Gentle man with
DEVOUT CHRISTIAN PAUL’S PASSION FOR THE PAST MEANT HE WAS ALWAYS READY AND WILLING TO SPEND TIME HELPING ANYONE WITH A HISTORICAL MYSTERY TO SOLVE
a man who loved the challenge of investigation, Paul Stephenson was always willing to offer his skills to those who needed it.
And although as a keen member of the local history society he had many interests himself, his research wasn’t solely confined to his own specialist areas.
“He was always open to accepting commissions, not to make a profit, but if an organisation said to him, ‘Would you like to write our history?’ or ‘Can you help?’ he was happy to take on a project,” says his friend, Rev Ray Morris.
“If someone wanted to know something, he would set about finding it out for them and take pride in doing his best.”
Paul was born towards the end of World War II and brought up by his grandparents Millicent and Charles Stephenson in Middlesbrough.
He was a very shy boy – a characteristic that stayed with him throughout his life – and, growing up in a religious household, he became a devout life-long Christian.
Paul had two younger halfbrothers, Graham and Clive, towards whom he always felt a sense of family loyalty.
KEEPING IN TOUCH
“Loyalty was just one of his many enduring qualities,” recalls Graham. “My younger brother and I were both in the Army and it was difficult to keep in touch with two halfbrothers, globetrotting in the forces, but we always got a card at Christmas wherever we were.”
Graham remembers Paul to have been an avid collector from an early age, gathering anything that interested him, including books, stamps, lead figures and, particularly, coins.
“In his twenties, he became shrewd and selective, clearly speculating to accumulate!” adds Graham. “I recall him selling a few of his precious coins in order to fund the purchase of a second-hand car when he was 21. Ironically, he never learned to drive.”
Paul’s meticulous attention to detail led him to work in a clerical capacity for the council before his fascination with local history helped to secure him a position at Stockton Central Library.
When he retired, he was able to devote even more time to his passion, becoming actively involved in the Cleveland and Teesside Local History Society, for which he was committee member from 1993 onwards.
Paul wrote many articles for its newsletters and no fewer than 14 books on local history. These included ones on the story of St Barnabas Church in Linthorpe, where he was a parishioner,
Joe Walton Boys’ Club and the
Sea Scouts.
Rev Morris from St Barnabas Church also recalls him using his talents to help individuals with family mysteries to solve.
“On one occasion we got a letter from a lady in Manchester who said she’d been told her grandmother had died in the church,” he says. “She was
desperate to know more about what had happened.
“I put it in the hands of Paul because he was brilliant at that kind of thing. He had such a thoroughness, a tenacity and generosity of purpose.
“He looked at census returns and consulted other local records before coming up with a very plausible story that the lady had actually died in the workhouse, at the far end of St Barnabas Road. He reckoned she’d come across from Manchester, possibly in service to a family, things hadn’t worked out and she had ended up in the Middlesbrough workhouse and died there.
“He then went into finding the burial records, and worked out the coordinates to locate where she was buried in a pauper’s grave. I went with Paul and my wife Kate, and we held a little service there and sent a photo to the lady in Manchester.
“That was Paul through and
One of the 14 books Paul wrote
GOOD FRIEND Rev Ray Morris through. This lady wanted to know something and he realised it meant a lot to her, so to be able to help her would have pleased him very much.”
Throughout his retirement, Paul spent many days travelling the country on his factfinding missions, returning to his flat in Linthorpe – a treasure trove of records and collectibles – to write up what he’d discovered.
One of his biggest challenges came closer to home, though – working alongside Ray and Kate Morris to create an archive and comprehensive history book for St Barnabas.
“We had an exhibition at the church a number of years ago and Paul was asked if he would make a display of our material from its archives – the really important things including Brian Clough’s wedding certificate,” says Rev Morris. “He worked closely with
Kate on the project and they really hit it off. She became his confidante and his champion.”
“Paul had this shyness, but I found that when you drew him out he wasn’t really shy,” Kate adds. “I think he was just very content with his own company and his own research.
“He was a man of great faith, which was partly what created his desire to do a good job; to help people when they were searching out things. He kept that faith to the end. He was a lovely, gentle man, and in all the years I worked with him, I never heard him say a bad word about anybody.”
Illness meant that unfortunately Paul was unable to entirely complete the church archive he and Kate had been working on.
“He’d finished collating it, but he hadn’t done all of the indexing and he was worried about that,” explains Kate. “He hated the idea of leaving a job unfinished – he really did care about the projects he worked on and wanted to see them through to completion.
Even when he was very ill, he was determined to fight on because he wanted to get things finished.”
He kept that faith to the end, he was a lovely gentle man, and in all the years I worked with him Paul’s friend Kate Morris