Darlington’s High Row is covered with holes and hoardings. Christmas shoppers trip in between. But find time, if you can, to escape the blinkers of the festive hurly burly. A glance down will reveal some stones last seen centuries ago; a look up will reveal a name that will have them perplexed in the centuries to come

AS part of the Pedestrian Heart work, a trench has been dug along West Row, outside the covered market, to take a drain.

After digging through 100 years of tarmac – this was the Great North Road until the 1960s – they’ve come across some unusual boulders which appear to be part of something that once stood on this site.

An archaeologist was contacted but didn’t think the finds to be exciting.

Nevertheless, John Buxton, Darlington Borough Council’s director of development and the environment, was excited enough to jump into the trench armed with a digital camera to record the boulders before they disappear until the next town centre revamp.

The boulders are rounded as if from a river and dark red in colour. They look very much like the sandstone that the Tees flows over at Croft, and which once was a favoured building material in the district.

Until the 21st Century digger bucket went through them, they were mortared together.

They appear to be the foundations of a long lost building. But what was it?

West Row has long been the mercantile heart of Darlington.

In the 16th Century – and probably centuries earlier – there was a line of low shambles, where the covered market is today, in which butchers had their stalls.

Where there are tradesmen, there is someone to regulate and to tax them. That person had his offices in the tollbooth – and it is likely that the boulders are connected to Darlington’s 18th Century tollbooth.

In centuries gone by, the Bishop of Durham levied tolls on anything that was bought and sold at a market.

Ostensibly, these tolls were to cover the Bishop’s costs of running a decent market and the borough court which laid down the rules governing the market.

In the dim distant past in Darlo, to run the court the Bishop had to employ a clerk of the court, two constables and four afferors (men who fixed the level of fines). To run the market, he had to employ searchers (who made sure no one was smuggling out hidden goods that should have been taxed), and tasters of ale, bread, and butter, plus two searchers of black leather, two searchers of red leather and two searchers of weights (who tested scales etc to make sure the Bishop wasn’t being diddled).

All of these officials – along with the overseers of the wells – had their offices in the tollbooth where they served under the watchful eye of the Chief Bailiff.

The constables also had their cells beneath the tollbooth in which they imprisoned miscreants.

The original tollbooth was demolished in 1808, but William Longstaffe remembered it well enough to describe it in his 1854 history of Darlington.

“Ancient tollbooths are generally of the rudest construction,” he wrote.

“The steps led to the courtroom, which occupied the whole length of the building.

The ground floor was divided into shops, one of which, containing the projecting window in the picture, was that of David Mackeown, the leading hardwareman of the town.

“Beneath was the town’s dungeon or kitty.”

This was a rat-infested place, although Longstaffe says an “enormouos multitude” of rats fled the night before the demolition.

From Longstaffe’s picture, it could be that the red sandstone boulders are the foundations of a cottage that was alongside the shambles and the tollbooth.

In 1808, an Italianate town hall was built in West Row. It was a grand affair in comparison to the ramshackle tollbooth, and housed all of the municipal flunkies plus the police and a dispensary. It was replaced in 1864 by the complex – clocktower, market and town hall – designed by renowned architect Alfred Waterhouse which stands to this day.

A look up AT the Bondgate end of High Row, a look up will reveal that something has changed (and if you look it up in the newly reprinted Memories of Darlington 3, you will see that this magnificent tome is already out of date).

For decades, the corner has been occupied by Pearl Assurance House. First it was a rather attractive 1910 rounded building with strong pillars and architectural flourishes.

This was built by the London City and Midland Bank and taken over by Pearl in 1923.

In the mid-1960s, Pearl demolished the former bank and some neighbouring properties, including the High Row premises from which the famous Dressers store had just moved and an ancient Bondgate inn called the Royal Oak.

In their place, Pearl built an unappealingly bland square slab at a cost of £70,000. It opened in 1970.

Despite the drastic change, there was continuity. This building was still called Pearl Assurance House, and it said so in shiney, silvery letters.

But look up now and you will see that those shiney, silvery letters have gone. They have been replaced by very similar shiney, silvery letters that spell out that this is now Kenneth House.

Who, though, is Kenneth?

After many false starts and unreturned calls, Bradford and Bingley lead us to the Cleveland Cable Company in Middlesbrough. It specialises, as its name suggests, in electrical cables, and has seven depots and 450 employees around the country, plus a property arm which owns a nightclub in Yarm plus, since 2001, Pearl Assurance House on High Row.

“We’ve just completed a major refurb of the building and, being sentimental, we thought we would name it after my father who died two years ago,” says Alastair Powell, the managing director of the Cleveland Cable Company whose father – as you’ve probably guessed – was called Kenneth Powell.

Kenneth, a Middlesbrough lad, ran Bilcourt Electrical Distributors at Riverside Park in Middlesbrough until he died aged 82 and now his name – while not quite in lights – is recalled in shiney, silvery letters.