STANHOPE Road was once Darlington's own Harley Street. Ninety years ago, living and operating in the tall terraces and Victorian villas were 12 surgeons.

For good measure, FH Jenkins was in number 69 - a veterinary surgeon.

But this wasn't enough. At the start of the First World War, Chesterfield was built so that more doctors and dentists could practise on the corner of Stanhope Road and Coniscliffe Road.

Chesterfield, a fine looking period villa, remained a home for medical men until 1982, but it may now be terminally ill - its current owners have applied for permission to demolish it and build a three-storey block of 31 flats in its place.

Stanhope Road was officially named in August 1885 by the Darlington Streets Committee after one of the titles of the area's former landowner, the Duke of Cleveland. Scattered in the streets behind Skinnergate are some of his other titles: Raby Street, Powlett Street, Cleveland Avenue and Terrace and, of course, Duke Street.

By 1910, surgeons had colonised Stanhope Road: Messrs Hartley and Farquhar were in partnership in numbers 24 and 26; J Smale was in 53; HC Pearson in 57; AH Thompson and Pearson in 71; DV Haig was in Derneholm (on the corner of Duke Street and Stanhope Road); J Hern was in Semmercote (now a dentist's); FG Martin was in Southfield and W Petter was in Netherlaw (villas on the west side of the street). Plus in Raydaleside, John Alexander Fothergill and Frank P Hamilton traded as surgical dentists.

To complete the coterie, Mr Fothergill's uncle, John Rimington Fothergill lived just around the corner in number 1 Langholm Crescent, known as Chorley Cottage and under the plans currently before the council, to be converted into four flats.

Then came Chesterfield, apparently built by Dr Frederick Charles Pridham. A new doctor in town, he lived in the upper floors above his consulting rooms until 1948. Sadly, history records no more about him.

But his first partner in Chesterfield has left a lot behind. He was Dr J Donald Sinclair who amalgamated his surgery in Wellington Cottages, Grange Road (where the Wellington Mews shops are now) with Dr Pridham's in Chesterfield.

Dr Sinclair was an Edinburgh man who set up practice in Darlington in 1907. During the First World War, he was the Red Cross officer in charge of the health of all the troops stationed in town.

In 1918, a flu epidemic swept through the Belgians encamped in the Friends Meeting House. Coping single-handedly with 93 patients, Dr Sinclair was himself laid so low by the bug that the Northern Despatch incorrectly reported his demise. As compensation, he was awarded an OBE.

After the war, Dr Sinclair graduated from doing his rounds on a horse-drawn brougham to a "safety bicycle" which meant leaving off his top hat. Then he got a single cylinder Wolseley car and crowds gathered to watch him turn the starting handle "which you put in the side and wound round like a mangle".

Dr Sinclair stayed in Chesterfield for about a decade before moving to the Elm Court wing of Pierremont. He raised £13,000 in 1931-3 for a children's wing at the new Memorial Hospital; he was deputy mayor in 1940-1; donated the Alice in Wonderland mural, which is now in the library, to the town in 1957, and died aged 85 in 1959.

Dr Sinclair's departure from Chesterfield didn't leave Dr Pridham on his own because he let a wing of the house to Mr Hamilton so his dental practice could move in from Raydaleside. This wing appears to originally have been called Majoribanks, although in the 1930s when Thomas William Stark took over the practice it was called Marjoribanks.

Dr Pridham disappears from Chesterfield in 1948. His wife, Ida, lived for a few more years in Linden Avenue - and his partner Dr Bernard Bruce Freshwater took over the practice. Dr Freshwater had been born in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), the son of a missionary, and had joined Dr Pridham in 1938.

Dr Freshwater recruited Dr John Scott Kerss as his partner in Chesterfield. Dr Kerss, an Edinburgh graduate from Dumfriesshire, had spent six years of the Second World War as an army doctor on the North-East Indian frontier and had received an MBE.

When Dr Freshwater became the general surgeon at the Memorial Hospital in 1948, Dr Kerss became senior partner in Chesterfield. He bought out the dentists in Marjoribanks and united the house, living in the upper storeys with his wife Dorothy.

He continued Chesterfield's motoring reputation, becoming in 1959 the first person in Darlington to own a Mini Minor. It cost him £375 and crowds gathered to see him cram his 17 stone frame into it. Into his practice came doctors FG Maxwell-Smith, A Morrison, A Mather, EM Callander and, later, Dr Roger James.

Dr Kerss, who died in 1993 at the age of 77, retired from Chesterfield in 1980 and the remaining doctors decided that it was too small for a practical practice. In 1982, they relocated to a new surgery in Denmark Street which is now headed by Dr James.

Chesterfield then became the home of two firms of architects: Norman Godsmark on the first floor and Richard Brown and Partners below. They moved out in 1989, and Darlington Building Society took over. It is the building society which has applied to the council for permission to demolish Chesterfield