Our series on Darlington's South Park looks at the lions, both real and plaster, and follows an eagle's fortunes.

Over the course of time, the eagle has lost its beak and most of one wing, and the lion has been bashed about the face on so many occasions that he no longer looks very fierce.

But a quirk of history records that we know far more details about these ornaments in Darlington's South Park than survive in their plasterwork.

Buried deep in the council's archives is the date when they were given to the town - November 21, 1889 - and the name of the man who, without fanfare, presented them: a Mr Wharton.

He turns out to be John Wharton, who was born in Barnard Castle in 1825 and came to Darlington in 1838. After learning his trade with a couple of builders, he set himself up in business.

For 40 years, he had a shop in Northgate beside the old Chesnut Street police station. The legend over his door told of his trades: "Slate merchants, slaters, plumbers and glaziers, ironmongers etc."

His shop - and judging by the iron hardware that can be seen in its upstairs windows it may rightly be described an emporium - still stands. Its fine first floor bay windows have been removed, though, and now it is occupied by three restaurants: Sardis, Eastern Bamboo and the Shapla.

In 1874, at the last minute, Mr Wharton offered himself for election to the town council. It was an uproarious election, as Darlington was still coming to terms with the newly-introduced democracy that allowed people to challenge the rule of the Quakers in general and the Peases in particular.

Mr Wharton decided to take on the sitting councillor in Central Ward, Joseph Stephenson (1800-83), who had at least one foot inside the Pease camp.

Mr Stephenson was a relative of George Stephenson. Joseph had come to Darlington before the Stockton and Darlington Railway opened and had made himself into one of the foremost railway surveyors of his generation.

In fact, we've met him before in this series because in 1851 he was appointed to the Park Committee which oversaw the creation of South Park.

Yet Mr Wharton left it very late to unseat Mr Stephenson. The Northern Echo report of polling day in Central Ward said: "The burgesses had been rather startled early in the morning with the appearance of an address from Mr J Wharton asking for their suffrages. This gentleman had made no public movement since nomination and very few were aware that he had any intention of contesting the seat."

But what an address it was! Huge posters bigger than this page were slapped up on walls in the town centre telling the voters what Mr Wharton planned to do.

Top of his list was to get South Park open on a Sunday. It was closed for religious reasons on the Sabbath, and at certain other times on other days so that the park-keeper could attend church.

In his manifesto, Mr Wharton wrote: "I shall certainly use my best endeavours to get it open the whole of the day, as I think it would be both condusive to the public health, and also to public morality, for what can be more condusive to either health or morality than in the spring to wander along the paths and view the daises, the buttercups, and the cowslips springing, and the hedges and trees putting forth their buds of green, or in the summer morn when nature is arrayed in all her beauty; or in the autumn when she is bearing her fruit; or, again in the winter morning when after a well-spent year she is retiring to rest, warning us all to look to the past as well as the future, and see if we have done our duty. It is all very well for those who can enjoy themselves every morning in walking through their own beautiful grounds, to close almost the only place where the people can enjoy themselves (as they are walling out and closing all the footpaths round the town)."

As well as being very long, this is very pointed. One of the reasons for South Park was to alleviate the criticism being hurled at the Peases - as well as the town's other rich rulers - for building walls. Grange Road, Coniscliffe Road, Milbank Road, Woodland Road, Carmel Road were all boring stone walls as the richest families sought to protect the privacy of their mansions and their manicured parkland.

South Park - or the People's Park, as it was known in its early days - was partly created as a place for the plebs to walk so that the didn't bother the mansion-owners sitting comfortably behind their walls.

Twenty years after the creation of the Park, Mr Wharton, who proclaimed himself "one of the people", was demanding longer opening hours. He was partially successful in that by the end of the 1870s the park was open on a Sunday.

But he was partially unsuccessful as he lost the election by 284 votes to 123 - a return that encouraged him to stand again later in the decade, when he was elected. This was the start of a six-year spell on the council, during which time he appears not to have made too many more waves.

When he stood down, he presented the park with the ornaments that are near the clock tower. Old pictures suggest that there were originally a pair of eagles, a statue of a boy who appears to have been playing a pipe, plus the lion.

One of the eagles appears to have disappeared decades ago, the boy - albeit minus his pipe - survived until the mid-1970s, and now we are left with a bashed-up lion and a wingless eagle.

Published: 28/04/2004

Echo Memories, The Northern Echo, Priestgate, Darlington DL1 1NF, e-mail chris.lloyd@nne.co.uk or telephone (01325) 505062.