LOCAL HISTORY
Prestigious address - Erdely is now
surrounded by a modern housing estate.
HOUSE OF
HISTORY
Once home to the most famous
member of the Grove Hill Aristocracy
Dave Allan discovers the fascinating past of a Middlesbrough residence
B
ram Stoker’s Dracula is, of course,
strongly associated with Whitby but
the world’s most famous vampire
would no doubt have approved of a lesser-
known piece of Transylvania that still stands
today in Middlesbrough.
The beautiful building of Erdely has an
incredible tale to tell, wrapped up with links
to another great literary creation, Sherlock
Holmes.
Hidden behind a high brick wall and
thick trees just off Marton Road, close to the
Highfield Hotel, Erdely was the childhood
home of a once famous writer, EW Hornung,
writer of a series of top-selling books in the
late 19th century based on the character of
Raffles, the Gentleman Thief.
The distinguished villa was built by Willie’s
father, John Hornung, a Hungarian export
merchant, who also served as vice-consul for
Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Its name,
Erdely, derives from the Hungarian name for
Transylvania, once part of John’s country of
birth.
Dating from the 1860s, Erdely was built
along a stretch of what is now Marton Road
but was then one of industrial boom-town
Middlesbrough’s most select suburbs, Grove
Hill.
While Teessiders will now know the name
for the nearby council housing estate, back
then Grove Hill referred to an area along an
Erdely was
the childhood
home of EW
Hornung,
writer of the
AJ Raffles
books about
a gentleman
thief.
old toll road between Middlesbrough and
Marton, extending from Borough Road to
Belle Vue Grove, and featuring farmlands
known as Longlands and Marton Grove.
The area – far from the noise and dirt of
the town’s industry – became known for its
dignified homes of distinguished persons,
later dubbed by local artist Paul Stephenson
as the Grove Hill Aristocracy.
Erdely – sometimes wrongly referred to as
Erdley – was one of the most dignified and
expensively-built residences in Grove Hill,
with its own gate lodge.
Willie, as the young Hornung was known
to friends and family, left his childhood
home in Middlesbrough to attend public
school when he was 13 in 1879 before going
on to write a series of best-sellers based
around his character, AJ Raffles, many of
which have been adapted for television
dramas.
He became the brother-in-law of the
famous writer Arthur Conan Doyle, who
penned the world-renowned tales about the
fictional private detective, Sherlock Holmes.
Indeed, Hornung dedicated his book,
The Amateur Cracksman, to his close friend
Doyle. When Willie and his wife Connie
had a son, they named him Arthur Oscar,
with his first name in honour of Doyle – the
baby’s godfather – and his middle name, by
which he was known, probably after Doyle
and Hornung's mutual friend, the great poet
and playwright Oscar Wilde. Sadly, Oscar
was killed at Ypres in France during World
War I when he just 20.
Erdely was later home to distinguished
ironmaster Arthur Cooper, managing
director of Acklam Iron Works and North
Eastern Steel Company.
A Christian cross that stands outside the
former villa – surrounded, bizarrely, by a
modern housing estate – dates back to a time
when Erdely was the convent to Sisters of
the Holy Rood, from the 1920s to 1978. The
order, which had opened Middlesbrough’s
first hospital at Dundas Mews in 1859,
eventually sold the property to Cleveland
and Teesside Housing Association.
Erdely is now a temporary home for
ex-offenders. AJ Raffles would no doubt
approve.
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