ON Friday (May 19), Cockerton library is holding a special open day, from 12 to 6.30pm, to examine the history of the village.
Through pictures, maps and articles, it'll look at the story of the old hall and the cocoa palace, plus the pubs, shops, schools and churches of the village which has grown up around its green.
There will even be talk of bridges.
This splendid picture from the Darlington Local Studies collection shows on the right hand side Cockerton's ancient stone bridge which carried travellers from Darlington over the Cocker Beck - until 1915, Darlington and Cockerton were separate townships and the beck was the border. The picture was taken at the top of Woodland Road, where a large roundabout is now.
Two views of the old Cockerton bridge over the Cocker Beck. Below you can see the old Drovers Inn in the background. Most recently a petrol station, the Drovers has been demolished in the last couple of years and replaced by a small housing development beside the Cockerton band club
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A horsedrawn tram in about 1900 with the bridge behind
The demands of 20th Century transport brought the end of the old bridge. Its humpback was insurmountable for trams and so it had to be replaced by a flat, iron girder bridge in 1904 so the first electrified tram could reach the centre of the village. In those days, trams ran every 10 minutes from the Market Place and the fare was 1½d, and when in 1918 open-topped double-decker trams were acquired, the route through the countryside of Woodland Road was a popular summer ride.
However, in 1926, electric trolleybuses replaced trams and they required a wider bridge. The Peases, who owned the Brinkburn mansion, gave a strip of their estate to widen the bridge, and the council bought four cottages and the Travellers Rest Hotel so it could demolish them and realign West Auckland Road.
1925 in Cockerton: the old Travellers Rest is cleared on the left while the new one takes shape on the right
Today, the road is so flat and so wide that the traveller from Darlington to Cockerton has no idea they are passing over the Cocker Beck, although they will still see the Travellers Rest when they reach the other side. It is the "new" Travellers Rest built in 1925 – so nearly 100 years old – to the east of the old Travellers Rest Hotel, which dated back to 1860.
All such stories and more at Friday's open day when admission is free.
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