Today’s Object of the Week is a much loved football stand – which was almost lost to history.
IT’S been a cherished part of the experience of watching Darlington play football for decades.
Standing in the Tin Shed – the affectionate name given by fans to the structure around the North Terrace at Quakers’ former Feethams home – has been a right of passage for many.
But when the club moved from Feethams in 2003 those days seemed gone forever.
The derelict ground was largely demolished, but the Tin Shed remained – largely to continue its other life as a sightscreen for the adjoining cricket club.
Its days seemed numbered when Persimmon Homes moved in to start build houses on the much-loved old ground in 2014.
But that’s when TM Ward, a haulage and plant hire company owned by Tony Ward which demolished Feethams, enter the story.
It would have taken the company two days to take down and scrap the Tin Shed. But Mr Ward was asked by Dennis Pinnegar, Darlington’s chairman at the time, to put it back up at the club’s new ground – the problem was, Darlington didn’t actually have a new ground at that time.
Based temporarily at Bishop Auckland, and with negotiations with Darlington Rugby Club dragging on, the dreams of a new home seemed very far away.
Meanwhile, the Tin Shed’s steelwork lay in pieces at Ward’s Faverdale base.
Different Darlington regimes came and went and had opposing views on the old stand’s usefulness. Quakers and Wards eventually agreed a price, but there were still enquiries about the possibility of taking it out of town – maybe to another Northern league club – and so the Tin Shed stayed put.
With a groundshare agreement now in place at the rugby club’s Blackwell Meadows, another offer was made to honour the deal, but Mr Ward – although desperate for the stand to stay in the town – didn’t want money.
His attitude was: "How do you sell the Tin Shed back to Darlington Football Club? That’d be wrong. You just couldn’t do it."
Eventually, instead of money – which would have been a five-figure sum – Wards settled for a couple of advertising hoardings at Blackwell, and a couple of season tickets.
And so, thanks to Tony Ward’s careful custodianship, the Tin Shed was returned to the fans.
JR & M Richardsons Construction re-erected the Tin Shed at Blackwell during the 2016/17 season. Although the original sheeting could not be reused as there were too many holes in it, the framework is all original.
And so it stands to this day, to the delight of die-hard fans who remember it from its Feethams years – and hopefully for future generations of youngsters who will set foot in the hallowed Tin Shed for the very first time.
* Thanks to Craig Stoddart for his help in compiling this feature, much of the information for which was inclided in an article in The Northern Echo from January 2017.
You can read the full version of the story here
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