Brothers' bankruptcy spurred expansion of People's Park

But it was in bankruptcy that they helped Darlington most.

For, as the liquidator picked over the bones of their business, the town acquired at a very reasonable rate their huge riverside estate. This became the New Park, which was beside the People's Park. Together, the two parks made up South Park, on which Darlington Borough Council is this year spending nearly £4m of National Lottery money restoring it to its Victorian glory.

William, the elder of the Thompson brothers, was born in the town in July 1810. He attended the old grammar school in the Leadyard, in the shadow of St Cuthbert's Church spire.

"There young Thompson evinced the same qualities by which he was known in after life," said his obituary in The Northern Echo in 1879.

"Plodding, attentive, and industrious, he often equalled, and sometimes excelled, boys gifted with quicker and more showy natural abilities."

He started work in the office of Francis Mewburn, Darlington's "railway solicitor", and then moved on to the counting house of Pease and Partners, the Darlington firm that ran the coal and rail industries of south Durham.

In 1838, he formed a stockbrokers and accountancy company with his younger brother, Robert, a cabinet-maker by trade "of whom it was said that he was never known to smile".

Fortune smiled on their partnership, however.

"That firm was undoubtedly at one time possessed of considerable wealth," said William's obituary.

"Its partners were men of social influence and high reputation. Mr Thompson was a member of nearly every successful directorate in south Durham during the quarter of a century following the memorable years of 1848-51."

In the boom years, the brothers were directors and auditors of everything from the Stockton and Darlington Railway Company to the Middlesbrough, Stockton and Yarm Water Company.

In between, they owned the Darlington and Stockton Times newspaper. It had been formed in Barnard Castle in 1847, but the brothers bought it in 1848 and moved it to the basement of Central Hall, in Darlington.

The Thompsons were Anglicans. William helped to create the parish of St Paul's in Darlington. He paid for missionaries to go around preaching the temperance message and for scripture readers to tour reading The Bible aloud.

In 1868, in Saltburn, which was being developed as Darlington's seaside resort, he paid for the construction of the first church, which was dedicated to Emmanuel, and built to the designs of Darlington architect JP Pritchett.

Both Thompson brothers were members of the St Cuthbert's Church vestry committee, which oversaw the Bellasses charity. In 1636, the charity had been bequeathed four fields off Grange Road, the rental income from which was used to assist poor linen-workers.

By 1850, Darlington's linen industry had all but disappeared, and William was one of the first, and probably the most passionate, to argue that the fields should be converted into a public park. When the rest of the town came to agree, Robert was one of five men appointed to the park committee to oversee the conversion.

But then, after the boom came the bust. Things began to get difficult for the Thompsons on Black Friday, 1866 - May 11, when the solid Quaker bank Overend and Gurney, of Lombard Street, London, collapsed with liabilities of £11m. There was widespread panic in the capital, and the ripples reached Darlington.

In a bid to recoup their losses, William and Robert appear to have embarked upon ever-more desperate speculations in shares and property - "a temporary loss of prudence", was how The Northern Echo described their actions.

Unfortunately, their speculations coincided with the deepest and longest recession of the 19th Century - a recession that hit south Durham's heavy industries of coal, iron and rail especially hard.

The pair hit rock-bottom in 1877, selling bits of their portfolio to keep the wolf from the door - a farm in Haughton, an estate at Polam and a brickyard at Bank Top, were all sold that July to pay the Pease family what was owed them.

The brothers also owned land in Harrowgate Hill, Darlington. When it was sold, Thompson Street was built across it.

But the sales could not stop the Thompsons' slide. They entered liquidation in early 1878: they owed £53,510, but had assets of just £29,125 - a deficit that in today's money would be worth a million.

And still the Peases were the biggest creditors, owed £8,957 13s 7d (about £375,000 today).

"Then came all the plagues that too often accompany severe reverses in fortune," said the kindly Echo.

"There were short memories where there might have been some traces of gratitude. There was also an ungenerous concentration on incidents attending to the last few months' desperate efforts to avoid calamity."

It took years to sort out the mess. In 1885, the creditors received their final payments: William's creditors receiving about 45 per cent of what they were owed, and Robert's only 23 per cent.

But by then both brothers were dead. William died in Victoria Road, Darlington, in October 1879, aged 69, and the whole town turned out to pay its respects at his funeral.

"His death cannot fail to excite many generous and tender recollections," said his obituary in The Northern Echo.

Robert died in February 1884, in Redcar, having moved away either to escape the ungenerous remarks, or because even the roof over his head had fallen victim to his collapse.

One of Robert's biggest assets had been the Little Polam Estate, a collection of fields in countryside beside the River Skerne.

He may have bought them as a rural retreat, building what is now called Embankment Lodge as his country escape.

Or he may have bought them as a shrewd investment because, surely, it was only a matter of time before Darlington's rapacious suburbs chewed them up and turned them into lucrative housing.

Yet when the Thompsons businesses collapsed in the depths of the recession, there was not much call for acres of terraces for workers. Indeed, when times were that tight, perhaps the only body that could afford to buy land was the council - especially as landscaping it could provide worthwhile employment for the hundreds of men laid off by the iron industry.

So, in 1878, the council acquired Little Polam's 24 acres for £3,800 (about £150,000 in today's terms), which was a very reasonable price.

The council had spent much of the previous decade wrangling over the purchase of the adjoining Bellasses Park from the charity. The charity wanted £3,900 for the 20 acres, but the council offered £2,250. Eventually, in February 1877, £3,075 (about £125,000) was agreed upon.

As the land changed ownership, so its name changed from Bellasses Park to the People's Park.

Little Polam, naturally enough, was known as the New Park, and park superintendent John Morrison immediately devoted himself to "ridding the land of an abundance of thistles and nettles and transforming the wilderness into a pleasure ground".

How well he succeeded is a story for another week.

Published: 04/02/2003

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