The many mysteries of the Guru of Blackwellgate

Offers in the region of £125,000 are invited.

Those bricks, mortar and cast iron make a fascinating Grade II listed building with, according to the listed buildings schedule, “fantastic adornment” on its front.

Blackwellgate in 1965, with Guru on the left

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The rear opens into the courtyard of the Houndgate Mews shopping arcade and is made of early 18th Century pinkish bricks, while the front looks to be early 19th Century with an unusual, triangular, three-storey single bay of windows added around 1860.

These windows have cast iron frames with cast iron “fantastic adornments”: medallions and bosses and, best of all, ornamental spandrels which feature four human heads – two male, two female, a couple wearing crowns – looking down from the first floor.

The architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner notes in his guide to County Durham that No 24 is similar to the “ornate, jolly” frontage of Doric House at No 37, Tubwell Row. Doric House has a larger cast iron frame with similar distinctive adornments (although no heads).

The ironwork on Doric House in Tubwell Row. Picture: Google StreetView

It is thought the two buildings’ ironwork was cast in Glasgow at Walter MacFarlane & Co’s Saracen Foundry. MacFarlane’s was the largest manufacturer of ornamental ironwork in the British Empire – from the bandstand in Darlington’s South Park to the drinking fountains in Shildon and Middleton-in-Teesdale, there are almost countless examples of their work in the region.

As well as its fantastic adornments on the outside, No 24 has curiosities on the inside.

In its cellar, it has an old range, and a cupboard which opens into a mini-room with a vaulted ceiling that has been excavated beneath the Blackwellgate pavement.

William Aitken's fishmongers in No 24, Blackwellgate, in 1972. Picture courtesy of Darlington Centre for Local Studies

And we believe that in the cellar, there was once a flagstone that was so wobbly that fishmonger and poulterer William Aitken decided to investigate.

He lifted the stone and found an immaculate well 16ft deep – so 30ft beneath the level of the pavement – with, at the bottom, 4ft of what the Evening Despatch newspaper called "perfectly fresh and icy cold water, obviously fed from a healthy spring and well ventilated". The well even contained a length of leadpipe which would once have been connected to a handpump that would have drawn the water to the surface.

Mr Aitken seems to have opened his fishmongery at No 24 in the mid-1940s after Mr Lupton moved his business to Skinnergate and he continued trading into the 1970s.

In 2006, Memories was told a story by park gardener Harry Challis, who was then 91. He worked at South Park for five years in the early 1950s, and cycled to work with his front pannier full of an unusual cargo.

"My first job each morning was to go to Aitken’s Fish Shop in Blackwellgate and buy half a pound of fresh fish for Peter the Park Penguin who lived in one of the aviaries,” said Harry. "It liked herring best, but ate whatever it got."

Peter the Penguin in his enclosure in South Park with the Fothergill Fountain through the cage door in the background

Peter was a Jackass Penguin from the south-west coast of South Africa. Jackass Penguins get their name because they make a noise like a braying donkey. Because they are Africans, they prefer a warmer climate – Darlington was probably too cold for Peter.

He arrived in the park with a penguin pal around 1940, but the Arctic conditions soon proved too much for the companion who quickly died. Peter, though, was a hardy soul and he lived until about 1960.

However, Peter wasn’t a very good eater. Harry told how he had to open up Peter’s beak, hold the herring vertically and then slide it down Peter’s gullet.

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An Edwardian postcard view of Blackwellgate