YESTERDAY, I had a mooch around Darlington Covered Market with Robin Blair, Darlington's Citizen of the Year and, of course, a greengrocer with a stall in the market. Robin loaned me a magnificent picture of the market shortly after it was built in 1861-3, showing it with open sides.

I wrote about the market last week, and am currently working on another piece for next week, although I must admit I'm finding new info hard to come by. This is because the ruling establishment on the Board of Health were rather embarrassed by the whole situation in 1863-4 and didn't want to be seen as boasting about the vainglorious success of building a market that was at least £1,000 - or 10 per cent - overspent, that immediately proved too small and which collapsed and killed a man before it was even complete (I've traced it into 1865 and I can see that Mrs Robson, the widow of the Newton Morrell farmer, was suing the BoH for compensation at Durham Assizes and the case was "remanet", whatever that may mean).

The BoH was the forerunner of Darlington council, so some cruel people might suggest this state of affairs has not changed much in 150 years.

In truth, the state of affairs were as much about the ruling Pease Party's unpopularity among certain sections in the town. They were being heavily criticised over their huge mansions which is one of the reasons they created South Park; they were vehmently pro-Temperance (although they liked the odd tipple) and so the newly-formed Licensed Victuallers Association took against them; they were flogging a street tramway which most people in the town hated because it ran over their prize greyhounds; they had just conducted an election to the BoH that the Queens Bench of the High Court in London would declare illegal... The list goes on.

Undoubtedly this BoH, which had only been going 15 years had done many things that changed the face of Darlington, but it was struggling to overcome its popularity. Therefore, I reckon it felt that to launch its farmer-killing market with a grand fanfare would have been seen as inappropriate particularly as the Covered Market included also included a new Town Hall - which was, of course, the office of the BoH!

Even if this theory is correct, I still find it odd that I can't find a date for when Backhouses Bank opened in 1866 - Backhouses were central to the Peases' ruling clique (the illegally elected member was a Backhouse) but still you would have thought the bank, a private company, would have liked to have boasted about its splendid new headquarters.

If you know the date, please let me know.

Anyway, enough rambling. Robin showed me round what must have been a stylish Town Hall in its day, full of gorgeous, sweeping Waterhouse arches.

The best titbit he gave me, though, was that if you walk off High Row at the Tubwell Row end you come into the market by the newsagents. If you look directly up, you will see the hatch which was once the market manager's office: he surveyed the scene in the market to make sure nothing was astray.

Next to his boarded up window, you can just make out four marks where a bell was attached to the wall. At 9pm each night - the market probably ran from 3pm to 9pm for the convenience of shoppers - he would ring the bell to signal the start of the auctions. In those pre-refridgeration days, everything remaining had to go - to the highest bidder.