popular with second-homers, many of whom live and work in the north-east. It’s basically one street which has some pretty eighteenth-century cottages lining a long, rolling village green. In the middle is the old Market Cross, admired by Pevsner for its ‘four round pillars carrying a pyramid roof with a ball finial.’ Until recently, it was used as the village’s garage.

      There were five pubs here at one time. Now there’s only one, the Old Crown, well known in real beer circles as it brews its own beer. There used to be a local school, known as Howbeck, just outside the village, which all the Stobarts attended but it is now a private home. It was opened, along with Caldbeck’s village school (still going strong) in 1875 to ensure rural children received the same education as urban children. A School Inspector’s report for 14 May 1890, observed that: ‘a remarkable occurrence took place on Monday afternoon – viz, every child was present.’

      Hesket Newmarket did have a market, established in 1751 for sheep and cattle, but it was discontinued by the middle of the nineteenth century. Hesket’s annual agricultural show, held since 1877, is still a big event, featuring Cumberland and Westmorland wrestling, hound trails as well as agricultural exhibits. It draws crowds and entrants from all over the county.

      William Wordsworth, plus sister Dorothy and Coleridge, stayed at Hesket on 14 August 1803. Dorothy recorded their visit in her journal: ‘Slept at Mr Young-husband’s publick house, Hesket Newmarket. In the evening walked to Caldbeck Fells.’

      Coleridge described the inn’s little parlour. ‘The sanded stone floor with the spitting pot full of sand dust, two pictures of young Master and Miss, she with a rose in her hand … the whole room struck me as cleanliness quarrelling with tobacco ghosts.’

      In September 1857, Charles Dickens and fellow novelist Wilkie Collins visited the village in order to climb Carrock Fell. They later wrote up their trip in The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices. They managed to get to the top of Carrock Fell in the rain, moaning all the way, but coming down, Wilkie Collins sprained an ankle.

      They, too, described the parlour in which they stayed, amazed by all the ‘little ornaments and nick-nacks … it was so very pleasant to see these things in such a lonesome by-place … what a wonder this room must be to the little children born in the gloomy village, what grand impressions of those who became wanderers over the earth, how at distant ends of the world some old voyagers would die, cherishing the belief that the finest apartment known to men was once in the Hesket Newmarket Inn, in rare old Cumberland …’

      I’m sure the locals didn’t like the reference to their ‘gloomy’ village but it shows that Hesket, however hidden away, has attracted some eminent people over the centuries.

      The present-day best-known resident of Hesket is Sir Chris Bonington, the mountaineer and writer: a Londoner by birth, but a Cumbrian by adoption. He bought a cottage at Nether Row, just outside Hesket, on the slopes of High Pike, in 1971 and has lived there full time since 1974. He is a co-owner of the Old Crown pub. It doesn’t quite put him on the level of a Scottish and Newcastle or Guinness director: the Old Crown is now a co-operative, with sixty local co-owners.

      Chris has no intention of ever leaving the area. He likes the local climbing, either doing hair-raising rock stuff over in Borrowdale or brisk fell walks straight up High Pike from his own back garden. In summer, he can manage two days in one: a working day, writing inside, then an evening day, outside at play till at least ten o’clock, as the nights are so light. ‘I love the quietness up here,’ he says, ‘well away from the Lake District rush. I also think it’s beautiful. I like the rolling quality, the open fells merging with the countryside. In fact, my favourite view in all Lakeland is a local one: from the road up above Uldale, looking back towards Skiddaw.’

      As a neighbour of the Stobart clan, Chris has watched their rise and rise, but doesn’t think you can make generalizations about them or their background: ‘What I will say, from my observations, is that the Cumbrian is shrewd.’

      Chris is currently watching the rise of another local family business from a similar background: known, so far, only in the immediate area. The founder, George Steadman, was the village blacksmith in Caldbeck in the 1900s. His son built barns. In turn, his son, Brian the present Managing Director, moved on to roofing and cladding for industrial buildings. Over the last twenty years, Brian Steadman and his wife, Doreen, have been doubling their business every year. They now employ sixty people and last year turned over nine million pounds.

      Visitors to the Caldbeck area driving back into Carlisle, down Warnell Fell, will notice the Steadmans’ new factory on the left-hand side. When I drive past, I always turn my head in admiration, taking care not to crash as it is a very steep hill. Their front lawns are so immaculate, their buildings all gleaming, yet it’s only a boring old factory, producing boring old roofing material.

      ‘We didn’t used to be so tidy when we were based in Caldbeck,’ says Brian. ‘It was partly the influence of Eddie Stobart Ltd. We did a big roofing job for them in Carlisle, big for us: £400,000 it was and they paid us on the dot, which very few firms do these days.

      ‘Anyway, while we were doing that job, I noticed how neat and tidy all his lorries were, and his premises, and how smart his staff were. We all know how successful Eddie Stobart Ltd has been. I thought we’d try to follow his lead.’

      The Steadmans are following Eddie Stobart from the same local environment. Is this just by chance, perhaps, or do they think there are any connections, any generalizations to be made? ‘I think what it shows,’ says Doreen, ‘is that people who leave school early, such as Brian and the Stobarts, who are no good academically but are good with their hands, can still create good businesses.’

      ‘I think with us and the Stobarts,’ says Brian, ‘it’s been an advantage being country people. Country staff are loyal, reliable people. They stick with you, through thick and thin. You need that in the difficult times, which all firms go through.’

      Perhaps, then, it’s not at all surprising for successful businesses to come out of a remote, rural area. Country folk are shrewd, says Bonington. Country folk are loyal, says Steadman.

      Country folk can do it, as has been shown in the past. One of Cumbria’s all-time successful business families came from Sebergham, the very next village after Hesket. In 1874, the village stonemason, John Laing, moved into Carlisle and set himself up as a builder. Today, Laing’s are still building all over the civilized world. So much for nothing happening, nothing ever coming out of such a remote rural region.

THE STOBARTS

      The Cumbrian branch of the Stobarts can trace their family back pretty clearly for around one hundred years, all of them humble farming folk in the Caldbeck Fells area. Before that, it gets a bit cloudy. Sometime early in the nineteenth century, so they think, the original Stobart is supposed to have come over to Cumberland from Northumberland, but that is just a family rumour. Originally, they could have been Scottish, or at least Border folk, as their surname is thought to have derived from ‘Stob’, an old Scottish word for a small wooden post or stump of a tree.

      The founder of the present family was John Stobart, father of Eddie and grandfather of Edward. He was born at Howgill, Sebergham, in 1903 and worked at his father’s farm on leaving school. In 1930, he secured his own smallholding of some thirty-two acres at Bankdale Head, Hesket Newmarket. By this time he had got married to Adelaide, known as Addie, and they had a baby son, Edward Pears Stobart – always known as СКАЧАТЬ