100 years of war to reclaim streets

The pedestrian-isation of Darlington town centre is back on the agenda. Last week, plans were unveiled showing how, between the hours of 9am and 5.30pm, High Row, Prospect Place, Skinnergate and lower Northgate will become vehicle-free.

Not before time. High Row, with its smog of buses and clutter of shelters, is most unattractive - although those less mobile might have a different, equally valid, view.

And not before time, because Darlington has been squabbling about what should be in its town centre streets for well over a century. It cannot decide whether buildings, cars or people should rule the roost.

The indecision began in 1890, when a three-storey extension was planned to the side of the old town hall (of course then it was known as the new town hall, because it had was built in 1864 to replace the truly old town hall of 1808). This extension would have eaten into the open space of the Market Square, and such was the local controversy that the council quickly backed down.

Instead, the council decided to build a town hall in Feethams and in 1895 held a competition among architects to find the best design. Amazingly, it was another 75 years before the new town hall was realised.

The result of the competition is unknown, but the problems of the town centre must have nagged away at municipal brains for years, because in 1935 they held another competition.

This one was to redesign a swathe of land from High Row down across the River Skerne and up to St John's Church on the other side of the valley.

The winner of the £100 first prize was E Berry Webber, of Gordon Square, London. He obliterated every building bar St Cuthbert's Church.

The town clock could survive, he said grudgingly, "but it is felt when the new buildings are complete its unsuitability will be obvious" - and laid out a fantasy town centre of wide, tree-lined boulevards. Darlington could be mistaken for Versailles, with a municipal palace at its heart.

The covered and open markets were moved to the bottom of Feethams, and an omnibus station was included on the edge of the new town square.

Motor omnibuses would be allowed to circulate one-way around the town centre and cars would be expected to park on the sides of the tree-lined boulevards. The pedestrian, for the first time, was being considered.

"It is not the intention of the council to carry out immediately the winning scheme, but it is desired to have a definite plan to which future municipal development shall conform," said the Northern Despatch.

The council, being a council, immediately set about tinkering with the winning scheme. In 1937, it created a model in which its grand town hall was in Feethams (where it is today) and the Covered Market was replaced by a garden.

The Leadyard became the principal bridge over the Skerne and all the land up to Borough Road was cleared for homes - as Mr Berry Webber had suggested.

But war intervened, and blew all the plans to bits.

In peacetime, the problems remained. Council departments were scattered all over the place because the old town hall was too small; the market area was dying as chain stores dragged the custom up Northgate, and traffic congestion was horrendous because Grange Road, Blackwellgate, High Row and Northgate were still part of the Great North Road - the main road connecting London with the north. By 1959, 2,000 vehicles an hour were passing very slowly through the centre of town.

The man who had to make sense of this mess was Eric Tornbohm, who had become borough architect in 1947. He was born in Sunderland, the son of a Swedish sea captain.

When he retired in 1972, a quarter of Darlington's population lived in houses he had designed and more than a half of school pupils were educated in his "glass matchbox" schools.

The fire station and the crematorium were his works, as was the College of Technology in Cleveland Avenue.

He co-designed the present town hall, and in 1961 he won a national award for Haughton Secondary School.

But Mr Tornbohm's life must have been a torment. From the early 1950s to his retirement he was on with redesigning Darlington's town centre.

He was a keen model-maker, and he presented his first model in 1959. It showed a new town hall on land between Houndgate and the Market Place - opposite where it is today - and the obliteration of the Covered Market.

"There is a glorious opportunity for planning a town centre to be the best in the north," said the Northern Despatch.

"One suggestion under consideration is the laying out of a floral garden on what is now the market square."

The drive to redesign was given more impetus in 1961, when work began on the A1(M), which would soon take away all the Great North Road's through-traffic.

The Northern Echo even suggested a complicated one-way system for the quieter town centre - with vehicles entering at Grange Road, moving along Skinnergate, down Bondgate, along Low Row and out via Tubwell Row - which included a large pedestrian precinct between Binns and the Covered Market.

