100 years of Darlington Society of Arts: the surprising stories of its founders

Some of their early sketches are to be found on a commemorative tea towel, which is raising funds for St Teresa’s Hospice.

The society’s first committee meeting was held in Northgate Chambers on July 27, 1922, when two men were elected who would run the society for the next 30 years. They were both prolific and talented artists whose works are in the Darlington borough collection and in other collections much further afield, and who both have fascinating back stories…

Jonathan Edward Hodgkin (1875-1953)

Jonathan Edward Hodgkin in 1915 when he was elected a Liberal councillor in Darlington. He was defeated in 1919 - perhaps his support for conscientious objectors was not popular. Picture courtesy of Darlington Centre for Local Studies

HODGKIN was the great-grandson of Edward Pease, who founded the railway. He was also the great-grandson of Jonathan Backhouse, who founded the bank which bankrolled the railway. Hodgkin, who grew up in the mansion of Elm Ridge, which is now a Methodist church, was regarded as one of the last direct links to Darlington’s founding Quaker fathers.

And he was a committed Quaker. This meant he was a pacifist. During the First World War, he acted as an advocate for the conscientious objectors when they appeared before tribunals where the military tried to press them into active service, and then he got a role as a chaplain at Durham jail so he could visit, and support them, in there.

He was an engineer by trade, and was chairman of 16 companies and a director of another four. These ranged from the Darlington Wire Mills, which made steel frames for houses on Albert Hill, to the Darlington Cremation Society, which ran the first crematorium in the north in West Cemetery.

He was a founder member of the Automobile Association (which was actually created to help motorists avoid police speed traps), and he was an archaeologist who funded the first dig at Piercebridge Roman fort. He wrote a guidebook to County Durham, plus he was a Liberal councillor, a Rotarian and a magistrate.

But his main interest was painting, and he exhibited in London and Liverpool. He was a trustee of the Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle and the founding chairman of the Darlington Society of Arts.

Above: The County Bridge at Barnard Castle by Jonathan Edward Hodgkin which is in the Darlington Borough Art Collection, probably painted in the late 1920s. Below: A similar view from 1935 by Hodgkin, which is held by the Darlington Society of Art

He was the chairman of the Darlington Society of Arts for its first 30 years. Whereas most members exhibited attractive countryside scenes, Hodgkin also painted ironworks and railway engines.

Dinsdale Iron Works at Middleton St George, painted by Jonathan Edward Hodgkin in 1926, with the Cleveland Hills behind. The site of the ironworks has now been covered by new housing. Picture courtesy of the Darlington Borough Art Collection

When he died in 1953 at his home of Dryderdale, a glorious country house near Hamsterley, the mayor of Darlington John Neasham described him as “a painter, a writer and above all, a gentleman”.

JE Hodgkin painting a railway engine at King's Cross station in May 1927. This was a publicity photo for an exhibition he was holding in Liverpool. Picture courtesy of the Darlington Centre for Local Studies

John Brown Harrison (1876-1958)

HARRISON also had illustrious ancestors, one of whom went to such despicably illegal lengths for his art that he caused the collapse of the North East’s biggest building society.

His great-great-grandfather was John “Longitude” Harrison, a self-taught clockmaker from south Yorkshire. His breakthrough was creating a pendulum long case clock that was accurate to a second a month, and then he turned his attention to solving the “problem of longitude”, devising chronometers that enabled sailors to tell precisely where they are. Captain James Cook was full of praise for the accuracy of Harrison’s devices, which are on display at the Greenwich museum, and the British government rewarded him with prizes totalling £23,065 in the 1760s (that’s worth nearly £3m today).

The chronometer-man’s son settled in Hurworth and the family founded the House of Harrison, a well respected watchmaker and jeweller on High Row.

The fourth generation of John Harrisons founded the Onward Building Society in Darlington. It became the largest building society in the North East. He also founded the Linthorpe Pottery in Middlesbrough which specialised in creating items with lustrous glazes and fancy, fashionable designs – Linthorpe Pottery is still extremely collectable.

This John Harrison, a highly respected figure, died young in 1889 and then his business affairs unravelled: the building society collapsed amid scenes reminiscent of Northern Rock’s demise; one of his employees attempted suicide and it was discovered that his “despicable defalcations” had meant he was syphoning money out of the building society to keep the pottery afloat.

A promotional item for the Darlington Society of Arts' exhibition in 1924. Picture courtesy of the Darlington Centre for Local Studies

This John Harrison was the uncle of John Brown Harrison who, for the first 30 years, was the secretary of the Darlington Society of Arts. He closed the House of Harrison in 1931 to concentrate on his art, and had paintings accepted by the Royal Academy in London and for an exhibition in Paris.

When he died in 1958, the society was said to have lost the second of its great founding forces.

High Coniscliffe Meadows by John Brown Harrison, with the distinctive outline of St Edwin's Church seen from the River Tees. Picture courtesy of the Darlington Borough Art Collection

A Souvenir of Blackwell Mill, by John Brown Harrison. Blackwell Mill dated back to the 11th Century and was regarded as the oldest mill in the north when it was demolished in 1939. Now the Blackwell Meadows rugby and football ground is on its site. Picture courtesy of the Darlington Borough Art Collection

The Night After by John Brown Harrison, painted in 1941. It shows the aftermath of a German bombing raid on an east coast town (people were very wary of censorship during the Second World War so he hasn't recorded exactly where the scene was). Picture courtesy of the Darlington Borough Art Collection

HODGKIN and Harrison founded the society 100 years ago next week following a successive exhibition by amateur artists in the Technical College, which had raised £56 that was split between the Memorial Hospital and the European Famine Fund (this famine was in Russia where about five million people died in the early 1920s of starvation caused by war, revolution, communism and drought).

The front cover of a Darlington Society of Arts exhibition programme from 1922. Picture courtesy of the Darlington Centre for Local Studies

Their main aim in those early days was to establish an art gallery in the town, and this was achieved in 1933 when the library was extended with space for hanging pictures.

The society then concentrated, as it does now, on promoting art and improving its members’ skills – although the frightening stipulation that an artist had to submit several pieces to the committee to see if they were good enough to be allowed membership of the society has fallen by the wayside.

For the centenary celebrations, members’ sketches of the town’s buildings are now on display in Darlington Building Society on Tubwell Row. They will be sketching in Blackwellgate on August 28 as part of the music festival, and in October they will be holding their annual exhibition at the Station in Richmond.

They meet every fortnight on a Thursday in the community centre in Pierremont Road from 7pm, with the next meeting on August 4 when they will be doing line drawings of a long distance runner.

More information is on their website, darlingtonsoa.co.uk, and the tea towel (below) is available for £4 by emailing linda.coleby@ntlworld.com (proceeds to St Teresa’s Hospice).