| Nunthorpe the village that has gone back to sleep
Then in 1962 - They call Nunthorpe the village that has gone back to sleep. A village which has given up the hustle and bustle of rural development and returned to the old, quiet way of life.
It was shortly after the war that the village of Nunthorpe was rudely torn from its slumbers. Development was in the Teesside air, and like other villages in the area, Nunthorpe was expected to play its part.
Houses sprang up in surrounding districts like mushrooms. At nearby Nunthorpe Station the scene was seemingly transformed overnight. Then Great Ayton and Stokesley joined the ranks of dormitory towns; and linking these areas with expanding Teesside was one road – a road passing right through the centre of Nunthorpe village.
Vehicles increased daily, so did the noise and the petrol fumes. Soon it was the main road to the South. Heavy transport now shared the route with the commuters’ cars, and the village shook with the noise.
Then, suddenly, it was over. the new by-pass road linking Nunthorpe Station with Stokesley was opened, and with it the suffering of the tiny village ended. Today Nunthorpe is once again a quiet country retreat, with not even a shop, public house, or cafe to attract visitors.
“It is truly marvellous now,” beamed Miss N.
Ballingall, (pictured) who for the past 30 years has lived in a small roadside cottage. “We are almost back to the horse and trap days.”
The Matron of the Nunthorpe Old Folk’s Home, Mrs. Morgan, was even more enthusiastic. “When I first came here 12 years ago,” she told me. “there was very little traffic. But gradually it increased. It got so bad that we had to start special road-safety classes or our old people.
For Mrs. G. Featherstone, a mother of two small children, living in the Agricola Cottages, “It was a nightmare looking after children.
As I left this tiny village a bus trundled along the chestnut-lined road, a defiant symbol of modern progress. But the village no longer cared. It had already gone back to sleep.
Now in
1998 - Nothing much has changed in the intervening years, the village is still a quiet back-water, in contrast to 1962 when the main highway linking Stokesley with Middlesbrough passed through the centre of the
village. The area to the north of the village is no longer known as Nunthorpe Station but just Nunthorpe.
This article originally appeared in the November 1998 issue of Now
& Then
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