IT is 50 years since Darlington’s fire brigade amalgamated with its neighbour in County Durham and to celebrate, the new fire station on the inner ring road is hosting an open day on Saturday, June 14. It runs from 10am to 2pm and as well as a host of activities, there will be an exhibition of Darlington fire helmets through the ages.
The first fire engine – a water pump – was recorded in Darlington in 1757 and was kept in St Cuthbert’s churchyard. The town’s first full time fireman was employed in 1863 on £3 10s a year, and the town's first brigade was created a year later. The first fire station was opened in Borough Road in 1905. It was replaced in 1973 by a £300,000 station on St Cuthbert’s Way, which was itself replaced in 2022 by the £3.2m station which is hosting the open day.
Here are what could be the town’s greatest blazes of all time which successive generations of firefighters have been called upon to tackle…
May 7, 1585
The Great Fire of Darlington, fanned by a “boisterous wind” swept through the town’s timber buildings when the wells and the river were extremely low because of drought. People therefore had to throw milk and beer on the flames, but it didn’t work: 273 houses, including much of High Row and Skinnergate, were destroyed and 800 of the town’s 1,200 population were made homeless. It took Darlington’s economy 50 years to recover, and its medieval streetscape was lost forever
READ MORE: 9 FAB PICS OF DARLINGTON'S EMERGENCY SERVICES THROUGH THE DECADES
Peases Mill
For generations, the Pease family’s woollen mill dominated both the town’s economy and its skyline, but it had a worrying habit of catching fire.
February 2, 1817: All 600 employees, who made up 10 per cent of the town’s population, were thrown out of work when the mill burned down. It did £30,000 of damage, but fortunately the Peases were insured with Norwich Union. As a result of their claim, Norwich Union presented the town with a horsedrawn manual pump in a bid to protect the mill, and Norwich Union’s other clients, from future fires meaning they wouldn’t have to pay out so much.
July 2, 1933: On the hottest day of the year – "88 in the shade in Darlington" – the mill again caught fire at 11.45am. The town’s 22 professional firemen were quickly on the scene, but unfortunately their first motorised fire engine, which Darlington had bought in 1920, was away getting repainted and having pneumatic tyres fitted in place of its wooden wheels. This was probably the biggest blaze of the 20th Century in the town, again bringing much of the mill crashing down. As it was a Sunday, the mill was not at work, so firemen risked their lives to rescue the only living creature inside the burning building: Jinne, the mill cat. Her kitten sadly died. The blaze did damage valued at £60,000.
In 1864, the Darlington Corporation Fire Brigade was formed and it bought a new large engine, on the left, a Merryweather, to go with then older Tilley on the right. This picture is from David Waterfall Brown whose great-grandfather, JG Brown, is standing on the front of the engine on the left
January 28, 1889
Because of the mill’s alarming tendency to catch fire, in 1870, Joseph Pease kindly donated the town’s first proper fire engine, which he named Southend after his mansion – Duncan Bannatyne now has his hotel in Joseph’s home.
The Shand Mason engine cost about £700, and everyone was very impressed when Mr Shand demonstrated its steampower by firing four jets of water over the roof of the mill.
The engine was kept in the cellars of the Covered Market. When an alarm was raised, the bell in the clocktower was rung to summon the firemen from their homes. However, in those pre-television days the bell also alerted to the townspeople to a drama unfolding in their midst and they turned out in great numbers to watch.
Indeed, the penny-pinching council used this phenomenon to its advantage and didn’t employ expensive full time firemen until 1863. Instead, the Borough Surveyor selected likely looking men from the gathering crowd to man the pump.
In 1889, at 9.40pm on January 28, the bell summoned the full time firemen to a blaze in the School Furnishing Company’s factory in East Mount Road, and it also drew a crowd of thousands who followed Southend to the scene.
READ MORE: THE FULL HISTORY OF DARLINGTON'S FIRE BRIGADE
At 10.30pm, the brick west wall of the factory collapsed on top of the hundreds of spectators who were using it to shield them from the heat of the flames.
Four men were killed outright. When their bodies were retrieved from the rubble, the Echo said: "Their heads and faces were totally unrecognisable, and their trunks had been beaten into a horrible misshapen mess.”
The bricks fractured the skull of Lionel Stainsby, 18, who worked at Peases Mill, and he was taken to hospital where an emergency trepanning operation was carried out – his skull being drilled into and sawn open. He became the fifth to die.
The inquest into their deaths was held in the Railway Tavern, and it ordered the council to improve water pressure so firemen could fight fires more effectively, and to provide a proper mortuary – three of the bodies had been laid out in the tavern’s stable but the landlord mislaid the key, delaying the inquest by 45 minutes.
And it ordered that the bell should be silenced and runners employed to rouse the firemen.
June 26, 1993
The “Burtree Bleve” was one of the most spectacular fires ever seen in County Durham. It occurred at Burtree Caravans, to the north of Darlington, when a 1.5 tonne tank of liquefied petroleum gas exploded.
Dave Kirby, who lived nearby in Burtree Lane, told The Northern Echo: "The tank suddenly exploded and there was a huge bang. It was just like an H-bomb with a huge mushroom cloud in the sky."
He was right. The fire heated the contents of the tank causing a “boiling liquid expanding vapour explosion”, a bleve, which sent the mushroom cloud of smoke and flame high into the sky so that it was visible for miles around. The flames spread rapidly towards the 300 caravans, destroying £2m-worth of them, but, fortunately, the wind blew the flames away from the Burmah filling station which had thousands of gallons of petrol stored underground.
Eighty firefighters were hampered by the caravan showroom not being connected to mains water supply. At first they had to drain the neighbouring pub fishpond before they could connect to a hydrant more than a mile away, and they drew out so much water so quickly, that for days after, houses in the north of Darlington had browny tapwater as years of sediment was suddenly disturbed.
Fortunately, no one was injured, but 13 expensive fish, which had been placed days before in the Burtree Inn pond for safekeeping while their owner went on holiday, were killed.
The bleve was also notable because it was the first fire attended by Durham’s first female firefighter, 18-year-old Susan Garnett, of Sedgefield. In June the previous year, Susan, who also worked part-time as a fashion assistant at Binns, had become a retained firefighter in her home village but this was her first proper call-out.
August 15, 2008
DARLINGTON’S biggest fire since 1933 broke out on the top floor of the King’s Head Hotel at 12.40am. Sixty firefighters, 10 fire engines and a police helicopter took six hours to get it under control, although the 100-plus guests – from Canada, India, Italy and China – were ushered out unharmed, two elderly ones needing to be rescued.
A quarter of the 83-bedroom hotel, which dates from the early 1890s, was destroyed.
Arson was suspected, but the fire consumed all evidence of its source so its cause has never officially been recorded.
After a splendid £8m restoration, the King’s Head reopened in 2012 and now the casual eye would not realise how much of this landmark building had been damaged.
- With many thanks to Brett Clayton
READ MORE: 70 YEARS OF DURHAM'S FIRE BRIGADE
OR: WELCOME TO CROFT: LOOK AT THE PLANTS AND DRINK IN THE PAST OF THE WHIFFY WATERS AND FAKE CASTLE
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here