History catches up with Beaumont Street School

SIT still children. Adjust your best clothes and hide any marks on your ultra-white smocks. Place your work on the desk in front of you. Sit up straight. Both arms behind your back. Look at the camera and, whatever you do, do not smile.

Flash! Bang! Wallop! What a miserable picture!

Only a couple of children on today’s front page have the flicker of a smile playing on their lips, and the slightly older children on the companion picture here don’t appear much more cheerful.

These photographs, from the Centre for Local Studies in Darlington library, were taken in 1911 in Beaumont Street School. The school closed on October 19, 1966. “Twohundred and seventy-four Darlington children will close their desks, pack away their books and pencils, and say ‘goodbye’ to their school for the last time, as it makes way for a multi-storey car park,” said the Evening Despatch newspaper.

The street that surrounded it was also cleared, and uneven car parks grew on the rising ground at the back of the Dolphin Centre.

But the multi-storey never materialised – until now. Nearly 50 years after the school’s demolition, plans for a £7m parking block have finally reached the council, and a heritage report has been compiled into the area. One of the most interesting parts of the report is that it debunks the theory that Darlington town centre was once protected by an Anglo- Saxon ditch, with an earth rampart topped by a wooden stockade. The ditch was said to roughly run from the River Skerne along East Street to Northgate. It then ran between High Row and Skinnergate before heading back to the river by running behind Houndgate – the site of the proposed car park.

But archaeologists have found no evidence of the ditch and believe it to be just “wishful thinking”.

The site doesn’t seem to have got a name until the 16th Century when its eastern fields became known as Kilngarth. These fields – just about where Houndgate Hall was until it was destroyed by fire in 2000 – also had an important well in them.

In 1624, Richard Potter was a very naughty person. He was ordered to “hinder none from carrying water from the lane in Hungaite at this kilne side” and he was fined for “harbouringe roguishe people in his kilne”. So not only was he bothering people who were collecting water but he was hiding ruffians inside his kiln.

The area gradually improved.

Taken on the same day in 1911 as today’s cover picture in Beaumont Street School – the same photographer’s number, 354, can be seen at the front. Like the younger ones on the cover, these children appear to have been under strict instructions to sit properly with their arms behind their backs. Notice the boys’ white collars – how long would they stay clean? The pictures are reproduced by kind permission of the Centre for Local Studies in Darlington Library

Prosperous merchants made their home in Houndgate – Memories 148 in October told how a hotel, The Townhouse, had opened in the Allan family’s fine Georgian residence. The car park site behind Houndgate was laid out as the townhouses’ pleasuregardens.

But Darlington was expanding. In 1871, its population was about 27,000; in 1885, it was 36,000. In the early 1880s, a new street – Beaumont Street – was planned for the pleasuregardens.

Standard Four at Beaumont Street School taken in the playground in 1902. We reckon the doorway at the top left is at the rear of the Allan family’s property which is now The Townhouse restaurant and hotel. This picture is also from Darlington Library’s Centre for Local Studies

HOWEVER, the 1870 Education Act placed responsibility for schooling in the hands of the local authority. In Darlington, the School Board set up its headquarters in the Allans’ townhouse in Houndgate and took charge of the charity and church schools in the town.

It sought out youngsters playing hooky and forced them into class, with the result that the number of children in education rose from 3,800 in 1871, to 6,800 in 1885.

They needed a new school, and so the board started constructing a 1,000-place infants and junior building on the Allans’ pleasuregarden – this was the first purpose-built state school in Darlington.

Looking up Beaumont Street from Feethams on May 9, 1964. Running horizontally at the top of the picture is the rear of the properties on Grange Road. A large white sign can be seen pointing to “Duplex workshops”, Duplex being the famous garage that once occupied much of Grange Road. On the right of the picture is the school, beyond which is the brewery. Go on, then – identify the first five cars parked on the left (for more old car spotting, see over the page)

It cost £8,718 (nearly £1m in today’s values), and opened in 1886.

The architect was FW Brooks of Darlington who described it as being in the style of the “Queen Anne epoch”. Some say its powerful appearance represents the town’s civic pride in its first school; others think the domineering brickwork must have crushed the life out of a little child being ushered through its archway for the first time.

It served the town for 80 years until 1966 when most of the pupils were transferred to the newly-completed Skerne Park Junior School, which opened on October 31, 1966.

Then it was pulled down, and its site was cleared. Various schemes have been proposed for it since, but no one can have expected it to take 50 years before one of them came to fruition. Work on the five-storey car park is due to start next month, although planning permission has yet to be granted. Perhaps we are counting our car parks before they’ve been approved.

Another great photograph from Darlington Library’s Centre for Local Studies. This shows Beaumont Street dressed up for Edward VII’s Coronation in 1901. John Routh is holding the horse and the Reed family are in the carriage

HE one building in Beaumont Street to have escaped the demolition of the late 1960s was a brewery. It is now a nightclub.

It must date from the mid-1880s, and it belonged to the Plews family of brewers. They started their business in Bedale in 1795, and had a large brewery – the Vale of Mowbray Brewery – at Leeming Bar.

An artist’s impression of the multi-storey car park planned for the school site. The smaller white buildings to the right are the existing Georgian properties in Houndgate

They branched out to Darlington in the early 19th Century, and established a malthouse beside the East Coast Main Line, in Neasham Road, in 1874. Barley is converted into malt in a malthouse ready for brewing – perhaps that part of the beer-making process took place in Beaumont Street. In 1925, Plews’ breweries and 100 pubs were bought for £250,000 by Camerons.