The passion and the glory of County Durham

As it was, he published several books, loads of articles and made just two TV series in the 1960s before he burned himself out and succumbed to alcoholism.

He was a maths graduate who became an RAF pilot and made his name as a writer and broadcaster about architecture. He was deeply worried that the bland suburban sprawl which was covering the countryside with identical, characterless places would create a drab new world where people were no longer inspired by their surroundings.

So he set off to find strange, curious places, brimming with character. In 1964, he visited 76 County Durham towns and villages and wrote with enormous passion about what he found that he loved – and, on occasions, despised.

His 50-year-old book has just been republished by architect Martin Roberts, of West Auckland, to raise money for the Old Durham Gardens. Turning each page, the reader is blown away by Nairn's enthusiasm for the surroundings that we take for granted on a day to day basis.

This is how it was in the 1960s, but Nairn's cry from the heart is that if we don't plan our places carefully, we will lose our soul and character.

Bishop Auckland

"A magnificent, underrated town, the best in Durham," said Nairn. "It has one of everything: a long, wide shopping street (Newgate Street), a short narrow shopping street which could easily be made pedestrian (Fore Bondgate) with a village green at the far end (High Bondgate).

"Gill's splendid furniture shop, newly painted black, white and plum-red, with a colossal roof-top sign is the perfect eyecatcher for the end of Newgate Street and should never be removed." Of course, a few years after Nairn's visit, WE Gill and Son's splendid shop was demolished and replaced by a mini-supermarket.

"Half-a-mile out, turn round, and there is one of those town images that you usually see in old prints and sigh for. The river in the foreground, the town on the ridge with town hall and Bishop's Palace above the houses, a fine railway viaduct on the right-hand side: the whole consort singing together."

Stockton

"Stockton is like a great breath of northern fresh air," said Nairn. "It works like a charm; the central space, which is the easiest kind of car park for most of the week, is still crammed with stalls on market days."

He had a plan for the town's derelict riverside. "Run a road along it to relieve the market place, and build a deck over for houses, shops or plain drinking. Bingo: this grand town would have a new dimension." Tragically, Stockton only had the foresight and finances to implement half of this plan – a dual carriageway road was built alongside the riverside, but not in a tunnel so houses, shops, restaurants and pubs never could be built on the waterfront.

Consequently, Stockton's centre is today cut off from its greatest asset, the River Tees.

Crook

Crook, said Nairn, is much better than the "dismally straight streets of its neighbours, Willington and Spennymoor".

"The town can indulge in preposterous gestures: a place for absurd statues and an enormous floral clock," he said. "This is one of the places to keep, cheerfully thumbing its nose at the Pennines and industrial depression. One of nature's extroverts, and very precious in a county where the mining places too often look gloomily at their own boots."

Ferryhill

Nairn's description is brave, and probably accurate. "A small town, not a colliery village, and one of those rare places where old and new Durham have combined to make something instead of abrading each other. nothing pretty, certainly: Ferryhill will never appear on a travel poster. But full of character, the ugly face that can inspire lifelong affection."

Darlington

Nairn didn't like Darlington very much. "All of the old parts in the centre seem to be at odds, unrelated leftovers," he said. He saw the centre stretched north to south by the A1 and also pulled from east to west, from St Cuthbert's Church to Bondgate. "In between, the main shopping streets droop around the Victorian Market Hall," he said.

His remedy was 40 years ahead of its time. He proposed a scheme that used the natural 35ft rise from the Skerne to create "two or three mezzanine levels from one side to the other". What would he have thought of Pedestrian Heart?

Piercebridge

Nairn was enthusiastic about Durham's villages and their greens, and Piercebridge moved him to a symphonic rapture. "It should have a Köchel number: if all Durham greens could be regarded as minuets, then this one was written by Mozart... with estate terraces on both sides among the older and shaggier cottages... The top end is pure music."

Gainford

He loved Gainford – "as mellow as any village in the county". He said: "The green is roughly square, but you can never see all of it at a time: the north side is convex and raised, every view ends in a come-hither question mark with enticing things just out of full view."

