The story of a curious corner of Darlington that was once an island in the river Skerne, and its links to a butcher noted for his culinary skills in ox-roasting...

IN yesterday's NE magazine, which accompanied The Northern Echo, there was an article about the conversion of an old warehouse situated in an industrial area of decay and dereliction in Darlington town centre.

The old warehouse in Weir Street is now a minimalist, modernist home valued at £175,000.

When Nigel Massey bought it last year for £28,500 it was an empty shell - but it came with a complete set of deeds dating back to Pease's time.

These deeds tell the story of a curious corner of Darlington that was once an island in the middle of the River Skerne.

The deeds begin on September 11, 1861, when John Pease, of East Mount, made his will.

John was the eldest son of Edward "Father of the Railways" Pease. From the verandah of his East Mount mansion he could see across the valley to his father's house and gardens in Northgate.

John, who was known as "the silver trumpet of the North" because of his religious fervour, bought most of the land on the east side of Northgate and slowly sold it off for housing - John Street, East Mount Road, Valley Street, etc...

The river at the bottom of the Peases' valley was altered so that it could feed their mill in Crown Street. Between the new streets of Chesnut Street and Russell Street a mill dam island was created - and it is on that island Nigel Massey's warehouse stands.

John Pease died on July 29, 1868. His son, Arthur, who acquired much of his Darlington estate, died on August 27, 1898.

Arthur's sons, Arthur Francis and Herbert Pike, broke up the estate. On May 23, 1903, they finalised a deal with the Darlington Middlesbrough and Stockton Steam Laundries Co Ltd.

The company bought the mill dam island for £317.

By 1906, the mill dam had been filled and the deeds tell how the laundry had to leave enough land for Garden Street to be elongated to reach the River Skerne and a bridge built.

The bridge was never constructed (if you walk to the foot of Garden Street you can still see the piece of wasteland that the laundry put aside 100 years ago to comply with the Peases' wishes) and nothing was built on the old island because the laundry took its investors to the cleaners.

At an extraordinary general meeting held in the Savings Bank Chambers, in Tubwell Row, on January 6, 1915, the company was voluntarily wound up and chartered accountant John Watson was appointed liquidator.

The following year, the liquidator sold the land to Samuel Aspell of Leicester for £200 - a loss of £117 to the laundry creditors.

Aspell, presumably a speculator, held on to the mill dam island until 1923, when he sold a slice of it to Joseph Robson, a potato merchant in Yarm Road, for £104.10s.

In 1928, Mr Robson, who was by then described as a fish merchant, sold the slice of land to his wife, Mary, and daughter, Catherine, for £2,000.

This deal looks a little fishy, but the hike in price is probably because during those five years Mr Robson had built a warehouse on the slice of land - the warehouse that Nigel Massey has just converted.

In that same year of 1928, Mr Aspell sold the rest of the land for £320 - meaning that in 13 years he had more than doubled his money.

The new owners were a consortium: Harry Sansom, a chartered accountant, of Priestgate; John George Snaith, a butcher, of Priestgate, and Alfred James Lascelles, a jeweller, of Grange Road.

They were councillors. Mr Lascelles, of Grange Road, was "one of the most able and popular public men in Darlington", according to his obituary in 1930. He was the son of a Darlington assistant postmaster, who had married a Miss Buckle. Her parents ran "an extensive fancy goods business" in Northgate.

The success of this business allowed Mr Lascelles to indulge in country pursuits and he became well-known in Conservative circles.

Mr Snaith moved in the same circles. He had inherited his father's butcher's shop on the corner of Prebend Row and Priestgate (where a mobile phone shop is today), but he had a finger in many other pies.

He was a director of the Hippodrome, of the Darlington Garden Suburb Company, of Darlington Pure Ice and Cold Storage Co, of Darlington Equitable Building Society and of the Skerne Printing Works (interestingly, the printing works had built the very first warehouse in this part of town in 1906, a warehouse that has also recently been converted for residential use).

Mr Snaith was first elected to the council in 1916. He served as mayor and died in 1942, at his home, 67 Stanhope Road, aged 74.

Mr Sansom, who was the youngest of the trio, died in 1956, aged 71, while on holiday in Ayrshire.

His home was Chislehurst, in Carmel Road. He was also a Conservative councillor and a mayor. Like Mr Lascelles, he was also a dog-breeder, and his West Highland white terriers won at Cruft's on several occasions.

It was this consortium of Snaith, Lascelles and Sansom that, after 1928, built the warehouses that stand on the land today.

Over the decades, the consortium let warehouses to His Majesty's Postmaster General, who turned them into the Darlington Garage; to Chambers and Holiday, motor engineers, and to the North of England Newspaper Co Ltd (owner of The Northern Echo).

The trail in the deeds comes to an end in March 1996, when the Snaith family, of High Coniscliffe, and the Sansoms, of Bromsgrove, in the West Midlands, sold the warehouses to Martin Yates-Brown and an associate for £69,000.

Mr Yates-Brown turned the warehouses into a Classic World of Fitness gym.

In March this year, he was jailed for three years for conspiracy to supply cannabis and the warehouses have since fallen derelict and may also, like their neighbours, be ripe for conversion.

Some right royal ox-roasts recalled

MENTION of John Snaith, who part-owned Mill Dam Island, recalls memories of ox-roasting in Darlington.

The Snaith family were butchers at the top of Priestgate, in Darlington, from 1830 until 1984, and they gave the ox that was traditionally roasted on regal occasions in the town's Market Square.

For the 1902 Coronation of Edward VII, William Snaith had taken charge of the ceremony, which passed off surprisingly well considering the traction engine that turned the spit threatened to career out of control through the fire that the pouring rain did its best to put out.

For the 1911 Coronation of George V, an ox-roasting committee was formed to oversee the commemorations.

The committee's minute book records: "The meeting got a most pleasant surprise. Mr J G Snaith announced that he and his brother, Mr R B Snaith, proposed presenting the committee with a bullock in memory of their late father, who had expressed the intention of himself roasting an ox if he lived to see another coronation."

This time, the Snaiths employed an electric engine to turn the spit, and they built a canopy in the Market Square to keep the rain out.

"The general opinion was that the meat was exceedingly well cooked and that it would be impossible to roast an ox better," noted the minute book.

By 1911, many other towns had moved away from public ox-roasts as a way of marking important events, so Darlington's effort impressed a poetic visitor from Gateshead:

"The crowning of our gracious King on Coronation Day,

The various towns all celebrate each in its different way.

But mention really must be made of Darlington-on-Skerne,

So ardent are the Quaker folk with loyalty they 'burn'.

The emblem of their loyalty stands in the Market Place,

The carcase of a mighty ox made ready to cremate."

The beef sandwiches on that day were eaten from 2,274 specially commissioned royal blue commemorative plates that still adorn the walls of many Darlington homes.

But this was the last ox-roast in Darlington. A roast was proposed for Feethams Field in 1936, to mark George V's Silver Jubilee, but the practice was condemned as "barbarous" by a councillor.

Published: ??/??/2003

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