Not everyone has a mineshaft in their garden but my neighbour “Happy” Steve Frogley did, writes Ted Thompson.
When he bought adjacent land from Alston Natural Stone quarry men the Hodgson Brothers in 1982 there were two cottages atop the 360 foot deep Haggs’ mineshaft, which went down to the Nent Force level.
The houses were demolished and, I think, rebuilt at the Beamish Museum and the shaft walled up and capped with a padlocked steel hinged cover. That mineshaft kept a link with Alston Moor’s industrial legacy, one of immigration of labour.
So Steve followed not so much famous figures such as Smeaton, but those who grafted underground. His own wishing well of history! Steve had such a logical mind at problem solving, and many benefited from his wiring skills, whether lighting, mines, installing stone cutting machinery in water turbines, generators or washing machines.
He worked as Happy and Zappy in Durham, and over here on many jobs with neighbour and friend Bill Donohue. Mobile phones and the internet and social media are so entwined with our stressed lives, but not for Steve the digital world!
He had been given a Cybermoor computer in the late 1990s which remained in mint condition unused, in a cupboard in his living room. You couldn’t reach him on the phone. You’d have to visit him and knock on his door. Occasionally, he’d open the door and say he was busy, most probably tinkering with his valve radios, and dismiss you. Mostly though he’d welcome you in, ask if you were happy, and clear a way to the only other chair apart from his own armchair. He’d make you a strong coffee then chat about the world, but mostly what was happening on the Moor.
It wasn’t advisable to visit before late afternoon but night was his time, and he came alive then. Any work or leisure arrangement was better sorted by a visit the previous day.
Bill had a headache to pick up the pieces when Steve passed away, and turn detective to liaise with Steve’s sister Jude in Cairns, Australia, to arrange his funeral. Jude sent a sibling’s perspective on his early life, of now rather humorous happenings from his childhood in Guildford. His father was a science teacher and at the age seven Stephen had already filled his bedroom with valve radios he restored and sold. Then he got into chemistry experiments, discovered gunpowder and sent his younger sister’s prize sewing box six feet up in the air.
Sent away to boarding school Stephen excelled at speed swimming to Olympic standard mentored by teacher Mr Ng, but he was shy and had no interest or ambition to pursue this further.
He left to do an electrical apprenticeship and then went travelling with his pliers, first to Australia where he worked on ships in Perth and then spent two years in Western Australia at the Hill 50 gold mine.
He moved on to Asia and lived and worked in the slums of Delhi and returned to Guildford two stone lighter, and clad in a smelly yak skin coat to the horror of his family He eventually settled in Langley Park in Durham in the 70s, in an alternative community renovating houses in Logan Terrace and Railway Terrace, finding a useful role in that mostly abandoned former pit village. He arrived in Nenthead at the time of the Blue Moon Festival.
Steve sat at the door at Alston Town Hall music gigs, often sitting with John Watson and a can of coke deep in conversation. He seldom went in for the music but the highlight was the renowned Alston Town Hall raffle. He always craved treading the boards in pantomime, and would have been a dancing chicken in this year’s Humpty Dumpty. On another occasion dressed as a dog, General Dogsbody, and blind in his costume, he slipped off the side of the stage onto Norman Emersons drum kit which raised a laugh but was very painful.
Happy Steve also volunteered at the Hub, Alston’s transport museum, and was proud of his restored stationary engines which he brought into life on Gala day every summer.
Steve used to be seen, goggle eyes straight forward, upright on his scooter ‘Pinky Wonder’ heading to Tom’s cafe in Alston, but missing nothing to the side. Happy Steve was a gentle giant and a one-off true eccentric, and after we all touched our Mr Happy stickers at the funeral we could share some memories out in the spring sunshine. Gone to a happy heaven, but not forgotten.
