Darlington department store, Bainbridge Barker, is being refurbished

Once it was the town’s homegrown premiere department store, battling with Binns for the posh people’s pennies, standing at the southern gateway to the centre, welcoming travellers on the Great North Road to Darlington.

Sadly, in the last 30 years, it has been unloved, with peeling paint hanging from it and an air of dereliction hanging over it.

Hoardings concealing the work that is being done on the corner of Skinnergate and Blackwellgate

But now hoardings conceal the corner of Skinnergate and Blackwellgate as work begins to give it a new future. What, though, of its past?

It goes right back to October 10, 1636, when James Bellasis of Owton, in Hartlepool, made his will prior to his death in 1640. James, from a very wealthy family, had acquired much property in Darlington, including the Skinnergate corner. In his will he left £20 plus “good provision of timber, bricke and stone” to build homes on the corner for workmen in the “lynning or wooling trade”. He may even have meant for a little factory to be built beside the cottages for the residents to use.

He also left four “beastgates”, or fields, on Bracken Moor so that the rental income from them would go to pay for the upkeep of these properties. These four fields today make up the terrace area of South Park, which was originally known as “Bellasis Park”.

The Skinnergate/Blackwellgate corner, with the Belassis almshouses of 1636 being the low building on the left

But even in 1636 there was skulduggery, and neither the houses nor the factory was built. Instead, the old property was converted into almshouses, and a large stone bearing James’s name was inserted into them. Three poor widows, nominated by the St Cuthbert’s churchwardens lived in the houses.

In the 19th Century, Benjamin Stockton had a stationer’s business beside the almshouses on the corner and when he retired after 30 years in 1898, local builder Thomas I’Anson bought all the property, knocked it down and built an impressive cornerpiece looking down the Great North Road.

He saved the stone with James’s name on it and it survives in a greenhouse somewhere in the Tees Valley (below).

In 1899, one of the new shops in the cornerpiece was rented by James Bainbridge Barker and his brother, Armstrong Barker, for their humble drapery business - they used a wooden pinbowl as their till.

To serve their customers, the brothers cycled into Wensleydale, Swaledale and Teesdale on a tandem. When the orders grew too large for the bicycle basket, they switched to a pony-and-trap and then to a motor car.

As the modes of transport improved, so Bainbridge Barker's premises grew. Within little more than a decade the brothers occupied all of the corner building.

A 1913 advert advises that BB's could "convince you that we can make your shopping a success! Millinery, coats and costumes, an almost endless variety. Blouses the beautiful delicacy of appearance combined with durability, proves great attraction in this department. Mourning orders receive prompt and careful attention."

In the late 1920s, a mock-Tudor café was opened in the upper storey of the cornerpiece, just as large stores and garden centres today also offer food to their customers.

Bainbridge Barkers was fitted out in the 1920 by Snaith's joinery in Bondgate. This is Snaith's patent Umbrella Display Case on top of their classic drapery drawers that were last seen in Grace's department store in Are You Being Served?

But Bainbridge Barker’s café was a little special. "The oak-panelled walls and antique beams and, most of all, the ingle-nook fireplace, cannot fail to conjure up scenes of England's Golden Age and take one's mind off the rush and bustle of modernity," said the Darlington & Stockton Times.

Bainbridge Barker’s delivered goods to their customers’ homes in a dark blue Morris J van with gold lettering on the side – in the 1950s, you knew you had made it when your neighbours saw you had been shopping for a new carpet at Darlington’s premiere department store.

Wide-eye camera view of Blackwellgate, Darlington, taken on March 11, 1965. Below: Another panorama, this time of Skinnergate in November 1965 with an arch at the Mechanics Institute end of Bainbridge Barkers. This gave access to Dobbins Yard, named after the veterinary surgeons Dobbin and Taylor who occupied it from 1900 until 1910. In the 1970s, the arch was converted into a shop

James Bainbridge Barker died in 1941 and in 1961 his son and grandson, apparently fearing death duties would wipe out their inheritance, decided to sell up for £194,000.

The 1961 sale catalogue

Blackwellgate, Darlington, in August 1964 when Bainbridge Barker on the left had briefly become Robinsons of Hartlepool. The A1 was still going down Blackwellgate onto High Row. Please note: some of our dates don't quite tally. If you can help us out, please email chris.lloyd@nne.co.uk

The new owner was Matthias Robinson and Son, a West Hartlepool family department store which had started in 1875 and had branches as far south as Leeds. But their name lasted over the door for just 11 months before Debenhams took over, and for the next decade Darlington enjoyed a departmental dogfight. Debenhams of national renown, on the Skinnergate corner of Blackwellgate, battled with Binns, or regional renown, on the High Row corner of Blackwellgate.

The dogfight ended in January 1973 when Debenhams retreated, tails between their legs, saying the Bainbridge Barker site was "too small".

McIlroys' store occupying the corner, we think in the early 1980s - this is probably the last time it had a coat of paint

Since 1973, the corner has had a succession of occupants. McIlroys, a drapery store, was in there for a while followed by the Motorists Discount Centre and then the Newcastle Building Society, but it must have been empty for five or more years, getting sorrier and sorrier.

The scruffy cornerpiece before the pandemic

So it is very good news that it is being done up and we hope, in the near future, to be able to say exactly what is going on behind the hoardings.

READ MORE: WHY THE ECHO IS NOW OFFICIALLY IN PARADISE

Bainbridge Barker on the corner of Skinnergate and Blackwellgate in August 1961 when the Great North Road, the main road between Edinburgh and London, ran past its door. Our old car spotters may care to identify the four vehicles on the corner: NHN 74 on the left, the black vehicle behind it, the smart two-tone saloon, and the van turning right