BY WAY of reminding you that today from 11am to 3pm, as featured in last week’s Memories, the 8th Darlington (Cockerton Green) Scout Group are holding their 100th Anniversary Open Day, here is a strange thing from their headquarters.

If you go along to the open day, you will spot it holding open a door in the headquarters on Cockerton Green – you will remember that part of the headquarters is the former Newton Kyloe Inn, which dates from the 17th Century.

So what was this fancy doorstop? It is about a foot long and made of cast iron so it is very heavy. It has a very smooth base and is designed to be lifted by its handle. On its top, it says: “EJ Riley, Accrington”.

What is it? Answer at the foot of the page – and don’t forget to visit the Scouts and their new museum, which will be opened at 1pm today by the mayor of Darlington.

IN Memories 223, a moment of forgetfulness placed Darlington’s Regent Cinema in the wrong street.

Plenty of other people remembered, though. Some of them even remembered the part Duncan Bannatyne played in its downfall – yes, look closely at the pictures.

The Regent was the last of Darlington’s purpose-built cinemas – although, 75 years later, a new multiscreen cinematic complex is today being built on Feethams. Holding 1,050 people, it opened at a cost of £20,000 in June 1939, in Cobden Street in the Eastbourne area of town.

It was built by Thompson’s of Middlesbrough and The Northern Echo described it as embodying "all the most modern ideas in cinema architecture".

It said: "The neon electrical illumination which has been designed as an integral part of the facade greatly enhances the appearance of the building at night.

"An atmosphere of warmth and brightness is imparted by the decorative scheme of the foyers which is repeated on a larger scale in the auditorium. These decorations also give a sense of luxury heightened by the subtle use of mirrors and effective illumination."

The first film screened there was Angels With Dirty Faces starring James Cagney.

But despite all its modcons, the Regent was one of the first of Darlington’s cinemas to close as the silver screen era came to an end. It shut on May 14, 1960, and was converted into a bingo hall, which wasn’t a great success, and so it stood empty and increasingly derelict for a couple of decades.

In the late 1980s, it was on the market for £80,000. A car showroom was interested, but in the end it was bought by Quality Care Homes of Stockton which planned to demolish it and replace it with a 40-bed care home.

In the summer of 1989, Mr Bannatyne, the owner of Quality Care Homes, went for a look round prior to demolition, and noticed that there was a false ceiling, installed by the bingo converters. Curious, he peeled it back to discover two locked doors.

Extremely curious, he broke through them, and found the Regent’s projector room, frozen in time and unused for 30 years. Scattered around were invoices from 1959, a 1960 calendar, and two twisted reels of a film called The End, which must have been chosen for the last night on account of its appropriate title.

Plus, screwed to the floor, were two huge Peerless Magnara High Intensity projectors. Mr Bannatyne called the Echo to offer them to any interested museums. It is not known where they ended up, but Eastbourne Care Home is now on the cinema’s site.

KEN THURLBECK of Stockton was one of those who drew our attention to our error. “As I recall,” he says, “admission to the stalls of the Regent was 10d and 1s 8d to the balcony, which was about three steps higher than the stalls.”

Not that Ken always paid...

One of the photographs in Memories 223 featured a coach with “Arnold Cockburn of Cockerton” painted on the side of it and we, naturally, asked who Mr Cockburn was.

“I don’t know about his later career, but we were schoolboy friends in the 1940s when he lived with his parents in Carnaby Road, Darlington,” says Ken. “I used to help him with his evening paper round and occasionally we finished up at the Regent Cinema where his older sister Nora, who worked as an usherette, would let us in for nothing.”

Lots of other people have told us about Mr Cockburn’s career, and we shall report back more fully in the near future.

THE selection of Darlington pictures in the From the Archive section of Memories 223 excited lots of other comment, as well.

Take the murder scene in Park Street, where Joe Barnes, 48, was shot on December 13, 1966 – the St Cuthbert’s Way Post Office sorting depot is on the site of this street today.

Mr Barnes seems to have been an innocent victim, shot in his home at 69, Park Street, by a 58-year-old chap who was known locally as “The Moon Man” because he only came out at night.

“Murderer had gone to shoot Joe’s wife,” says one of our correspondents who had walked past the house on his way to school a little earlier. “He was a loner, never spoke to anyone. He burst in the house to shoot her with shotgun. Joe was upstairs. Came downstairs into living room. Must have startled him. He spun round and shot Joe.”

This story is corroborated by other callers. The Moon Man was charged with murder, although the Echo’s archives don’t reveal the outcome of the case, and none of our correspondents remember it reaching court. This suggests other issues may have meant the case took another route.

IN the picture, a police van is parked crazily across the street. That aside, though, life seems to be going on as normal – no festoons of police tape as there would be nowadays.

Behind the police van is a corner shop with a large Mackeson stout advert on the wall – “that was the wall of my bedroom”, says Ken Bowman, whose parents Muriel and William ran the shop for 20 years until it was demolished in 1969.

Muriel was from Gainford and William was from Dundee – they met in Blackpool, and settled in Park Street with William working at Smiths Dock in Middlesbrough and Muriel running the shop.

Parked outside is an Austin 1100. “It was lime green,” says Ken. “I can remember it quite clearly – I learned to drive in that car.”

TONY WILLIAMS is a Darlingtonian in exile. He writes from Port Mulgrave, near Whitby, about the long-legged structure that could be seen in the distance from Luck’s Square in Darlington in Memories 223.

Luck’s Square – which was haunted by the ghost of Lady Jarrett, although that is another story – was at the foot of the Leadyard, on the banks of the Skerne. The education offices behind the town hall have just been built on its site, and the 1959 photo is looking over past the Civic Theatre towards Bank Top station.

“The tall tank on long legs is a water tower owned at the time by British Rail,” says Tony. “It was needed for steam trains.

“Around 1970, I was a 22-year-old junior civil engineer employed by BR at Forth Banks, Newcastle, and one of my duties was to inspect this tower and report on its condition. I had to inspect it on my own and it was very high and quite scary. It moved considerably in the wind.

“The 'elf and safety people would not allow this kind of solo inspection now.”

ALSO visible in the picture is a chimney, which we presumed was the old Borough Road fire station one that featured in Memories 217. Steve Turnbull is another of the people who has been grappling with the picture, and he concludes: “It is too far over to be connected to the old fire station which is located immediately behind the Civic Theatre.” Like the long-legged tank, it, too, must have been up near the station.

MARIAN LEWIS of Hutton Magna, near Barningham, called to explain the photograph of the enormous bus queue in Feethams in 1960.

“On a Bank Holiday Monday, Darlington was the only town open in the area, and so it was absolutely chaos,” she says. “People used to come from all over.”

From 1959 to 1977, Marian worked as a carpet seamstress in Mechanics Yard for Binns. “I used to get the bus home down Feethams at 6.15pm,” she says. “It was a Maude’s bus, which was based at Newsham, and it went out to Barningham.”

Referring to The Northern Echo’s now defunct sister paper, Marian continues: “The bus driver used to deliver the Evening Despatch. He used to tear a cigarette packet into four to make rings and he would slide the papers through the rings, and then as we were passing farms in places like Eppleby and Lane Head, he would throw the papers out of the window into the gardens – even if it was raining.

“He hooted his horn to alert people, although most of them had already heard the bus coming.”

WHAT IS IT? Our heavy cast iron object used as a doorstop by the Cockerton Green scouts is a snooker table iron. It would have been heated up and then run across the green baize to keep the material flat and speed up the balls.

If you have anything to add to any of today’s topics, please let us know.