ALFRED HILDRETH had an opinion on everything under the sun. At his funeral in 1940, a friend said: “He was a critic, opposing with the utmost vigour the shams, follies, hypocrisies, conventions, corruptions and unrealities in much of our modern life.”

In his obituary, the Darlington and Stockton Times couched its description of him delicately.

“His chief fame lay in his aptitude for fearless criticism and the voicing of public grievances, real or imaginary, either in the council chamber or the open forum of the Market Place,” it said.

“A lot of the complaints he carried to the chamber failed to bear investigation.”

Alfred did his research in his bookshop in Post House Wynd in Darlington. All and sundry from miles around gathered in his shop to study literature and to nurse grievances.

One of the exhibits at this Saturday’s Darlington Book Fair is a direct connection to those days of dissent. It is a copy of a local tome published in 1862, Men That Are Gone, by Henry Spencer, which Hildreth appears to have bound himself and dedicated to a friend. His Oxford Bookshop – named in commemoration of Percy Bysshe Shelley – was in a low building that had been a smithy at the back of the Talbot hotel. For centuries, the Talbot was Darlington’s premier hotel, its post house. It was there that the Duke of Cumberland, commander-inchief of the victorious English army, stayed on his return from beating the Scots at the Battle of Culloden in 1746. While he slept, the farrier in the smithy next door shod his charger.

Hildreth was born in 1870 and first came to attention as a firebrand in 1895 when he stormed onto the mayor’s stage at Central Hall during a debate about cleaning up Darlington town centre, and in particular ending the practice of street bookmaking.

Alfred shouted: “Although I am a teetotaller and an anti-gambler, I don’t agree with those fanatical people who protest against everything of the kind by trying to restrict the liberties of the people.”

He became assistant editor of the Newcastle Evening News, but resigned over its support of the Boer War.

In the Twenties, he acted as agent to the “soldier’s candidate” who stood against Prime Minister Lloyd George in Carnarvon.

Then he agitated on behalf of miners in Derbyshire before returning to his hometown where he simultaneously stood in six wards to protest against the council trying to save money in the 1930 elections.

He lost all six, but was elected two years later to serve Cockerton.

He was ironically nicknamed “the Sage of Post House Wynd”, but on his death The Darlington and Stockton Times conceded that Darlington had lost “one of its most remarkable and most versatile men”.

His shop – which is now occupied by Robin Finnegan’s jeweller’s – was cleared out and its vast stock criminally turned into three tons of pulp.

Fortunately, his personally-inscribed copy of Men That Are Gone didn’t go, and it will be for sale on Saturday.

■ The Darlington Book Fair runs from 10am to 4pm on Saturday at the Arts Centre, in Vane Terrace.

• At 7pm tonight, Chris Lloyd presents his talk Four Scandals and a Gooseberry to a special meeting of Darlington Civc Trust in the Friends Meeting House, Skinnergate.

All welcome.

Last week’s article on Durham-born author Jane Porter contained a sketch of her house in Bow Lane, Durham City, which belongs to the Michael Richardson Gilesgate Archive. Sorry this was not acknowledged.