Billy: hero
Apropos of very little, Wednesday’s paragraph on the Wensleydale Evening Cricket League match between Richmond Mavericks and Newton-le-Willows noted that the game was played on a sports field at Richmond School, known to generations of alumni as Wembley.
It prompts an email from Janice Bray in Peterlee, still the blog’s only known female reader. “There are a few Wembleys around here” she says, “maybe something to do with Sunderland winning the FA Cup in 1937.”
The region’s best known Wembley may be in Murton, a large former pit village a few miles down the coast from Sunderland, though there’s certainly another (and a Canada) in Easington.
There are Wembley Ways in Stockton, Darlington, Normanby – between Middlesbrough and Redcar – and Southwick, Sunderland.
Older maps clearly identified “Wembley” as part of Murton. I visited once, even discovered a set of wobbly – very wobbly – goal posts on an uneven, very uneven, playing field.
None could explain the name, though Janice’s theory seemed wholly plausible. Googling is more successful, and with a surprising outcome – the Durham Records Office says that the little estate was Murton’s first council housing, officially opened on April 28 1923.
It was also the opening day of the new Empire Stadium, and with a considerably bigger crowd, in a well-known part of north London….
*The FA Cup final between Bolton Wanderers and West Ham United became known as the White Horse Final. The programme noted that the new stadium, built as part of the British Empire Exhibition, offered a good view from all parts of the ground
It was said to accommodate 125,000, though around 200,000 forced their way in, spilling uncontrollably onto the pitch.
By-lined Draneol – the reporter’s mum may have known him as Leonard – the Northern Echo’s front page report was headed “The storming of Wembley Stadium.”
“All records were broken and so were heads, bodies, bones, bottles, gates, iron railings, vacuum flasks, attache cases, velour hats and anything else you can mention” wrote Draneol.
“There were thousands outside shrieking and howling to get in and thousands more inside who would have given their last dollar to get out. They were pinned as in a vice, and they were part of the vice.”
The FA issued a statement: it denied all responsibility.
The stadium had been built by Sir Robert McAlpine and Co. The quantity surveyors were Baker Mallett, a company formed just four years earlier and which in 2007 still had an office in Stockton, the boardroom walls hung with images of Wembley 1923.
It was then that I spoke to Peter Mallett, 91-year-old son of the founder, just seven when a few rows behind the royal box at the 1923 final. “What happened was quite horrific” he recalled. “I remembeer telling my father that far too many people were in the stadium and, of course, he was concerned about the adverse effect on the structural loadings.
“As far as I understand it, the cause of the bother was that they had turnstile admission as well as tickets. Everybody just turned up and flooded the place.”
Draneol had written of thousands – “in their unseemly haste” – neglecting the formality of paying to get in. Even those with 15 shilling tickets had been left outside, he said.
More than 100 people were taken to hospital, many more treated at the scene. Things would have been much worse, it was said, but for the work of Billy – the white horse – and of PC George Scorey, his rider.
He wasn’t a white horse at all, more a grey, but the new footbridge linking the stadium with the town centre is White Horse Bridge in his memory.
When the horse died in 1930, the Met preserved one of his hooves and gave it to PC Scorey. He was doubtless very grateful.
*It was also in 2007 that Wearhead United FC held its centenary weekend, that wonderful occasion when the Red Arrows – diverting from Sunderland Air Show – dipped wings over Weardale in salute to a famous occasion.
The centenary dinner had been in a marquee the evening before, the guest speaker Eric Gates, Sunderland and England.
For reasons now forgotten, Eric also had cause to mention the 1923 final and its equine heroics. The horse, he said, probably had the same name as several of those beneath canvas that memorable Friday night.
“Bloody hell” said someone at our table, “a police horse called Coulthard.”
Grass Routes 