DECEPTION Island, on the edge of the frozen wastes of Antarctica, could easily be mistaken for the very end of the Earth - but there, rusting and rotting in the blizzards, is a chunk of Darlington's history.

The island is part of the South Shetlands chain, which in turn is linked to the Falkland Islands. No one lives there. In fact, no more than 4,000 people a year visit. But those that do weigh anchor in Whalers Bay are confronted by a hulk of ironwork that was made by Whessoe Foundry at least 80 years ago.

The South Shetlands were discovered in 1819 by a British explorer called William Smith. He was the first person to sail in Antarctic waters since Captain James Cook, from Marton, had ventured that way in 1772-75.

Cook, despite his many achievements, had failed to spot any land in the area, so William Smith was the first person to see the islands.

Not that they are particularly welcoming. In summer, the temperature rarely rises above five degrees Celsius and Deception Island itself is no more than a volcanic crater.

Penguin lovers, though, will marvel at the chinstraps, gentoos and adelies that make their homes there.

More interesting to men like William Smith were the whales that sheltered in the Drake Passage, off Antarctica.

On Deception Island, at Whalers Bay and Port Foster, Smith found fine anchorages, and soon the island became the centre of the whaling industry.

In the 19th Century, whale blubber and oil was used to make soap and to fuel lamps. In the 20th Century, it went into margarine and other products, such as paint and printing ink.

But once you have harpooned your whale, where do you store its oil? In a whale oil tank, of course, made in Darlington, by Whessoe Foundry.

Whessoe Foundry traced its origins back to 1790, when weaver William Kitching opened an ironmonger's shop at the top of Tubwell Row.

Six years later, he started a foundry at the back of the shop to cast chimneys and cater for local mills and agriculture.

In 1821, his son, also William, made the astute move of subscribing £400 to help the newly-formed Stockton and Darlington Railway (S&DR) get up and running.

In 1824, William received his first contract from the S&DR: 15 guineas-worth of nails to fix the rails to the sleepers.

By 1831, William and his brother, Alfred, had so much railway work pouring into Tubwell Row that they had to move to bigger premises.

They relocated next to the railway - beside North Road station, in fact - in Hopetown, and began building engines. The most famous was Alfred's Derwent of 1845, which now stands in the North Road Railway Centre.

The Kitchings also took over the neighbouring foundry, run by William Lister, in Brinkburn Road, but then the S&DR decided it would do all its engineering work in-house.

The brothers retired, selling the Hopetown works to the railway and the Brinkburn Road foundry to their cousin, Charles Ianson.

Ianson called it Whessoe Foundry, and began building piers for Bournemouth, Plymouth, Aldborough, Hornsea and Redcar, as well as doing work in Spain, Portugal and South America.

Ianson died in 1884, and in 1891 the Kitching family sold the business to engineer William Coates, who renamed it the Whessoe Foundry Company Limited - which is the wording on the whale oil tank on Deception Island.

In this guise, building gasholders in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Denmark and France, the company only lasted until 1920, when it changed to the Whessoe Foundry and Engineering Company Limited. This means the whale oil tank must have been built between 1891 and 1920.

Until the late 1960s, the various branches of Whessoe employed as many as 3,000 people on its site in Brinkburn Road.

The slimming down commenced, and by 1989 there were fewer than 400. Then came the closure of the works, leaving two separate branches of Whessoe - one in Newton Aycliffe and one in the design office on Brinkburn Road - which are both now owned by Norwegian companies.

The 35 acre works was cleared in 1992. Three years later 372 houses were built there.

Meanwhile, the whale oil tank remained on Deception Island. It withstood the volcano eruption of 1969 which swept away a nearby cemetery in which 40 Norwegian whalers had been buried.

The pictures shown here were taken recently by the son-in-law of the county editor of the Somerset Victoria County History series, who passed them on to Gill Cookson, who is editing the Darlington volume of the series, who kindly passed them on to Echo Memories.

And now that, after at least 80 years, Darlington has been reunited with a fascinating piece of its past, this article has clearly been a case of "whale meet again"