A royal friendship forged by industry

Even though his train didn’t arrive at Bank Top station until 10.03pm, about 500 people gathered to cheer loudly as he stepped onto the platform.

When he was driven round to the Imperial Hotel, in Grange Road, a further 500 crowded around to noisily mark his arrival.

“As he stepped out of his car and heard the cheering, he took off his hat and waved a greeting to the crowd,” reported The Northern Echo. “A woman standing near the door shouted ‘cheerio’, and very softly the king answered: ‘Same to you’.”

You really don’t get a warmer welcome than that.

The following morning – July 4, 1928 – hundreds more stood outside the hotel, waving their hats, as today’s front cover shows, when King Alfonso XIII emerged into the morning sun.

They lined the streets as he was driven to Darlington Forge, on Albert Hill – some housetops even had Spanish flags flying from their chimneys.

At the Forge, more people hollered their welcome.

“The king paused on the steps, turning round to face the multitude and at the same time raising his hat in acknowledgement, and smiling pleasantly,” said the Northern Despatch newspaper.

No one working on the newspapers, at least, knew why the Spanish monarch was visiting the Forge. “No one supposes that King Alfonso is going to spend seven hours in the works for the good of his health,” said the Echo.

But he did spend all day there, immersing himself in a new casting process that a French engineer, Sgr Bernardini, was introducing to the plant.

“It was hot work,” said the Echo, “and the king kept a good distance from the intense heat.” This is a shame, because if he had got so close that he could feel the warmth of the furnace on his face, we could then have legitimately reported how Darlington Forge had singed the King of Spain’s beard, or at least his moustache.

“The king talked fluently in English in a slightly foreign accent, and showed an extensive knowledge of metallurgical processes,” said the paper.

“He was so deeply interested that he was not content with the emptying of one converter, but sat down and waited quietly for the process to be completed from the second.”

Although the king was “loath to leave”, the 5.30pm express was waiting at Bank Top to return him to London.

Given the warmth of the reception, his highness might have expected a special souvenir of his visit that he could treasure. A beautiful steel ingot, perhaps, or a model of Tiny Tim, reputedly the world’s largest steam hammer which worked at the Forge from 1883 to 1910. Or even a working replica of Locomotion No 1, the world’s first passenger steam engine, which he admired on Bank Top station as his express pulled in. But, no.

Headlines and photographs from The Northern Echo and the Northern Despatch about the king’s visit in 1928

“He was given a memento of his visit in the shape of a steel ash tray cast from the steel which he had seen in liquid form passing from the converter in the small casting shop,” said the Echo.

So the King of Spain went to Darlington, the birthplace of the railways, and all he got was a crummy ash tray.

PERHAPS Alfonso XIII’s greatest claim is that he was the king who put the real into Madrid.

On the day of his visit to Darlington, the Despatch said that he was “a popular king”

and it requoted a line from a French newspaper that he was the “happiest and best-loved of all the rulers of the earth”.

Facts tend to suggest otherwise.

Alfonso was born king in 1886, because his father had died a few months earlier. In 1905, on a state visit to Edward VII of Britain, he met Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg, a grand-daughter of Queen Victoria.

Despite opposition from Alfonso’s mother, they married in 1906 – and on their wedding day, he survived the first of several assassination attempts.

An anarchist threw a bomb at the wedding procession, killing several guests and bystanders, but the happy couple survived.

In 1918, another would-be assassin shot at Alfonso, but only wounded the horse he was riding.

Alfonso was neutral in the First World War because he had family connections to all the main protagonists. However, at the end of the war, he became so seriously ill with influenza that the epidemic which swept around the world – it killed more people than the fighting – became known as Spanish Flu.

Alfonso tinkered with the elected Spanish government and then backed the military dictatorship which took over in the 1920s. When it collapsed a couple of years after his visit to Darlington, he was deposed, and he spent his last decade living in a hotel in Rome.

Alfonso leaving the Imperial Hotel, in Grange Road, on his way to Darlington Forge on July 4, 1928

As the Despatch said, Alfonso was noted for his “gay sportsmanship”, and the football teams he patronised were allowed to call themselves “real”, or royal.

Alfonso’s grandson, Juan Carlos, was restored to the Spanish throne in 1975.

THE reason for Alfonso’s visit to Darlington Forge is still unclear. He appears not to have placed any orders before he was dethroned by the revolution of 1931.

On the day of his visit, the Despatch reported that the Forge had made a profit of £3,144 3s 1d (about £167,000 in today’s values, according to the Bank of England Inflation Calculator) in the previous year. This, though, merely made a small dent in its total debt of £206,906 (about £11m today).

The Forge had been formed in the 1850s. Under the wise stewardship of William Putnam, it had taken over other ailing ironworks on Albert Hill during the deep recession of the 1870s. Mr Putnam’s son, Sir Thomas, showed Alfonso around the Forge in 1928, but the business was unable to withstand the Great Depression of the inter-war years.

It was placed into receivership in 1930, and mothballed in 1932.

In 1936, it was revived as part of the English Steel Corporation to build weapons and warships. In 1942, it employed 1,700 men and 300 women helping the war effort.

Peacetime was less prosperous, and when its closure was announced on January 10, 1967, 650 jobs were lost.

ON the British Pathe website, there is a 59-second clip of silent newsreel footage of “King Alphonso... keen metallurgist and mechanic...

spends whole day at Works of Darlington Forge Company.”

It’s at britishpathe.com and search for “alphonso”. WHEN today’s front cover picture appeared in Memories 139, we didn’t know who the distinguished visitor was.

Darlington Forge on Albert Hill, beside the East Coast Main Line

However, readers quickly informed us. For instance, Dorothy Lincoln of Darlington said: “My mother told me that the King of Spain once stayed at the Imperial Hotel and that afterwards his room was open to public viewing.”

So can anyone tell us who the distinguished visitor is in this picture? It shows a traffic policeman outside the Imperial Hotel directing a car with “Jhalawar” on the front. Jhalawar was an independent state in India ruled by a maharaja.

Could the maharaja have visited Darlington between the wars?