Demolition unveils a dying trade on a hiding to nothing

IN centuries gone by, Darlington stank. In those pre-sewer days, when man and beast lived cheek by jowl, the town was not alone in its stinky predicament. But one of its main industries, which washed bits of dead animal with urine and then left them lying in stagnant pits for months on end, added an aroma all of its own.

Three centuries ago, creating leather was probably Darlington’s most significant industry. Two centuries ago, “greater quantities of leather have been produced than in any other town in England of its size”, and it was particularly famed for its chamois leather.

In 1834, it employed at least 100 men: tanners, tawers, skinners, finishers, curriers, barkers and fellmongers.

Many more were employed in ancillary trades: glovers, saddlers, girdlers, cobblers, cordwainers and breechesmakers.

All of their occupations have been swept away by the tide of history, although many live on as surnames.

One of the buildings in which they worked has recently been revealed to view. Demolishers clearing the former Skippers Ford garage along the inner ring road have allowed people to see an odd construction with a timbered ventilation chamber on its roof.

It has fascinated many people since its appearance in Echo Memories a fortnight ago. No one has yet explained precisely what it was, although it could be a “currying factory”.

When an ancient currying factory was demolished in 1963 in Priestgate (where the Cornmill Centre is today), it was described as having “louvre-windowed drying rooms” – could this be the slatted ventilation chamber?

There were several leather factories dotted around the town centre, but the biggest was in the east – downwind from all the posh houses in the west end. It was behind the slums of Clay Row that were cleared in the Sixties as the ring-road bulldozed through.

The leather-making process started in Skinnergate, where the fellmongers sold the animal skins which were carried to the tannery.

The skins were cleaned of hair and tissue by being scrubbed with urine and lime, and then they were immersed in a tanning solution made from oak bark.

The bark was cut from the tree in the spring and stored in a bark heap – there was a big bark heap near St Hilda’s Church.

Women were employed to split the bark up – most of the tannin was on the inside – ready to be ground into a powder by a horse-powered barkmill. The powder was diluted with water from the Skerne and poured into the three-metre deep tanpit.

The hides stayed in the tanpits for months, sometimes years. They were regularly hauled out, washed and prodded and poked before being re-immersed to soak up more tannin.

Old maps show the tannery area was riddled with tanpits. In 1848 when James Dove sold his tannery, he advertised “four lime pits, two soak pits, five bate pits, 15 cisterns and ten bark letches”.

Once tanned to everyone’s satisfaction, the hide was given a last wash beside the Stone Bridge in the Skerne.

This practice was banned in 1901 as a health hazard, although Richard Mosley, the last of the working tanners who died in 1927, refused to obey until the kindly council fitted him up with two £50 water tanks and reduced water rates for ten years.

After being tanned, the hide went to the curriers who stretched it over frames, dried it over fires, finished it with their knives, and rubbed fats and oils – such as beef tallow and cod liver oil – into it until it was strong and supple enough for the next craftsman in the chain. The thicker leather went to the saddler; the flexible leather went to the cordwainer; the soft, thin leather went to the glover.

And the smell drifted over everybody.

The top tanners did well for themselves. For example, in 1753 John Wesley preached for the first time in Darlington in tanner John Middleton’s “small thatched cottage with a mud floor” in Clay Row. A couple of generations later, the Middletons had developed the biggest tannery and had a whole street named after them.

Richard Child, on whose tannery and glue factory St Hilda’s Church was built in 1888, lived in Geneva House, a substantial farmhouse, and was elected to the first town council in 1867 and when he died in 1880 was remembered in carvings and plaques in the churches of St Cuthbert, St Hilda and St John.

But by the time of his death, his industry was all but dead in Darlington. The Darlington tanners hadn’t invested in the new machinery that was cheapening leather production elsewhere in Europe, notably Belgium.

New products, such as rubber, were eating into their markets; new methods of transport – first trains and then motor cars – were overpowering the horse.

But the tanpits remained.

According to an Evening Despatch journalist in 1960, they were “deep fosses of abomination”.

In July 1881, “a little girl named Maria Mosley” was found drowned in a tanpit in Middleton’s Yard off Clay Row (her father was a joiner, but she must surely have been related to the Mosleys who were the last tanners working in this location).

It was discovered “that there were upwards of 40 disused tanpits in this yard, which were both offensive and dangerous to life and health,” reported the Darlington and Stockton Times.

“In recovering the body of this girl, the stench was awful.

“Some years ago, another child was drowned in one of the pits, and at that time a strong opinion was expressed that they ought to be fenced off or filled up.”

The coroner at Maria’s inquest was reported as saying: “It was scandalous that such a place should be allowed to exist; and, in a town like Darlington, it was quite unaccountable.”

The paper’s editorial went further. “It points to absolute negligence and indifference on the part of some of our public officers that these pits have existed so long as a nuisance, and that only when human life has been sacrificed, they should consider it as being within their duties to have the nuisance stopped immediately.”

The council ordered that within 14 days all the pits should be filled in. So disappeared one of Darlington’s oldest industries – although one of its more peculiar and distinctive outbuildings may survive.

THERE was a Curriers Arms pub in Queen Street, where the shopping centre is today. It was in the pub that the town’s curriers united in 1871 and demanded a 15 per cent pay rise. Within a decade, their entire industry had disappeared.

THE word “currier” appears to come from the Latin “coriuma”. The corium is a layer in the middle of the skin. It’s sandwiched between the tough epidermis on the outside and the soft flesh underneath it.

In tanning terms, the corium is crucial as it dictates the strength and texture of the finished leather product. The curriers were experts at getting the best out of the corium.

OTHER tanning terms...

A tawer specialised in making white leather. He added alum to his tanpits.

A fellmonger was a hide merchant. A cordwainer was a shoemaker.

A bate pit was where the hide was cleaned after its treatment in a tanpit.

A bark letch appears to have been the main immersion pit – where the tannins leached out of the bark.

JAMES MOUNTFORD was Darlington’s last breechesmaker.

He was driven out of business early in the 19th Century when horsemen started preferring breeches made from new, strong textiles rather than his chaffing leather.

OUR peculiar building is in a yard which runs from behind the Cricketers pub to Borough Road. It has been called Middleton’s Yard, Mosley’s Yard and currently Clayton’s Yard.

David Race recalls being in the yard in the late Fifties and seeing near our building two large metal rings set into stones on the floor. Between the rings the yard was channelled into a gully for drainage,” he says. “It was similar to a set up I had seen before in slaughter houses.

“A halter of rope would be placed over the beast’s head and round it’s neck and the rope fed through the rings in the ground. Depending upon the size and strength of the animal one, two or possibly three men would pull the head down close to the ground and then the slaughterman would stun the animal using a felling hammer or pole axe.

“The animal would then be killed by having it’s throat cut and the blood would drain away into the gully and possibly on into the Skerne.

“I saw this method used at the former Darlington Cooperative Society slaughter house in Crosby Street as late as the early Sixties where I was an apprentice butcher. By this time, though, the pole axe had been replaced by a captive bolt pistol and the metal rings were being replaced by the more humane and easier to use Stunning Pen.”

■ Thanks to David, and everyone else who has been in touch.

Free lecture offers insight into flooding

A FREE lecture today looks at the history of flooding in the North-East.

It will be given by hydrology expert David Archer and will begin with the Great Flood of 1771.

The Great Floods of Northumbria is part of Sunderland University’s community lectures programme and is open to the public.

It starts at 2.30pm at the Sir Tom Cowie Lecture Theatre in the Prospect Building.

Call the University of Sunderland Events Office on 0191-515-3169 for further information.