| Where | Great Broughton Village Hall | Type of Event | Talk |
| When | Monday 11th July at 7.30pm | Tutor | Barbara Bishop |
Barbara Bishop’s father, Kenneth Warne, was indeed born at Bridge House, Kirby Lane, Stokesley in 1907. However Barbara, admitting to luring her audience to the Village Hall ‘under false pretences’, based her talk on her grandfather’s life, having discovered his diaries, and associated artefacts after her father’s death in 2011.
Henry Warne bought Bridge House in 1885 from John Cole for £480, and it was his family’s home until 1908. He himself spent much of his time abroad, working as an engineer and contracts manager for
Head Wrightson & Co Ltd of Thornaby. He travelled to Buenos Aires in 1871 with his wife and children, where he stayed for 4 years. Further contracts took him to Uruguay, South Africa, Brazil, Ceylon, Costa Rica and Mexico as well as more ‘local’ projects in England, including Southend pier in 1897.
In 1902 a Jamaican girl, Lena, came to live with the family at Bridge House, and also in The Recess in
Newton Road, Great Ayton (the family home of Henry’s 3rd wife, Ethel). She stayed with the family until her death in 1907 in Stokesley.
Bridge House was sold in 1908 when the family moved to Stockton where they lived in a number of properties that Henry had purchased, or built, while receiving substantial remuneration (for the time) from the prestigious works done by Head Wrightson. Henry died in 1916, aged 75, having travelled further by sea than most of us have travelled by air today.