Where dragons lurk above the doorway

THERE are often angels in the architecture, but dragons in the stonework. . . ? As recent Echo Memories has been telling, archaeologist Peter Ryder is having a preliminary look at Darlington's non-conformist chapels on behalf of English Heritage.

First, he rediscovered the remains of Darlington's first Methodist chapel, built in 1779, at the back of the George Inn, in Bondgate.

Now comes a pair of dragons.

The dragons are on chapels more than a mile apart, but both open their fiery mouths to welcome worshippers who dare to enter through the doublearched doorways beneath them.

Further investigation reveals, that a single man was probably responsible for both dragon carvings.

The first dragon is on St George's Presbyterian Church, in Northgate. The church opened on March 24, 1869, and was designed by architect John Ross.

The second dragon is on Cockerton Methodist Church. It opened six-and-a-half years later, on November 30, 1875, and was designed by the same John Ross, in conjunction with his then partner, Robert Lamb.

Ross was born in 1836, probably in Darlington. Early in his teens he became an apprentice architect to Joseph Sparkes, the designer of the Mechanics Institute, in Skinnergate. The other apprentice was William Richardson.

Soon the two apprentices were designing conservatories and glasshouses for the wealthy Quaker families of the district.

Then they moved on to whole houses: Brinkburn and Mowden Hall, both in 1862.

Their partnership ended in 1862. Richardson set himself up as a heating engineer and conservatory builder with premises on Bank Top. His thermometer monument was a railway trackside landmark for decades, and his conservatory company is today going strong as Amdega.

Ross concentrated on architecture. His largest project was Grey Towers (1865-67), a mansion for ironmaster WRI Hopkins, at Nunthorpe. This later became the home of Sir Arthur Dorman. Upon his death in 1931, it was purchased by Lieutenant Colonel T Gibson-Poole, who presented it to Middlesbrough. A joint effort among the councils of the Tees Valley converted it into a tuberculosis sanatorium (see past Echo Memories).

Poole Hospital, as it has since been known, has just been converted into 12 homes, with a further 80 being built in its gardens.

In 1869, Ross went into partnership with Robert Lamb, an architect from Newcastle.

Their office was in Feethams, and their business lasted for ten years until Lamb emigrated to New Zealand on health grounds.

During this time, Ross laid out most of the West End of Darlington, on fields belonging to the Duke of Cleveland. Raby, Powlett and Primrose streets were followed by Winston, Outram, Napier, Duke and Trinity streets, plus Millbank, Uplands Road and Cleveland Terrace. He also laid out the roads around Pensbury Street, off Victoria Road.

Ross and Lamb's biggest project was Northallerton Town Hall, in 1873 - a building critics have called "irredeemable" and "joyless".

Ross retired to Whitley Bay in 1882, where he died in 1895, leaving a couple of dragons in Darlington.

THERE is much more about non-conformist chapels to come. In the meantime, the first Methodist service was held in Darlington in 1753, in a thatched cottage with a mud floor in Clay Row. A plaque was put up to mark its spot.

When the inner ring-road scythed through Clay Row in the 1960s, the plaque was taken down and replaced on John Neasham's Ford garage, which had been built on the spot.

In the strange way of Echo Memories, we know so much and so little. We know, for example, that the plaque was designed by John Acres, the chief draughtsman of the North of England School Furnishing Company, who later, coincidentally, worked on Richardson's conservatories.

But we do not know the whereabouts of the plaque. It disappeared about 15 years ago (it was on a fire escape).

Can CD Bramall, the Ford dealership on the site today, be persuaded to put it back up if it is found?

MANY thanks for all the titbits that are waiting to be woven into this column.

Let us return, momentarily, through the backlog to the workshop of Dr Charles Stanley Steavenson, at Felix House, Middleton St George.

A few weeks ago we featured his array of lathes and drills, which were powered by leatherbelts that whizzed around the workshop (the village doctor's surgery is now on the site).

It transpires that these machines were made during the First World War - the lathe by the Colchester Lathe Company - as a mobile workshop that toured France in the back of a lorry.

Somehow, Dr Steavenson got his hands on them and installed them at Felix House so his tuberculosis patients - in his back garden, goat-powered sanatorium - had something useful to do with their time.

In the late 1970s, the workshop was demolished and the lathe and drilling machine were acquired for £120 by the Tanfield Railway, the world's oldest existing railway, near Stanley.

They were in use for some years until health and safety officials became concerned by the dangers of belts whizzing about all over the place, and now they sit in a shed waiting to be made fit for the 21st Century.

THAT snippet comes from Graham Redfearn, of Bishop Auckland, who also sends a list of the locomotives that once worked on the Middleton Ironworks site, ferrying slag.

