Darlington'S Dolphin Centre was built in the early-1980s, and Jimmy Blumer's aerial photo from 1950 reminds us what was there before.

The answer is simple: pubs. There was the Dolphin pub (No 1) which was known to locals as The Crooked Fish because its sign was distinctly un-dolphin like. It closed in 1958 and, until demolition, was the home of the council's weights and measures department.

Two doors away was the Waterloo (No 2) which didn't close until demolition.

It was next door to the Hole in the Wall (No 3) which still stands. It was originally known as the Golden Cock but changed its name when the landlord moved to Tubwell Row in the 1840s. It kept its name when it was rebuilt at the turn of the century and returned to it after a brief, trendy flirtation with Sans Souci during the 1980s.

Another oft-lamented pub is The Fleece (No 4) at the end of Blackwellgate. This establishment had stood here for over 300 years until it was demolished in 1969 because Vaux the brewers couldn't afford the £100,000 its warren of rooms needed in renovation.

But perhaps the most intriguing building on Mr Blumer's picture is the Nissen huts on the corner of Feethams and Houndgate (No 5). Corrugated steel Nissen huts were named after the man who invented them (Lt Col Peter Nissen, 1871-1930, a British mining engineer) and had a variety of uses.

Here they occupied an awkward corner of land. After the demolition of the Deanery in 1876, no one quite knew what to do with this spot other than store the market stalls on it. For a while the Corn Exchange was here until it moved to Victoria Road and then, in the 1930s, Lt Col Nissen's huts took over.

Initially they were used as a warehouse showroom for agricultural equipment belonging to Teasdale Brothers and Ord and Maddison.

But as the Second World War ended, they became the home of the Civic Restaurant. Also known as the British Restaurant, it served meals that could be paid for in cash (usually about half a crown) rather than in food coupons and so allowing families to stretch their coupons a little bit further.

The Civic Restaurant was very popular. George Flynn, Darlington's renowned historian, has council minutes which show that in one August week in 1946 it served 961 lunches and 362 evening meals.

But it seems that the people of Darlington were not just ekeing out their food coupons. They were also saving on the cutlery rations for, in just one three-month period in 1946, 974 knives, forks and spoons were reported missing and 7,579 items were said to have been broken.

l If you have any memories of British Restaurants, write to Chris Lloyd, The Northern Echo, Priestgate, Darlington DL1 1NF