But there was a huge but. "On the south side there are four new houses, built with the collaboration and approval of the county planning department. They are modern, quite chic, and catastrophically wrong... It is the smart-aleck TV commentator yabbering away at someone of real stature, and it was done with the best of intentions. Which, as always, are not enough."

To Nairn, these houses are up there with Peterlee as the worst in the county. Is he wrong?

Newton Aycliffe

Poor Aycliffe was less than 20-years-old when Nairn visited, and he found a positive – it wasn't quite as bad as Peterlee. He said: "If a New Town has got to mean monotony, characterless and hamfisted simplicity in the centre, then at least it is achieved here without the pretensions of Peterlee. When all the trees grow up it will be mildly pretty in summer. But what a way to build a community."

Middleton-in-Teesdale

Nairn was fascinated by the way industrialists had tried to conquer the brutal nature of the upper Durham dales. He wasn't really impressed by the "rough L-shape" of Middleton, which he regarded as "an overgrown half-industrial village", but which was redeemed by the curio that is still its centrepiece – one of those historic curios that gives a place it's identity.

He said: "It sounds like a muddle: but exactly on the elbow is a delicious toy, the Bainbridge Testimonial fountain of 1877: an iron canopy with a puddingly cherub underneath dispensing water. It catches the eye from both streets and gives the place a hinge."

The Slack

Surprisingly, Nairn could find beauty in most Durham settings, even in this Gaunless Valley hamlet which is overlooked by Cockfield and Butterknowle. "Four roads dip down to meet in a kind of punchbowl, a happy natural site complicated by old grassy pitheaps and the sense of mortality they bring with them. Cottages lie around haphazard; there are two pubs and one abandoned railway terminus. The slopes are scattered with hen coops and sheds, and terraces from bigger villages peer over the horizon... this wayward place has a strength of personality which many towns would sigh for."

NAIRN'S NUGGETS

Staindrop: "classically upright and sober"

Aycliffe Village: "unusually intricate and intimate for Durham"

Cockfield: "of all County Durham's mixtures of rural and industrial, this is the oddest"

Escomb: "no village in the county more deserves restoration: not as a cute place, not because it might seem untidy to the visitors, but for its own gruff greatness as a shape, a personality"

Evenwood: "one of the best villages in Durham"

Heighington: "The main part, West Green, is robust and open, sloping downhill with countryside over the rooftops. The other part, East Green, is intricate, unexpected, off-beat..."

Hurworth: "If there are southern gentlemen who think that anything north of Barnet is a bit crude and bleak, they ought to take a look at this. The long green is lined with every kind of style and size of architecture from the last two centuries: but it is all done with sophistication – never needing to raise its voice..."

Hett: "it is as gaunt and angular as its name, utterly itself, a place of incredible strength, yet one that could be killed with a couple of marshmallow touches"

Middleton One Row: "One of the most spectacular sites in the country: the crescent of houses facing the setting sun above a loop of cornfields... even the Ladies and Gents thoughtfully dug into the hillside is too much: there should be absolutely nothing south of the road to interfere with this stupendous view"

Norton: "this exceptionally urbane village has a flavour all of its own – a country retreat just out of the town: the northern equivalent of Richmond or Twickenham"

Redmarshall: "this place, only a mile-and-a-half from the wall-eyed new outskirts of Stockton, is a special kind of nature reserve – but utterly free from gumbooty or crankish associations: more an industrial village where the people mine for vegetables rather than coal"

Shincliffe: "the best example in east Durham of how a village street should be kept. No artificial cosiness, just honest downright roses-and-cream prettiness, something which the North does far better than the South"

Staindrop: "classically upright and sober"

Tow Law: "the bleakness becomes bleak nobility"

Trimdon: "bleak and battered, but intact... what makes Trimdon special is the church in the middle, simple and rough; no tower, just a bellcote huddling down against the weather"

West Auckland: "all the bleak grandness of the north"

Nairn's County Durham costs £5 plus £2 post from Martin Roberts, Old Fleece House, 20B Front Street, West Auckland DL14 9HW, or email martin@fleece.wanadoo.co.uk. All proceeds go to the Old Durham Gardens, the restored 17th Century pleasureground to the east of Durham City (see Memories 195)