Lloyd - Darlington in 100 Dates

These are 100 of my favourite stories that have appeared in my Memories column in The Northern Echo since I started writing it twenty-five years ago. Back then, I was just a trainee and it was merely a picture caption which no one wanted to write; now Im Deputy Editor and it is a twelve-page weekly supplement that is one of the most popular parts of the paper.

I became interested in the local history of Darlington as I tried to understand the town where I had generously been offered a job after leaving university, despite only having set foot a couple of times on Bank Top station platform which means, I now know, that I got a step closer than Queen Victoria, who only gazed out of her carriage window.

Im not sure I am any closer to my desired comprehension but I think I have uncovered some great stories fascinating and often funny about a great place.

My researches often start in Darlington Centre for Local Studies, and successive editors have always supported me, most notably Peter Barron, who currently keeps W.T. Steads chair warm. My wife, Petra, has been with me every step of the way, and I have been guided by my readers, whose knowledge, interest, enthusiasm and ability to stay awake during my talks never ceases to amaze me.

My thanks to them all, and Im already looking forward to finding out about the next 100.

Chris Lloyd, 2015

Margaret, the 13-year-old daughter of Henry VII, slept in the Bishops Manor House in Darlington on her way to meet her new husband, James IV of Scotland, for the first time. Margarets hand had been part of the deal that had sealed the 1502 Treaty of Perpetual Peace between the feuding countries. She married James by proxy (i.e. the bridegroom was absent) in Richmond Palace on 25 January 1503, and then journeyed to meet him.

She rode on horseback, but when she came within 3 miles of a town, she jumped into a richly decorated bed and was carried in style by two footmen. The footmen picked their way over the Tees into Neasham, where the Abbess of Neasham, the Bishop of Durham and a fayr company, including forty horsemen, offered her a cross to kiss.

She was conveyed into Darlington, greeting knights and sheriffs on the roadside, and at the gates of St Cuthberts church, the vicar and folks of the church welcomed her.

Margaret slept in the Bishops Palace where the town hall is today and a special lock was fitted to her chamber door (for centuries, its key was one of Darlingtons most prized possessions). Next morning, she left for Durham in fayr array.

The Treaty of Perpetual Peace lasted ten years before James invaded England in 1513.

(Longstaffe: History and Antiquities of Darlington )

Between the hours of 12 a.m. and 1 a.m. there took hold a most fierce and terrible fire as [if] it had been wildfire, which burned most faire houses in the Towne. It took good holde of pitch, tar, rossen, flax, gunpowder and such like commodities, and ceased not until it had burned 273 houses.

Fanned by a boisterous wind, the timber houses rapidly burned. The wells were dry because of a drought, so people had either to run to the Skerne for water, or toss liquids like milk and beer onto the flames.

Much of High Row and Skinnergate was destroyed, including the house of the leading Eure family. Prosperous merchant Francis Oswell lost goods valued at 1,000, and in total the fire was said to have caused 20,000 of damage.

Although the area around St Cuthberts church was untouched, the Great Fire of Darlington rendered about 800 of Darlingtons 1,200 inhabitants homeless. They sought shelter in barns in nearby villages. A pamphlet, Lamentable Newes from the Towne of Darnton, told of the poor distressed people in need of help. Their distress deepened in the autumn when the farmers evicted them from the barns so they could store their harvest.

Although the town was rebuilt on the old medieval street layout, it took several generations for Darlington to recover.

(Memories, The Northern Echo , 2011)

George Swalwell was the last person to be publicly executed in Darlington. He had been sentenced to death in Durham three days earlier for treason as he refused to renounce his Catholicism. He was trussed to a cart and taken to his hometown, where four priests beat him with a rod across the Market Place to the gallows on Bakehouse Hill.

To terrify him the more, they led him by two great fires, the one made for burning his bowels, the other for boiling his quarters, recorded Bishop Richard Challoner.

The rope was put around Swalwells neck and, as he urged Catholics in the crowd to pray for him, he was pushed off the ladder. He was cut down before he lost consciousness and the hangman drew him along by the rope yet alive, and there dismembered and bowelled him, and cast his bowels into the fire, said the bishop.

At the taking out of his heart, he lifted up his left hand to his head, which the hangman laid down again; and when the heart was cast into the fire, the same hand laid itself over the open body Then the hangman cut off his head and held it up saying: Behold the head of a traitor! His quarters, after they were boiled in a cauldron, were buried in the bakers dunghill.

(Memories, The Northern Echo , 2002)

King James VI of Scotland was making his journey south to London to be crowned King James I of England when he came across the stunning view of Teesdale, to the west of Darlington. At Bolam, he stopped and sat with his back against an ancient, arthritic stone finger and drank in the view.

I have taken possession of the promised land, he sighed. It is a bonnie, bonnie country. As he was sitting cross-legged, the stone finger was immediately nicknamed Legs Cross (another explanation is that the stone was erected by the Romans 20th Legion of Piercebridge, but the weathering of time meant that only LEG X survived of their carving).

The king adjourned to Walworth Castle for the night, where his host was Elizabeth Jennison. Her late husband, Thomas, had been Queen Elizabeth Is Auditor General for Ireland and had restored the ruined castle in the 1580s.

The king was so bountifully entertained that it gave his excellency very high contentment, says a contemporary account. After his quiet repose there that night and part of the next day, he took leave of her with many princely gratulations.

In the seventeenth century, the Saxon village of Walworth, which was to the north of the castle, was cleared by the castle owners to improve their view. Since 1981, the castle has been a hotel.

(Memories, The Northern Echo , 2005)

Xpofer Simpson, a labourer from Thornaby, was discovered strangled near the confluence of the Baydale Beck and the River Tees at Low Coniscliffe. The alarm was raised and Xpofers nephew, weaver Ralph Simpson, was seized at Aldborough St John and dragged back to the scene where deputy coroner Francis Raisbie swore in fourteen men as the jury.

They heard that Xpofer and Ralph had been to Gunnerside to buy a little black horse for 10 s . Witnesses reported seeing them en route, but before the sunne did arise, Ralph was spotted alone. Constable Thomas Emerson turned out Ralphs pockets and found a cord made of throumes (the warp ends of weavers web) which was bloody.