DARLINGTON'S £37m Hopetown railway visitor attraction opened this week. Here, from the straightforward to the strange, are seven sights, and tastes, that you don't want to miss...
The world’s oldest continuously used railway bridge
Overlooking the car park off John Street is the Skerne Bridge, the largest piece of infrastructure on the Stockton & Darlington Railway when it opened on September 27, 1825. Designed by George Stephenson with assistance from the Durham cathedral architect, Ignatius Bonomi, this really is global history: no one had built an industrial-sized railway bridge until this point. Only it didn’t really stand up to the early trains as they increased in weight. By late 1828, dangerous cracks were opening up, so stonemason John Carter, of Heighington, was employed to add the graceful wings that ensure that, 199 years after Locomotion No 1 first went across it, it can still carry trains. In the 1990s, the bridge featured on the back of the £5 note, and today it has been framed so you can take a picture of it.
READ MORE: THE FULL STORY OF THE SKERNE BRIDGE
The sofa at the start
Edward “the Father of the Railways” lived in Northgate, where Domino’s pizza parlour is today. At about 5pm on April 19, 1821, George Stephenson arrived from Newcastle to discuss Edward’s railway plans, but as he did not have an appointment, the butler refused him admission. Edward, though, heard the commotion and let George in, taking him into the kitchen – until recently a kebab shop – where they sat on this cream and rose pink sofa. Amid these very cushions, George persuaded Edward that new-fangled steampower and not old-fashioned horsepower should drive his railway and the rest really is history. In the new museum, the sofa has George and Edward’s cleverly animated heads in deep discussion.
READ MORE: HOW STEPHENSON FIRST MET PEASE IN A KEBAB SHOP AND CHANGED THE WORLD
Francis Mewburn’s Staff of Office
Mewburn’s grave in West Cemetery proclaims him as the “First Railway Solicitor”, and he did the bulk of the legal work that enabled the creation of the S&DR. He was from Bishop Middleham, came to Darlington in 1809 and established himself as the town’s pre-eminent solicitor. At times, his caution frustrated the Peases, and Joseph once shouted at him: “Thou hast the heart of a chicken.” He laid the foundation stone for the Skerne Bridge on July 6, 1824. In 1846, he was appointed Borough Bailiff – the Bishop of Durham’s representative in the town, a post which dated back to at least 1433. This made him the town’s first citizen, and we guess that his Staff of Office is connected to his appointment. It looks like a cricket mallet – a ball on a stick – that is used for “knocking in” a new cricket bat, but it has painted on it: “IIII WR S0”. Can anyone interpret that for us? Could it be a staff that was created for an earlier bailiff in the reign of William IV? Anyway, the post of bailiff was made redundant in 1867, the year Mewburn died, when Queen Victoria turned the town into a borough with a council and a mayor.
The Deluge
The ultimate in late Victorian toilets, which was once in a Darlington house. It was probably the first “wash down water closet” – as opposed to the “wash out water closet” that had previously graced the best bathrooms – and it forced a deluge of water down in its bowl from all around its rim. It was a masterpiece of pottery engineering, made by Thomas Twyford, the global king of toilet innovation, in Staffordshire, and introduced to the market in 1889. It is superbly finished with Gothic ornamentation all over it. Of course, although this is a railway museum, it is flushed with toilets: the late Victorian urinals in the station are well worth visiting.
Black Diamond Ice Cream Cone
Specially created for Hopetown by the Northern Bloc ice cream makers of Leeds is a black cone and wafer called “Black Diamond”. Coal was once so valuable, it was nicknamed “black diamond”, and that was the name given to the S&DR’s third engine built by Robert Stephenson & Co in Newcastle. No 1 engine was Locomotion, No 2 was Hope, No 3 Black Diamond and No 4 Diligence, all to the same design. No 3 cost £600 and started work in Darlington in April 1826. It was rebuilt several times until in 1846 it was sold for £400 to John Anderson, the contractor who was building the Middlesbrough & Redcar Railway. No one seems to know what happened to Black Diamond after that, but its name lives on in an ice cream cone.
Hopetown Dog Poo Bag Carrier
The most unusual item in the Hopetown gift shop is a £3.50 bone-shaped poo bag carrier. Dog owners’ barked with delight when they saw that it has a clip on it. The problem with poo bags is that when you discover you need one, they have always been left at home or are in the other coat pocket. But, no more! The Hopetown-branded poo bag has a clip to attach it permanently to the dog lead so it will never again be forgotten. Edward “the Father of the Railways” Pease would have been proud of such ingenuity. The poo bag carrier does not come with instructions on how to dispose of your bag once it has been filled, but, as everyone knows, you sling it into the branches of the tallest nearby tree.
Vincent Raven’s valet case
Sir Vincent was a legendary engineer, designing more than 200 locomotives and devising signalling systems that improved the safety of the railway network. He held the post of Chief Mechanical Engineer to the North Eastern Railway from 1910 until his death in 1922. He lived in the Grantly mansion on Carmel Road – it was demolished in 2001 and replaced by a gated development that still bears its name – and the grand Stooperdale offices were built in 1911 with him in mind: they have a portico so that he wouldn’t get wet having been driven to work by his chauffeur from just around the corner in Grantly.
This remarkable valet case was presented to him in 1910, with his name in gold on the outside, and the silver handles of each of the 18 items bear his monogram. There are clothes brushes, hair brushes, a soap dish, a powder capsule, an oil bottle, a comb case, a mirror, tweezers, a nail file – everything an Edwardian gentlemen needed to ensure he, and his moustache, looked right.
There’s also what appears to be a loofah with two different grades of leather on either side for extra back rubbing delight.
The case contains a couple of railway devices: a silver universal carriage key, so that he could open any door, and a strange-looking silver hook.
Sir Vincent had a reputation for being a cold, firm man, but he seems not to have been vain: the valet case appears hardly to have been used. It was donated to the museum by his family before the pandemic, and is now in the stores area.
There are so many fascinations in the new Hopetown that we shall continue our trivial tour next week. In the meantime...
...here’s a thing we’d never spotted it before which has now been picked out in black paint beneath the grey wooden footbridge over the tracks in the old North Road station. It was clearly designed to stop the smoke and steam from giving a blast up the trousers or skirts of anyone on the bridge, but what was it called? All the people we’ve consulted agree it must have had a name, but no one knows what it was. Do you?
Please email any responses to chris.lloyd@nne.co.uk
READ MORE: THE DEBATE OVER THE NAME OF HOPETOWN
AND: THE HISTORIC BUILDINGS THAT MAKE UP HOPETOWN, DARLINGTON'S GLOBALLY IMPORTANT RAILWAY QUARTER
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