A tour through time: 5 more Darlington parks full of history

READ FIRST: A TOUR THROUGH TIME IN DARLINGTON'S PARKS PART 1

Still at the end of the 19th Century, we look at which parks came next to give Darlington its undeniably green feel...

Southend Avenue 

This Edwardian postcard of Southend Avenue shows it was much more densely tree-lined when the council first took it over than it is today

Crocus Walk, Darlington’s fourth public park, was bought by the council in 1897 to save it from the developers when the land around Joseph Pease’s Southend mansion – now Duncan Bannatyne’s hotel – was being built upon.

The Grange Road/Victoria Road roundabout covers much of the land outside the Southend lodge house which was at the entrance to Crocus Walk

This preserved the attractive, tree-lined southern approach to the town, and the council lowered Mr Pease’s wall by three feet to make the area feel less like a forbidden private garden.

Maude Chilton

One of the houses in Southend Avenue was the home for many years of Maude and Douglas Chilton. He was the director of Peases Mill, which closed in 1972, and chaired Darlington Conservative Association for which he was awarded an OBE in 1952.

Maude loved to sit among the springtime crocuses and admire the colours, which must have been a leftover from Mr Pease’s day.

Douglas Sinclair, who planted hundreds of crocus bulbs in the 1980s in Crocus Walk in memory of his wife, Maude

Maude and Douglas were together for 68 years, married for 57, until Maude died aged 81 in 1980. In her memory, Douglas donated 15,000 bulbs, which cost him £500, and when they all flowered the following spring, he donated a further 15,000 to complete the carpet.

Mr Chilton died in 1986, and, although the bulbs have been regularly topped up since, he left behind what generations of Darlingtonians have regarded as the great harbinger of spring – you know the worst of winter is behind you when you see the crocuses of Crocus Walk opening up in the first warmth of the sun.

Southend Avenue in the 1930s with the crocuses in full spring bloom

A sure sign that spring is coming is the display in Crocus Walk off Southend Avenue in Darlington, with the Grange Road Baptist Church behind in 2017. Picture: Peter Giroux

East Park 

East Park shortly after it opened in 1902. The Bowl House can be seen in the distance

THE council bought seven acres of land off Eastbourne Road for £1,600 and borough surveyor George Winter, who laid out all of Darlington’s late 19th Century/early 20th Century parks, spent £1,750 landscaping a public park, which was opened on May 17, 1902.

In 1908, Lady Starmer opened the bowling green in the park. It had a pretty bowls pavilion, complete with clock, but this was burned down in May 1980 and replaced by a more functional, brick clubhouse with shutters.

Probably the first East Park Ladies Bowls Club in 1927, with the ladies wearing some splendidly fashionable 1920s hats

In 1927, the men bowlers voted to allow women to form a team, and The Northern Echo presented a silver trophy which was competed for by women bowlers across the town annually.

After 106 years, the bowling clubs disbanded as they were running out of members.

Members of the East Park Bowling Club celebrating their 100th anniversary in August 2007. Pictured (L-R) are Ronnie Fort, George Grindley, Peter O'Toole, Dennis Hodgson, Roy Gent, Richard Copeland and Ken Main

Ladies bowling in East Park in 1997

The Northern Echo presented a trophy to the East Park Ladies Club in May 1928

North Lodge Park 

An Edwardian postcard of North Lodge Park

IN the 1820s, banker William Backhouse laid out the grounds behind his Elmfield mansion on North Road (now next door to a tyre garage) with as its focal point a pond, fountain and castellated boathouse.

An Edwardian postcard of North Lodge Park showing the pond and the boathouse, which dated from the 1820s, and the bandstand which was new addition when the park opened in 1903

In the 1830s, he sold the southern portion of his estate to John Beaumont Pease who built a family home, North Lodge, on it.

The grounds of North Lodge played an important part in the town’s history because in 1883, unable to find a pitch anywhere else, Darlington FC played their first ever games there.

Skaters on the lake in what is now North Lodge Park in the 1870s. This suggests that there was some public access to the grounds of the private houses of Elmfield and North Lodge from which the park was formed

At the start of the 20th Century, the two estates – Elmfield and North Lodge – were under threat from property developers, so the council bought 12 acres of them which were opened as a public park on July 5, 1903. The pond – for which a councillor donated pair of black swans in 1904 – and the boathouse were joined by a new bandstand as the main focal points of the park.

In 1906, a bowling green was added, and in 1910, a pioneering open-air school was trialled in the park. Unfortunately, that summer was typically English – wet – and so the sick children didn’t benefit much so their portable classroom was moved to Dodmire school.

The park’s lake was filled in in 1932 and, criminally, the boathouse was demolished in 1955, but the bandstand remains in this delightful town centre green oasis.

The castellated boathouse being demolished in January 1955

Three ladies enjoying a bandstand performance in Darlington's North Lodge Park in 2011

The denes

BRINKBURN DENE – or “tenny dene” – is the first of the six denes and it celebrated its 100th anniversary last year.

READ THE FULL STORY OF THE DENES, AS THEY REACH 100, HERE

The tenny dene was originally called Brinkburn Dene as the central path was once the tree-lined driveway leading to Brinkburn mansion

The Cocker Beck runs through the denes and its steep-sided ravine was the boundary between the two Pease estates of Pierremont and Brinkburn, and the council bought the ravine in 1912, once again to save it from the developers.

It became 171 allotments during the First World War, and then the first section, which featured the tree-lined drive to the Brinkburn mansion, was opened to the public on September 11, 1923.

Crowds spill into the newly-opened Cockerbeck Valley Gardens, now known as "the denes", on opening day, September 4, 1925

Then unemployed men were put to work creating 1.5 miles of paths and planting 10,000 shrubs until the next section was ready for opening on September 4, 1925, when it was grandly called “Cockerbeck Valley Gardens”.

The opening of the paddly dene in 1926

Over time, each of the denes has been given its own name depending upon its uses. For example, the easternmost dene had a paddling pool and sandpit built in it in 1926 and is to this day known as “paddly dene”, even though the pool is long since gone, and the westernmost dene is never called by its official title but has been the “tenny dene” ever since tennis courts were added in 1930.

A Swiss-style chalet was the focal point of the "chalet dene", also known as "sheddy dene", as this 1930s family is discovering

In the Bowling Dene in the 1960s, a giant game of draughts was a spectator sport and people were able to play without leaving their seats, or taking the pipes out of their mouths

Tower Park 

Henry Pease's Pierremont mansion, which is now apartments, with the clocktower on the right

THE crowning glory of Henry Pease’s lavish Pierremont estate – known as “the Buckingham Palace of the North” because it was so grand – was a clocktower designed by Alfred Waterhouse, the greatest Gothic architect of the Victorian era.

Like all these great estates, in the 20th Century, its grounds were built over.

In 1916, Henry’s grandson, Ronald Hodgkin of Meadowcroft in Cotherstone, the owner of the famous Lily Laundry, quietly presented the clocktower and a small plot of land at its foot, to the town.

It opened as a public park in 1925, and as well as the clocktower, which is topped by a weathervane featuring the Peases’ dove of peace carrying a peapod of peace in its beak, there was “a huge rockery” which included “a very fine collection of Alpine plants, a number of double gorse bushes, climbing roses and an assortment of hard British ferns”.

Even though Tower Park is in one of the town’s better off neighbourhoods, it was in a disappointingly unkempt condition the last time Memories called in.

Tower Road in 1960 with the clocktower. Incidentally, the council has got good value out of those distinctive non-slip paving stones on the right hand side because, more than 60 years later, many of them are still in place

Pierremont clocktower, Darlington, by Chris Lloyd