Willy Bulmer’s stone in Darlington is town’s rock of ages

BLINK and you’ll miss it.

Imprisoned behind railings, almost hidden from view, by a Darlington roadside for nearly 100 years, most people don’t give it a second glance.

Butt our Object of the Week has a fascinating history.

It’s an ‘erratic porphyry’. Erratic because it hitched a ride on a glacier during the Great Ice Age about 80,000 years ago, and porphery because it has large, pink feldspar crystals embedded in it.

Bulmer’s Stone, as it is known, has stood in Northgate, Darlington, for many years – maybe even before there was a town at all.

Indeed, there is a theory that people came to settle in Darlington purely because of the presence of the nomadic stone.

Dr Richard Taylor Manson, an eminent nature lover and founder of the Darlington and Teesdale Naturalists’ Field Club, next to the stone outside the cottages in Northgate in 1891

In 1906, Sir Robert Hall, lecturing in Leeds pointed out: “Bulmer’s Stone was not placed there by the people of Darlington; Darlington was placed round it.”

Ancient legend says it has magical properties, turning round nine times when the clock strikes 12 – according to a local ancient legend.

A history book that was common issue in the schools of Darlington in 1915 puts the matter in perspective. “No other town or city in the world has a more ancient monument in its midst.

At one time known as the “battling stone” from when Darlington weavers used to beat their flax upon it, the name Bulmer’s Stone dates back to the early days of the last century.

Willy Bulmer – the Borough Crier – was given permission to read the contents of newspapers aloud to folk unable to do so themselves. He decided the best oratory position to spread the news was from the top of the stone – and so the boulder took his name.

The stone stands opposite what was Edward Pease’s house - now a kebab shop – in which he had the first interview with George Stephenson from which sprung the idea of the first passenger railway.

Stephenson and fellow pioneer Nicholas Wood had walked barefoot from Newcastle to visit Pease and they sat on the stone to put their shoes on before the historic meeting almost exactly 200 years ago..

In the 1890s, the old cottages that had kept the stone company for so long were pulled down to make way the former Technical College, opened in 1897.

Bulmer’s Stone sat on the pavement, jutting out into the road, but in 1923 it was considered a severe traffic hazard and so was removed to behind the railings – where it still stands to this day.

During a parliamentary election in the 1900s, the stone was painted red, white and blue – the colours of the Conservative party.

At the following election Liberal supporters painted the stone blue – but the heavens opened and washed the blues’ support down the drain.

It has sat in its cage ever since, watching the world go by without incident.