A COINCIDENCE OF COINCIDENCES

Dave Pogson

For 50 years until retirement Dave practiced as a surveyor in Lancashire and Cumbria, becoming a Fellow of the RICS and working for the Department of the Environment, Lancashire County Council, South Lakeland District Council and the NPS Group. During that time, he wrote articles on surveying topics and work experiences which allowed him to introduce some controversy, humour, and the odd bit of fiction. https://davidlewispogson.wordpress.com

I’m pleased to say that Dave has once more dusted down his keyboard, having been stimulated from reading Winter Terrier. I invite stories from ACES members on famous people that didn't turn up to arranged meetings, or who unexpectedly sat near them but didn't speak ... or even ones that did. It reminded me of a Suffolk Scribbler piece, which follows Dave’s. 

I can't find a collective noun for several coincidences all happening at once so I've coined one: 'a coincidence of coincidences'. I'd been reading Simon Eades' entertaining article 'More Musings - Catch up in December' mentioning his coincidences in the Winter issue of ACES Terrier and thinking 'How extraordinary!' Only days before I found myself driving up the M6 to have a set of coincidental experiences of my own. They took me back over 50 years to the early part of my surveying career. 

Former Station Yard, Plumpton 

The image is looking south along the Tea Rooms (formerly the Station House) at the former Station Yard, Plumpton, Penrith, Cumbria with the surrounding Cumberland hills in the background and the West Coast Main Line running to the left out of sight beyond the new buildings in the old Yard. Photo taken on 23 January 2025 by the writer as the rain eased momentarily. 

In January 2025, my wife and I were heading north to The Pot Place Garden Centre and Tea Rooms in the Station Yard at Plumpton, a tiny village some 4 miles north of Penrith, about 50 miles from my home. It's reached from the M6 via the B5305, a back road into the wilds of Cumberland only used by people who specifically need to go there. As we crossed the summit of Shap Fell and levelled off at 1,037 feet, I was telling her about the only two times in my life that I had visited there before. 

f Plumpton Station Yard from 1898-1900

Plumpton Station Yard 1898-90. Map reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland under Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) licence. Amendments to the original are indicated in red. 

I'd first visited Plumpton Station Yard in about late 1972, not long after qualifying as an Associate of the RICS. As an Assistant Surveyor for the Ministry of Public Buildings and Works, I'd been instructed to find a suitable building for an Ancient Monuments Works Depot somewhere between Carlisle and Penrith. I'd heard about the closed station with its vacant goods shed and so went with the Ancient Monuments surveyor to inspect it. He drove me up from our Preston office to meet his Regional Manager there. 

When we arrived it was snowing, and I realised that I'd forgotten to bring a coat. Fortunately my companion had a spare site coat in his car which he loaned me for the day. I was glad of it. The Regional Manager loved the goods shed and its location, told me what he needed to spend to make it fit for purpose, and instructed me to negotiate a lease with the owners, the British Railways Property Board (BRPB). I was a bit concerned about the tenure as BRPB would only offer a six-monthly tenancy as standard policy. I felt that the service should have a lengthy lease for security to justify its investment in the accommodation works. However, I was overruled by the Regional Manager and so agreed terms on that less-secure basis. It turns out that he was right to take the risk, as the building was used for many years. 

In early 1973 I had cause to visit Plumpton Station Yard again. It was for a meeting to discuss a complaint made by the irate BRPB tenant living in the Station House next to the West Coast Main Line railway. He was fed up with the Ancient Monuments people parking on the narrow yard road leading to the goods shed and blocking access to the house. Apart from the weather being miserable again, the coincidence this time was that my cousin was the BRPB surveyor, having recently taken over management of the Board's holdings in Cumbria. He was required to travel by rail to Penrith or Carlisle and take a taxi from either station to reach Plumpton. Like me he was based in Preston, so we agreed that it was more sensible for both of us to travel in my Mini. 

On the way he told me that his Station House tenant expected Willie Whitelaw, the local MP for Penrith and the Border, and Secretary of State for Northern Ireland under Ted Heath, to attend the meeting. Willie Whitelaw owned and lived in Lowther Castle Estate and Deer Park, about 11 miles from Plumpton on the south side of Penrith. We suspected that the Station House tenant felt that he might be steam-rolled into some adverse agreement and wanted support. Willie had told the tenant that he would be arriving there by helicopter, presumably for security reasons. We met on site, accepted the tenant's invitation to sit in the Station House to talk over a cup of tea, and worked out a practical solution to improve parking which the tenant was happy with. 

