The story of the historic Railway Tavern in Darlington

The Railway Tavern in Northgate has been highlighted for its individuality along with the nation’s first car wash, a Cornish fogou, a church that looks like a ship, an unusually long railway footbridge and a Second World War radar station on a glorious clifftop in Northumberland.

The Railway Tavern, Northgate, Darlington. Picture: Historic England

The Tavern’s curious place in national history is that it was built in 1826 to 1827 by the Stockton & Darlington Railway as a “proto-station”. The S&DR was the first organisation to grapple with the concept of what a station needed to be and so, influenced by the coaching inns that it was about to make redundant, it decided to build three pubs with accommodation next to its coal depots, which it expected to be its major source of income.

In June 1826, it borrowed £1,305 19s from Joseph Pease to pay for the construction of the three inns, which was overseen by mastermason John Falcus Carter, who had been born in Heighington in 1787.

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However, the passenger side of the railway took off, and it soon found that passengers did not want to be mingling with drinkers at a coal depot – they wanted to be waiting lineside, perhaps with a sandwich. Therefore, the concept of a station began to evolve, and the three inns found themselves relegated to the status of a good historic idea that never took off, like the Betamax video or the squarial satellite dish.

The railway sold the Tavern in 1870 when the Westbrook coal drops opposite it closed.

Enjoying a beer in the Victoriana of the Railway Tavern. The interior was laid out by Darlington's finest architect, GG Hoskins

The Tavern was then revamped as a full time inn, and it was given a classic late Victorian makeover in 1898 by Darlington’s distinguished architect GG Hoskins, the man responsible for the King’s Head Hotel and Middlesbrough Town Hall. He added the distinctive windows on the front and designed the bar lay-out that we see today.

At the other end of the line, the S&DR built a very similar Railway Tavern at St John’s Crossing in Stockton. It, too, failed to fly as a “proto-station” and closed in 1869 when it was converted into railway housing.

The third of these pioneering buildings was the Locomotion pub (above), also known as Heighington station, in Newton Aycliffe. Disgracefully, it is closed and derelict. In private hands, no one has yet found a will or a way to bring it back to life and to tell its pioneering story – and yet it shares the same quirky claim to fame as the Railway Tavern in Northgate.

The S&DR underbridge near Dene Beck, close to Coatham Grange Farm, off Patches Lane, to the north of Darlington, which has been listed

OTHER parts of the S&DR have also been given Grade II listed status this week. They include a coal depot wall on Stockton quayside, the trackbed at Preston Park in Stockton and along the River Gaunless in West Auckland, plus the inclines at Brusselton and Etherley.

Also listed is a culvert and a bridge near the derelict Coatham Grange Farm off Patches Lane to the north of Darlington. These featured in Memories 517 as this was a very boggy area, called Myers Flat, that caused George Stephenson great problems when building the line: no matter how much soil he tipped into the bog, it quickly disappeared as if fairies had removed it. Stephenson had to come up with an ingenious raft method to beat the bog, and he designed the culvert for the Dene Beck to flow through and the bridge for a farmer to take his cattle through.

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The "first car wash", in Royston, Hertfordshire

HISTORIC ENGLAND named its 16 quirky buildings as a way of highlighting the 227 less glamorous, but no less important, buildings that it has given listed status to – less glamorous buildings like culverts.

The unusually long Deep Pit footbridge, of 1887, over nine tracks at Hindley, Wigan, was another quirky highlight along with the carriage splash in Royston, Hertfordshire, which dates from 1600. It was a drive-through carwash for horsedrawn carriages, one of only four known in the country.

The other quirky listed building in the North East is the Chain Home Low Radar Station at Craster, which has splendid clifftop views to Dunstanburgh Castle.

There were more than 200 radar stations built during the Second World War, but only 75 were for coastal defence, or “chain home low” stations. Of those 75, only eight survive in such a complete condition as Craster. It was built in 1941 and provided an early warning of incoming enemy planes.

Craster Chain Home Low Radar Station, Craster, Northumberland, with Dunstanburgh Castle in the top left. Picture: Historic England

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Craster Chain Home Low Radar Station, Craster, Northumberland. Picture: Historic England