The day Duplex blazed

“THOUSANDS of pounds worth of damage was caused when fire - the biggest in Darlington for many years – swept through the showroom and garage of the Duplex Motor and Cycle Company in Grange Road at the weekend,” reported The Northern Echo on Monday, July 10, 1967.

The blaze had broken out shortly after closing on Saturday evening, and the Darlington Fire Brigade was called out at 16.15. However, it found difficulty locating the seat of the blaze in the warren of workshops behind Grange Road and so, an hour later, it took the unusual step of calling in outside assistance form the County Durham brigade.

“Four appliances, including a machine from Stockton brigade, raced to the scene,” said the Echo. “Twelve breathing apparatus sets and a turntable ladder were used.”

Several hundred people gathered to watch the drama unfold.

GRANGE ROAD: A turntable ladder fire engine attends the blaze at the Duplex on July 8, 1967. Picture courtesy of the Armstrong Railway Photographic Trust

“Intense heat caused a minor explosion in the cellar of the showroom and two firemen had to scramble to safety through a shattered plate glass window. At least two new cars were burned and more than 20 motor-cycles, scooters and mopeds were destroyed as 50 firemen and police fought to control the blaze.”

But many Darlingtonians benefited: fire damaged cars, with melted lights, and motorbikes, without rubber tyres, were sold off cheaply in the weeks that followed.

The Duplex was created by Tommy Alton, who was just a teenager in 1903 when he pawned the overcoat off his back and raised enough money to buy a pushbike with solid rubber tyres for 15s. He hired it out for 6d-per-hour from a little shop in Grange Road, and quickly expanded into Belgian motorbikes and, by the time of the First World War, Canadian cars.

Grange Road was in those days on the Great North Road - the main London to Edinburgh road – and so ideally suited for a garage.

Mr Alton died in 1956, and his businesses passed to his relations, Fred Robinson and his sons, who owned Thomas Watson auctioneers in Northumberland Street, behind Grange Road. Memories 257 told of the 175th anniversary of the founding of the auction house, which prompted Richard Barber, of the Armstrong Railway Photographic Trust, to send in these splendid pictures of the fire, taken by John Boyes of Billingham.

AFTER DUPLEX: Grange Road, Darlington, in 1979 when the garage had been converted into Fred W Robinson's furniture emporium

The blaze was the last straw for Duplex. It had been struggling since 1965 when the A1 Darlington bypass opened, taking away much of its passing motoring trade.

It closed soon after the fire, and Fred Robinson turned the garage into a furniture showroom, a venture which lasted until 1979.

The buildings ravaged by the fire were restored or replaced in the early 1990s and are now home to some of Darlington’s boutique shops.

RECENT Memories have been conjuring with the concept of Tittybottle Park. Many towns in our area had/have a Tittybottle Park (Redcar, Bishop Auckland, Masham, Richmond, Guisborough, Loftus, Normanby and Eaglescliffe) where, in generations gone by, mothers and nannies would go to give a bottle to their babies and have a good gossip.

Shildon, as Memories 261 and 263 established, had a Tittybottle Bank. It was on the A6072, near what used to be George Reynolds’ industrial estate. It looked south, across the deep valley towards Redworth.

“It was on both sides of the road, and there were three or four long wooden benches,” says Aubrey Clethero, looking back on his childhood before the Second World War. “We used to see ladies with their prams going out there, although I don’t remember seeing a lady feeding a baby with a tittybottle.

“The council used to dump their rubbish and chippings from the road up there.”

In Memories 263, Nancy Marley said that the beck at the bottom of the Tittybottle Bank valley was called Johnny Bests’ Beck – but she didn’t know who Johnny Bests was.

“John Best rented Red House Farm at the foot of the valley from, I think, Lord Eldon before the war,” says Aubrey.

Aubrey attended All Saints school in Shildon in the 1930s where he remembers the headteacher, Mr JA Minto – known, of course, to his pupils as “Jam” – giving an assembly on the beck, which he called Woodham Burn.

According to the Ordnance Survey map, the streamlet in question begins by rolling east down Brusselton Bank. At the foot of Tittybottle Bank, it collects Corner Beck, which runs out of the Jubilee Lakes fishponds near Redworth, and becomes known as Red House Beck. It flows eastwards under the trackbed of the Stockton and Darlington Railway and into Newton Aycliffe where, just as “Jam” said, it becomes known as Woodham Burn. Having gone under the A167, it flows through the lost medieval village of Woodham before entering the carrs around The Isle – a boggy piece of land. Finally, our beck deposits its contents into the River Skerne where it goes under the A1(M).

HAWK-EYED: Regular readers spotted our mistake last week involving the Humber Hawk, as photographed by John Daniels

BAH! Last week’s Memories also included the identity of the cars parked in a row outside Darlington’s Central Hall in 1962, but we managed to get them the wrong way round. Loads of people pointed out that we meant to say that it is a Humber Hawk nearest to the “No Entry” sign, then a Mk7 Jaguar, a Mk 2 Jaguar and on the far left an Austin Cambridge. To help future identifiers, Peter Daniels of Bishop Auckland kindly attached a picture of a Humber Hawk.

MAINLINE STATION: Danby Wiske, before its closure in 1958 and demolition

ANOTHER snippet that has been fascinating us recently is this picture of Danby Wiske station that Mrs E Smith of Northallerton has kindly sent in, as she lived in the station from 1936 to 1950.

Danby Wiske is between Northallerton and Darlington and from 1884 to 1958 it had its own station on the East Coast Main Line. The station was situated a few hundred yards outside the village on the east side of the line. Today, the railway cottages on the west side of the line remain, but the station has gone.

It must have been a curious little halt in the middle of nowhere. Who can tell us about it – why would the Victorians have placed a station beside a lane in this corner of North Yorkshire?