“JAMES FRASER MURRAY was a butcher by trade,” says Malcolm Middleton in response to our picture in Memories 636 of a shopfront which has recently been rediscovered in Darlington after being hidden for the best part of 50 years.
“In 1957, he was trading from 62 Coniscliffe Road and had another shop at 117 North Road, which was on the corner of Wales Street. I remember this shop well as I was often shopped there for my mother.”
Pictures of Mr Murray's shopfront by Hugh Mortimer
It is the Coniscliffe Road shop where the old nameboard of “J Fraser Murray & Son” briefly re-emerged a couple of weeks ago as the shop is being restored.
The parade of shops in Coniscliffe Road with Mr Murray's shop the black-fronted newsagent in this picture from Google StreetView
Pat Crack grew up in Langholm Crescent during the Second World War just around the corner from the shop.
“Murray's was a butchers and general grocery shop which supplied us during the war with our food rations,” she says. “As a child, I often went to Murrays with a note from my mother as to our daily food requirements as there were no refrigerators in those days, and our weekend order was delivered to us.”
Murray’s was in a little parade of retail outlets.
“The four shops from left to right were Outhwaite’s (tobacconist), Murray’s, Andrews (fruit and veg) and Staton’s (shoe repairers). The attached garage on the corner was called the Central Garage.”
F&W Outhwaite were trading from the parade from well before the Second World War, and it looks as if Mr Murray started up during the war. He remained in business until the early 1970s and he died in 1989 on a coach tour in Scotland.
Coniscliffe News took on his shop, covering up his nameboard. It traded until a couple of years ago and Peter Singlehurst, another who has provided valuable information, had The Northern Echo delivered from there every morning for more than 40 years ago.
Murray’s nameboard was briefly revealed as the property was prepared for a new use, and it has been covered up again but not destroyed.
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MR MURRAY was well known in the town as President of the Darlington & District Butchers Association and also a leading member of Darlington Operatic Society (DOS).
“He was one of those who saved the Darlington Hippodrome from closure and was on the committee of the operatic society which funded the saving of the theatre,” says John Lloyd, of the society.
DOS had put on bi-annual shows at the Hippodrome since 1924. In 1957, the theatre proprietor, Edward J Hinge, ceased trading and the theatre closed.
Darlington council was pursuing its plans of building a new theatre into the municipal complex that it wished to cover the Market Place with and refused to get involved with the theatre, so the DOS committee, of which Mr Murray was a part, took on the £450-a-year lease and shooed out the pigeons from the derelict building.
In 1961, their lease expired and the theatre owners wanted to either sell the rotting building for £8,000 or demolish it completely. The council said the maximum it could muster for such a worthless asset was £5,500 – well short of the owners’ expectations.
Demolition seemed likely until the DOS committee brokered a brave deal: on November 4, 1961, the DOS committee bought the theatre for £8,000 and that same day sold it on to the council for £5,500. The committee took an immense financial hit which had used up all of its reserves – but it had saved the Hippodrome from demolition and delivered it into the council’s hands. Twenty years later, the council began restoring the theatre and now it is one of Darlington’s greatest treasures.
“For this, we should be grateful to Mr Murray and the others,” says John.
The full committee which took on the Hippodrome in 1958 was: John Brown, Lloyds Bank manager; Wilfred Downing of Newlands Road, retired works overseer; Thomas Gilchrist of Woodvale Road, retired bank manager; Edward Hammond of Prebend Row, chartered accountant; Antony Little of Priestgate, solicitor; Mary Lyonette of Hutton Avenue, housewife; James Fraser Murray of Hartford Road, butcher and grocer; Cyril Park, of Houndgate, solicitor; Dame Cecily Starmer of Danby Lodge, housewife; Fred Thompson of Middleton St George, leather merchant; Norman Thompson of Elton Parade, engineer.
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THE other reason many people remember Mr Murray was that his grandparents (we think), Jack and Nora Murray, started Murray’s the bakers in 1923.
They grew to have nine shops, including branches in Richmond and Northallerton, supplied by their bakery which was in Maude Street until 1988 when it moved to bigger premises in Union Place.
With their little blue and white vans buzzing around town, in 1989 they produced 50,000 rolls and teacakes a week, 18,000 cakes, 12,500 loaves, 10,000 pies and pasties and 10,000 cream cakes.
But that year, the five major supermarkets launched “bread wars”, cutting the price of their own-brand 800g white sliced loaves from 17p to 7p. Independent bakers could not compete.
Murray’s required a £500,000 investment to save it from adminstration in 1999, and then won contracts to supply airlines flying out of Teesside airport with sandwiches which also went to Middlesbrough FC’s Cellnet stadium and Rockliffe training ground in Hurworth.
But even all that could not save the firm which, after three generations of Murrays, went abruptly into liquidation on August 1, 2001, when their 60 bakers lost their jobs.
For much of the 20th Century, though, Murray’s were a Darlington institution.
A 1959 advert for Central Garage, courtesy of Susan Bennett
BACK to the Coniscliffe Road parade of shops which finished with Central Garage, from where Susan Bennett’s father bought a powder blue Commer Cob van in 1958.
She still has the receipt which shows the basic vehicle, which was like a Hillman Husky, cost £430, but Mr Bennett also had to pay for antifreeze, underseal, number plates, two lamp rims and a passenger seat, plus tax and delivery, so in total, the Commer cost £533 7s 4d (that’s about £10,300 in today’s prices, according to the Bank of England Inflation Calculator).
Fortunately, though, Mr Bennett had a 1955 Morris van to trade in that was worth £300.
READ MORE: HOW NETTIE HONEYBALL INTRODUCED WOMEN'S FOOTBALL TO DARLINGTON
We hope this is a Commer Cob van
Chesterfield, on the corner of Coniscliffe Road and Stanhope Road, Darlington. It was demolished in 2002 and replaced by a block of flats called Chesterfields. Picture courtesy of the Darlingotn Centre for Local Studies
WE believe the garage belonged to Chesterfield, a doctors’ surgery which was built in 1914 on the corner of Coniscliffe Road and Stanhope Road by Dr Frederick Pridham, who had met his wife while working in Chesterfield hospital. Dr Pridham kept his pioneering cars in the garage which enabled him to see patients outside town.
“I was born in December 1937 in Stapleton when Dr Pridham attended my birth,” says Pat Crack. “When we moved in to Langholm Crescent in 1942, he remained our doctor and we consulted him at Chesterfield when required.
“As your article said, the doctors decamped from Chesterfield to Denmark Street in 1982, and I am still with that practice today even though I returned to Stapleton in 1986.”
So that’s 85-and-a-half years with the same practice – that must be some sort of record unless, of course, you can beat it.
DR PRIDHAM was succeeded at Chesterfield by Dr John Kerss who weighed 17½ stone but drove a brown Mini, the first in Darlington.
“In March 1946, my husband Peter was supposedly the first baby Dr Kerrs delivered when he came to Darlington and remained our family doctor till he retired,” says Monica Giggins. “I remember him coming to see Paul, our oldest son, who was sleeping in our bedroom because the second bedroom wasn’t ready for occupation. Dr Kerss walked into the second bedroom, moved the furniture around to make a space for a small cot and said: ‘There, he sleeps in there from now on.’ He was a superb doctor.”
MANY thanks for all your interest. Can you tell us anymore about any of the people, places or firms mentioned – lots of people must have memories of Murray’s the bakers. Please email chris.lloyd@nne.co.uk
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