IN the summer, Memories spotted a tall, ivy-covered tower growing out of St Cuthbert’s churchyard in the middle of Darlington.

Despite it being 20ft or so tall, we’d never noticed it before.

Many readers, of course, were well aware of it. In Memories 140, they told how it was a chimney which vented the Victorian boilers in the church’s cellar.

Hugh Mortimer has dug deeper, and has discovered that the chimney was once taller and quite a bit older than we first imagined.

It dates back to the 1860s when St Cuthbert’s Church was a smelly, damp, ratridden place heated by six portable gas stoves. Most worrying were the wide cracks in the walls which were caused by the spire settling – the spire was a 14th Century afterthought, plonked on top of the 12th Century tower which did not have the foundations to support it.

In 1861, Sir George Gilbert Scott was called in to shore it up. He was one of the great Gothic architects of his day – he was building the Albert Memorial in Hyde Park, London, for Queen Victoria while he was saving St Cuthbert’s.

Sir George seems only to have visited St Cuthbert’s twice, so much of the work, which took three years to complete, fell to local architect JP Pritchett.

Lots of local workmen were involved, especially “master bricklayer” David Hurworth.

He won the large £1,867 9s 9d contract – worth about £200,000 today, according to the Bank of England’s Inflation Calculator – to restore the nave. In addition, he won a £226 4s 6d contract to install the “warming apparatus” in the cellar beneath the nave.

Mr Hurworth was a native of Gilling West who became one of Darlington’s leading mid 19th Century builders.

In 1859, he won the £4,000 contract to provide 1.5 million bricks with which the North Road Railway Works – the famous workshops where Morrison’s supermarket is today – were constructed.

The warming apparatus that Mr Hurworth installed in the church was built by William Richardson’s horticultural works – Richardson’s operated for 130 years and is best remembered for its large, triangular advertising thermometer which stood beside the railway line at Bank Top station until 1998.

The Northern Echo:
Today, the chimney is covered in ivy

ST Cuthbert’s Church was reopened after its restoration on December 14, 1865. In its report of the day’s services, sermons, speeches and banquets, the Darlington & Stockton Times says: “The warming apparatus is most complete, and throws out a genial warmth, freed from the stovelike dryness of other modes of heating… It would be well if church authorities would discountenance the dangerous system of flues, stoves and hot air tubes which have caused the destruction of many of our finest edifices.”

Perhaps, like Memories, the D&S Times reporter hadn’t spotted that Mr Hurworth had built a long, underground flue to connect the boilers to his tall chimney.

Back in 1865, the chimney must have been even more prominent than it is now. Old pictures suggest it once had a fancy top and may even have been 30ft high.

Now it is shorter and has disappeared under rampant ivy.

The underground flue is more difficult to spot, but its route beneath the churchyard grass is marked by what looks like a fallen headstone – until you see the word “FLUE” carved on it in large capital letters, which is a bit of a giveaway.

A tall chimney in a prominent location would be an appropriate memorial for a master bricklayer like David Hurworth, but after he died in 1873, an elaborate Gothic tomb was erected over his grave in West Cemetery.

The Northern Echo:
Chimney-builder David Hurworth’s memorial in West Cemetery. Modern pictures courtesy of Hugh Mortimer

  • With many thanks to Hugh Mortimer. At this point we should probably apologise to another Hugh, Sir Hugh Walpole, the 1920s novelist, because last week, a slip of the finger rendered him Sir Huge Walpole.