Willie Whitelaw never turned up. We never found out why, but possibly things in Northern Ireland were kicking off again. Regardless of that, Plumpton, its bad weather and its shed were becoming a feature in my life. I didn't know then that Willie Whitelaw and Northern Ireland might soon figure in my life too (see 'Every Rebel has a Cause' in 2016/17 Winter Terrier for that story). 

Station buildings around the 1960s/70s 

The image shows the original Station buildings (now demolished) looking North alongside the West Coast Main Line with the old goods shed in the background to the left behind the tree and the goods wagon. The Station House is out of sight even further left. Photo likely dates from the 1960s/70s judging from the parked car's vintage. Photo by Harold D Bowtell from the collection of, and with the permission of, the Cumbria Railways Association 

At the end of 1973, the Ministry of Public Buildings and Works instructed me to start travelling to Northern Ireland to buy houses. They were needed to accommodate the civil servants seconded there to support the new administrative arrangements arising from 'the Troubles'. However, Willie Whitelaw was ending his term as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland then. So, despite me nipping in and out of Stormont and the occasional visit to the former Governor's Residence at Hillsborough Castle, used by the Secretary of State since 1972, I never saw him in Belfast on my visits in early 1974. However I had the benefit of the services of one of his chauffeurs, who lived in the grounds of the Castle, and one of his official cars for my house inspections. 

By May 1974 I'd resigned and joined Lancashire County Council so my chances of bumping into him to ask why he hadn't turned up at Plumpton in 1973, or to share Northern Ireland experiences, were significantly reduced. But two years later I took my wife and 3-year old daughter to visit his Lowther Castle Estate and Deer Park. Although I didn't really expect to see him at the gate taking the entrance money, I did wonder if we'd encounter him as we wandered around. It was not to be. However, one of his friendly highland cattle did gently bump my daughter from behind with its nose and nudge her over. That was the closest physical contact that anyone from my family had ever had with him. 

When I did finally encounter him, it was so long after 1974 that he probably wouldn't have remembered Plumpton anyway, even if I'd asked him. While working for South Lakeland District Council around 1990, I had to travel with colleagues by rail from Kendal to London for a meeting. Willie must have caught the train from Penrith and I took a seat level with him and his entourage across the central aisle in the same carriage. He'd been Deputy Prime Minister from 1979 but had given up that responsibility and ceased to be an MP in 1988, although continuing to be Deputy Leader of the Conservative Party. Maggie Thatcher had rewarded him for his loyalty to her and for his ability to manage political challenges by making him in 1988 Viscount Whitelaw, with a seat in the Lords. In 1989 she added that famous quote "Every Prime Minister needs a Willie." Well - please forgive the expression but - my cousin and I hadn't needed a Willie in early 1973 in Plumpton to sort out his constituent. We never spoke on that train so, for the fourth time, Willie had unknowingly missed a golden opportunity to get to know me. 

That brief encounter with Willie on the train certainly didn't live up to my meeting with Prime Minister Harold Wilson on Sheffield's Pond Street station when I was a surveying student, but that's another story [Ed – duly noted….]. 

My recent return to Plumpton Station Yard with my wife followed the earlier trend of bad weather, sheds and, of course, no Willie Whitelaw since, sadly, he had died in 1999. It also brought me back into contact with my cousin. As I barely recognised the place following its changes, I had to email him after the visit to verify that I'd been at the right location and ask him to jog my memory about the details. 

My wife had been admiring a neighbour's very substantial potting shed which he had bought at Plumpton. So, we had gone to look at the outdoor display, with a view to acquiring a shed from the garden centre which now sits on the cleared-site of the old goods shed. Of the original buildings, only the old Station House remains, but is served by a roomy car park which would have suited the old Station House tenant right down to the ground. 

Co-incidentally the weather was as bad as it was on both of those previous visits. I've been there three times in over 50 years but never seen the sun shine. This time I made sure to take a large, warm coat. The reason we went on that particular day was because Storm Eowyn was chasing us up the motorway, promising even worse conditions for the following day. We learnt subsequently just how good a decision (made by my wife) that was from watching the TV news broadcast on the day after the storm. High-sided vehicles littered that section of the M6. As it was, the rain only held off long enough to allow us to walk quickly around the garden shed display before heading into the sales office for shelter. We followed that with lunch in the old Station House that I'd sat in with my cousin 50-odd years earlier, now used as very pleasant and reasonably priced tea rooms. The weather just grew worse as we travelled south to home, with the clouds at roof level over Tebay. Even the Herdwicks in the fields flanking the M6 were seeking shelter. That night, as if to confirm the usefulness of the visit, Eowyn stripped the top layer of felt off my old garden shed roof!