"Darlington's main present problem is the danger and difficulty which shoppers face when they want to cross from the High Row shops to those between Priestgate and Horsemarket," it said.

It still is today, although pedestrianisation may soon alleviate that.

All through the 1960s, Mr Tornbohm and a variety of outside advisors beavered away on schemes and ideas. In 1968, he proposed a wipe-out from Tubwell Row to Houndgate. The town hall was already going up in Feethams; a civic hall - including a hotel, theatre and arts centre - would go on top of Bakehouse Hill and the markets would go around Bull Wynd.

Then Shepherds of York was brought in to assist Mr Tornbohm. The resulting scheme looks disastrous. The Market Place was covered with a vast and hideous indoor shopping complex stretching to Houndgate.

One councillor said: "The Covered Market has come to an end structurally. If we do not get it down before long someone is going to be injured."

Colin Shepherd, director of Shepherds, said: "The concept of covered shops with heated streets will place us among the best of the town centre developments."

The ruling Conservative Party signed a £2.5m contract with him in 1970. Labour fought the local election saying it would pull out of the deal. Labour won and duly pulled out. Shepherds sued for £1m compensation and settled out of court for £380,000.

Mr Tornbohm probably sighed and went back to the drawing board. He came up with "an honest endeavour to produce the best for Darlington" for just £1m.

His model describes it better than words. It was an improvement on the Shepherds' scheme, but still a slab of 1960s architecture. It kept an open square in the middle, but Mr Tornbohm was certain a developer would soon demolish the old buildings on Bakehouse Hill and replace them with a concrete shopping centre.

Mr Tornbohm retired believing it was all done and dusted. But the concept of destroying the town's heart was now controversial, as was the £1m cost. There was more political argument - the Tories against it because it was a Labour plan - and it went to, and passed, a public inquiry.

In 1974, Mr Tornbohm came out of retirement to see if he could turn his plans into bricks and mortar. But 1960s-style was going out of fashion, costs were spiralling, and the emphasis was switching from shopping to leisure. Mr Tornbohm died in 1986, his goal of transforming the town centre unfulfilled.

In the late-1970s, a new swimming pool and sports facilities seemed more alluring. Work began clearing the Ho undgate area and exactly 20 years ago, in November 1982, the Dolphin Centre opened. It imaginatively incorporated the 1847 Central Hall and covered a fraction of the area of plans that had been bandied about since 1935 - but still it cost £23m.

The completion of the Dolphin Centre marked the end of Darlington's attempts to cover its historic streets with buildings. Indeed, such was the change of heart in the planning department that there were even thoughts that people might like to walk those streets unmolested by vehicles.

The first proper attempt at pedestrianisation had come in 1971 with a plan for Northgate, but it was not until the late-1980s that the idea really caught on.

The £45m Cornmill Shopping Centre was springing up on the site of the old Co-op, between Priestgate and Tubwell Row, but in 1990 the Department of the Environment threw a spanner in the works when it rejected the final stage of the inner ring-road between Bondgate and Grange Road - it was thought that traffic could not be banned from the town centre if it could not flow around the outside.

But the hung nature of Darlington council inspired the local politicians to think imaginatively - and bizarrely - to gain electoral advantage.

Labour promised to narrow town centre streets to a single lane and to pedestrianise High Row and Skinnergate.

The Tories went for crazy blue-sky thinking by calling for lower Northgate to be pedestrianised and roofed, and for an underground car park to be mined out beneath a pedestrianised Market Square (their suggestion of a multi-storey car park in Beaumont Street, where now we only have a bombsite, had much merit, though).

Labour won. Cars were removed from the Market Square and then from Skinnergate - but still buses were allowed to dominate High Row and lower Northgate.

Darlingtonians have fought a 100-years war to get this far - but with last week's pedestrian plans on the table, has the time now come to reclaim the town centre?

l If you have any views on Darlington's past, present or future plans for pedestrian-isation and its town centre, write to: Hear All Sides, The Northern Echo, Priestgate, Darlington, DL1 1NF; or alternatively, email chris.lloydnne.co.uk.

Published: 13/11/2002

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