DARLINGTON'S new £37m railway visitor attraction has opened, telling the story of the 199-year-old Stockton & Darlington Railway. Here are five more of the splendid, if a little strange, exhibits that caught our eye, from Lego to the Lily Laundry, from a chauldron waggon to a Fox's Cafe milk jug...
Chauldron waggon
ONE of the first displays to greet the visitor to Hopetown is coal flying overhead into a chauldron waggon, because the principal purpose of the Stockton & Darlington Railway was to move coal from the pitheads of south Durham to the seaport of Stockton in chauldron waggons.
It is a fascinating word, deriving ultimately from the Latin, caldarium, or hot bath. From there it becomes a cauldron, a vessel for holding hot water, and from there a chauldron, which was a vessel for holding coal.
The earliest chauldrons were square boxes on wheels, but by the time the S&DR opened in 1825, the shape had been modified so it looked like a hopper, slightly wider at the top.
The 1821 Act of Parliament that allowed the S&DR to be set up, ordered that each one have the owner’s name, “place of abode” and waggon number on in white letters three inches, or more, high on a black background.
In the 1820s, in the North East people referred to “chauldrons” whereas in London they spoke of “chaldrons”.
A Newcastle chauldron contained 53 hundredweight (about 2.65 tons) whereas a London chaldron was smaller, carrying 40 hundredweight (two tons).
For opening day, the S&DR acquired 150 chauldrons. It made six clean enough so “seats reserved for strangers” could be fitted, and 14 were used “for workmen and others” to stand in.
However, these early chauldrons were very basic, with primitive brakes that could only be applied by a long lever and wooden, fixed axels. They regularly broke.
On November 27, 1828, the S&DR took delivery of “improved” waggons built by Robert Stephenson & Co, of Newcastle. These had a primitive, spring-mounted, suspension system with bearings so the axels didn’t break with every jolt.
These chauldrons had a capacity of 80 hundredweight (four tons) which then became the standard size for a goods waggon on a British railway.
Chauldrons look uninteresting: black and a bit coaly. But they, too, tell the story of how the S&DR overcame initial problems to set the rest of the world’s railways on track.
Another word: in the 1820s, the S&DR referred to “waggons” although even then it was beginning to be replaced by “wagon”. Similarly, “chauldron” has largely lost out to “chaldron”: just as the weight of a wagon was standardised across the railway network, so was the spelling.
Lego
THE first special exhibition in the Hopetown Carriage Works is Lego, featuring models built by Edinburgh brick artist Warren Elsmore who, in terms of drawing a crowd, is to Lego what Taylor Swift is to pop music.
He has produced a specially commissioned Lego model of Locomotion No 1.
However, one of the most eye-catching models has been made over many years by Shona Thomas in her flat in Southend Avenue in Darlington. It is of the Bishop’s Palace which used to stand where Darlington Town Hall is today.
The palace was built by Bishop Hugh de Puiset in the 12th Century when, three storeys high, it must have dominated all the lowly hovels of the townspeople.
The Bishop of Durham soon realised he didn’t need a palace in every town in the bishopric so his Skerneside residence became downgraded, although during the English Civil War of the 17th Century, it is the setting of the town’s most famous ghost story, when Lady Jarrett was murdered there – her one armed spectre is regularly seen searching for the ring that was hacked off her finger.
At the start of the 18th Century, the palace was converted into a workhouse, which was demolished in 1870.
The recent construction of the Department of Education offices behind the Town Hall allowed excavation of the site and the discovery of 12th Century worked stones, but Shona has painstakingly put together a detailed model to show what this important building looked like.
READ MORE: THE BISHOP'S HAUNTED PALACE IN THE DARLINGTON MUD
AND: DIGGING IN THE PAST TO FIND THE BISHOP'S PALACE IN DARLINGTON
Lily Laundry
ON display in the gift shop area of Hopetown is a fading Lily Laundry box. Once it was deep violet in colour, but time is turning it blue. In here would have been a delivery of freshly laundered and pressed shirts.
The laundry, as the box says, was in Russell Street, off Northgate, and it was founded in 1912 by Ronald Hodgkin, a grandson of Henry Pease who was still a committed Quaker.
The working day would start with non-compulsory morning worship, and the largely female workforce was banned from wearing make-up. The company also frowned upon them attending cinemas or going out dancing, and if they got married before the age of 23, it didn't give them the usual gift of a taffeta bedspread or chiming clock.
And if anyone was late for work – well, Mr Hodgkin once burned some pound notes in front of the face of one late-comer to show them that time was money.
The laundry's first motto was "seek ye first the kingdom of God", but over the course of the 20th Century, it changed to “whiter than white”.
The business thrived. It had horses and carts, then motor vans and then electric vans, running out to Redcar, Swaledale, Wensleydale and Barnard Castle, collecting dirty washing and delivering clean laundry.
There were teams of scrubbers doing the cleaning, and there were rooms full of ironers – a skilled operation as those were the days of matrons’ fiddly hats and choirboys’ complicated ruffs. The Lily also supplied most of the hotels and hospitals in the district.
In Russell Street, its first premises were the old Marlin Horse Shoe Manufactory and it expanded into a brewery and then into Skerne House, a former cotton mill. In 1947, it grew further by opening a dry cleaning operation and a carpet beating department, and it took over its competitors: the Darlington Laundry Company, of Barton Street, and the Aycliffe Laundry Company.
Mr Hodgkin died in 1966 aged 85 at Meadowcroft, a large house in Cotherstone which he had bought before the war so his employees could have a holiday in the country air.
The laundry closed in 1982, and there was much debate about whether its buildings should be preserved as Skerne House was 350-years-old. In the end, they were demolished in 1984 to allow the ring road swept through, and now only laundry boxes remain to tell its story.
Fox’s Café Milk Jug
IN the stores area of Hopetown is what is said to be the finest collection of crested china in the country. Regular readers will know that before the First World War, the country was nuts about collecting small china souvenirs displaying a town’s coat-of-arms, and Ian Dougill has spent a lifetime collecting pieces with Darlington’s emblem on them.
Also in his collection is a delicate Fox’s Café milk jug, which takes us to one of Darlington’s most curious buildings. In Northgate, where Woolies used to be, at first floor level there are Roman heads and fantastical beasts in the stonework, and we think they were put there for David Fox when he opened his Oriental Café on Christmas Eve 1888.
This was later claimed to be the first “café” in the North East – everywhere else still used the title “coffee house”.
Behind the café was an outbuilding where John Wesley was said to have preached in about 1740. As David, and his son Charles, incorporated it into their café, they discovered the builder had left a Queen Elizabeth shilling coin dated 1573 which they put on display in their Oak Smoke Room.
The Foxes had travelled the world, and their café featured the latest global tastes and decorations, including a magnificent 14th Century carved Moushurabyeh (or watercooler) screen from Cairo.
Their shop window was the first in Darlington to be lit by electricity, which they generated themselves. Coffee was roasted in the shop window and, at the rear, was the Darlington Creamery which featured “Dr de Laval’s patent separator” so that at 9.30am every day, Darlingtonians could buy the freshest cream freshly separated from the freshest local milk.
For a couple of generations, Fox’s was the place in town to take coffee. It closed in 1939, shortly after Charles had died, and now Holland & Barrett occupies its wonderful building while a milk jug tells its story.
READ MORE: THE DAY A METEOR FELL FROM THE SKY ONTO A DARLINGTON VILLAGE
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