THE restored headstone of one the most important but overlooked figures in Victorian Durham is to be unveiled this afternoon having lain flat for many years with the frost eating in to its lettering.
John Coward (1832-1917), of Dunelm Mount, Durham (Image: Meg Gilley)
John Coward was a Methodist who estimated he travelled 200,000 miles across the North East preaching and, as a city councillor and magistrate, he was involved in the temperance movement and in local politics – the mayor of Durham is due to attend tomorrow’s (Saturday, October 24) ceremony wearing the 18 carat gold chain that John raised £129 to buy in 1870 as a symbol of the city’s civic pride.
“His story reflects the life of Durham in his day and the development of health, education, social care, and justice,” says the Reverend Dr Meg Gilley, who will be giving a talk about him today at 2.30pm in St Cuthbert’s Church. “He was such a significant figure and yet he is rather forgotten.”
He grew up in Western Hill, off North Road, where houses had been deliberately built by Liberal supporters so that they were just large enough for whoever lived in them to qualify for a vote – which they hoped would go to the Liberal candidate.
John himself became a Liberal councillor, serving on many committees, and a successful businessman, chairing gas companies in Durham, Spennymoor, Tudhoe and Bishop Auckland – when he died in 1917, his estate was valued at £17,290 which, according to the Bank of England Inflation Calculator, would make him a millionaire today.
As a magistrate, he regularly saw the corrosive effects of drink and he was a leading figure in 1873 of the purchase of the Shakespeare Hotel in North Road. At auction, the bidding went much higher than expected, to £2,630, but John was able to drum up donations from Darlington’s Quaker families of Backhouse and Pease of £450 and Bishop Edward Maltby, of £20, to reopen it as a “public house without the drink”.
The Shakespeare Hall on North Road is still owned by the Shakespeare Temperance Trust. It was once a hotel that John Coward helped buy and turn into a temperance establishment (Image: Google StreetView)
It was called the Shakespeare British Workman, after the temperance self-improvement movement – regular readers will remember last week we stumbled on the Egglesburn chapel in Teesdale which still has “British Workman” carved over its door.
With a grand first floor hall, the building is still owned by the Shakespeare Temperance Trust.
John and his wife, Elizabeth, built Dunelm Mount off North Road as their home. In the 20th Century, it became the Western Hill School, a preparatory for Durham Chorister School, which a young boy named Tony Blair, aged four to seven, attended.
When John died, the mayor described him as “a man of outstanding ability [who had] played many parts in the public life of the city … as during a strenuous life he had done much good”.
Tomorrow afternoon, followed by tea and cake, his restored headstone will be unveiled as a monument to the way his generation addressed the social problems of their day, many of which still confront the city in our day.
The newly restored headstone dedicated to John Coward is to be unveiled in St Cuthbert's churchyard in Durham today at 2.30pm (Image: Meg Gilley)