First was an 1897 Peckett called Victoria, which came from Middlesex and which was sold on to the Egglescliffe Chemical Company, at Urlay Nook.

Then there was an unnamed Manning Wardle, built in 1880, which ended up at Dorman Long, in Redcar. It was followed by three Pecketts: Dinsdale No 1, built in 1900; Dinsdale No 2, built in 1901, and Dinsdale No 3, built in 1906. When the Ironworks closed in the 1930s, all three Dinsdales moved to Middlesbrough.

Durham County Council moved on to the site with two Ruston Hornby diesel engines, which worked to flatten out the slagheaps. In 1950, these were sold to quarries in North Wales.

DR CS Steavenson's eldest brother was Addison Langhorn Steavenson (18351910), of Holywell Hall, Durham City. He was one of the NorthEast's most eminent mining engineers and, despite what we said on December 31, he did have children. There were three daughters - Anna, Frances and Hilda - and an Addison Langhorn junior, who died young.

His eldest son was Charles Herbert Steavenson, who also became a mining engineer. He owned and managed Redheugh Colliery, in Newcastle, and, as the family tradition dictated, was made a freeman of Berwick in 1866. His granddaughter, Bebe Bullis, lives in Great Ayton.

ABSOLUTELY unable to finish with this fascinating doctor, we reported a while back that he was keen on gadgets. In Felix House he had an early dishwasher: a headhigh affair that spewed water out of all its joints and smashed all the crockery inside.

Outside, Dr Steavenson had the Darlington district's first caravan in which, from 1929, he toured the area. It was a homemade affair, constructed by Oswald Fellows and Fred Legg, two villagers from Middleton St George.

Oswald's daughter, Jean Knott, still lives in the village.

Her father was born in 1894 in Warrington, but moved to Middleton in 1900 when his father arrived there looking for employment in the ironworks.

In 1909, Oswald became an apprentice cabinet-maker, signing forms with James Richard Todd and Co, "eccelesiastical and architectural designers, woodcarvers and cabinetmakers" of Melville Street, Darlington.

Melville Street is one of Darlington's many curious corners. It grows out of the junction between High Northgate and Station Road, its entrance marked by the strangely triangular Melville House.

Melville House was built in 1876 by this column's favourite eccentric architect, Robert Borrowdale (see Memories of Darlington 3 - just 35 copies left at a bargain £4.95 each), and in 1879 opened as the town's first cocoa palace.

Nowadays, the distinctive building boasts three floors of household goods at sale prices.

Behind Melville House are a couple of terraced houses that must be the slimmest properties in the town.

Then comes the warehouse - today Burnside Carpets - where JR Todd had his workshop.

Unless any reader can fill us in, there is no more to say about Mr Todd.

Oswald Fellows, though, completed his apprenticeship, joined the Royal Navy and fought during the First World War aboard HMS Iron Duke.

In peacetime, he returned to Middleton and went into partnership with Fred Legg as a builder and undertaker, with the odd caravan built to order as well.

OUR meanderings a month ago around Geordie Fawbert's old stomping ground in Darlington's Clay Row area brought us into contact with a Mr Crawford. He, we said, wheeled a barrow on which there were "pigs' trotters, cows' feet, tripe and chicklets".

For chicklets, it turns out, we should have said "chitterlings" which were an inter-war delicacy: pigs' intestines.

"Horrible things, " says one of our informants.

"Some of them were curly.

Some of them were straight.

You ate them with bread and butter."

Chitterlings were boiled by Mr Crawford in his shop opposite the Rising Star, at the bottom of Priestgate, and sold ready-to-eat - McDonalds for an earlier generation.

"My family used to buy them from Zisslers the pork butchers, " says our informant.

"I'm told that they were very nice, quite soft, but I never tasted them."

ACOUPLE of years ago, this column fell hopelessly in love with the historical remains of the Gaunless Valley around Cockfield Fell - the North's largest ancient monument.

Indeed, our new talk, Pits, Pockmarks and Haggerleases, has had a couple of airings to local interest groups. So far no one has nodded off.

The man who introduced us to Cockfield Fell, Chris Mills, is leading a guided walk around Morley and Windmill on Saturday, starting at 10.30am from the Gaunless Valley Visitor Centre, in The Slack, Butterknowle.

It is a nine-mile walk of medium difficulty, and walkers should take a packed lunch. As Saturday is the first day of spring, they should probably also take warm winter clothing.

Further details are available on (01388) 662666.

Snippets on anything from chapels to chitterlings are welcome. Please write to: Echo Memories, The Northern Echo, Priestgate, Darlington, DL1 1Nf, telephone (01325) 505062, or email chris. lloyd@nne. co. uk

Published: 11/03/2003

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