IN the early hours of January 1, 1870, while the first-footers and the last carollers from the “watch-night” church services were still on the streets, a secondhand press installed in a former shoe thread factory clattered into life in Darlington town centre – and the first edition of The Northern Echo was born.

Exactly 150 years later, the Echo is still based on the corner of Priestgate in the town centre, and it still brings the latest news to the people of County Durham, the Tees Valley and North Yorkshire every morning.

Only now its pages include colour photographs, and its 24/7 website features breaking news and video footage and audio clips – something that our Victorian forefathers cannot have conceived.

  • Don’t miss The Northern Echo on Saturday for an 88-page souvenir supplement celebrating the 150th anniversary of The Great Daily of the North

Their first paper is reproduced in the centre of today's Northern Echo, its front page covered in adverts for a printer, a hat manufacturer, a tobacconist, an India rubber depot and a surgeon-dentist operating in Saltburn.

Inside, there’s news of a death in the snow at Spennymoor, an alleged watch theft at Langbaurgh, an assault on a commercial traveller in Middlesbrough, and details of the thaw which was causing the swollen rivers Skerne and Tees to break their banks.

It includes the first letter, on Page 2, written from Torquay by Edward Pease urging the ratepayers of Darlington to adopt his idea of a “free library” for the town. Despite his pleadings, the ratepayers didn’t see why they should pay taxes to provide books, and it wasn’t until Edward died 10 years later and left a huge amount of money in his will for a library that they decided it was a good idea.

The press that printed the first paper came secondhand from Otley in West Yorkshire, which might explain why the impression isn’t always perfect. However, it should be clear enough to read the fantastic story from Australia of an “exciting scene in a theatre” where the actor playing Iago in Othello had genuinely stabbed his wife, Emilia.

“The lady fell prone to the stage in hysterical scenes and it soon became apparent that, as was first thought, she was not acting,” said the Echo. Fortunately, it seemed only to be a flesh wound, and the actress survived.

The Northern Echo:

From those early days, the Echo gained a reputation for vocally standing up for its community and campaigning to improve its circumstances. From editor WT Stead campaigning against child prostitution in the 1870s to Sir Harold Evans campaigning to have the cervical smear test available on the NHS in the 1960s, this is a tradition that continues to this day – most notably in recent years, we led the charge against the break-up of the art collection in Auckland Castle which is now at the heart of a major attraction to the region, while persuasively making the case for Hitachi to locate its train-building factory at Newton Aycliffe.

There’ll be far more stories from throughout the last 150 years in our special sesquicentennial supplement on Saturday.

This New Year’s morning of 2020, though, is just the moment to raise a glass to those founders, to think of all the readers, reporters, advertisers, printers and newsagents who have gone before, and to say “happy birthday” to The Northern Echo.