Taking a spin through a store that was once the beating heart of Darlington commerce

Starr was known as “the king of the Scottish accordionists”, and one of his 78rpm ten inch records is one of the many curiosities on sale at next weekend’s Durham Book Fair.

It has an Eightsome Reel on one side and a Quickstep Medley on the other. They were recorded just after the Second World War and released on the claret and gold Parlophone label.

Eightsome Reel by William Starr, the sleeve of which advertise the positive plethora of goods available for purchase from the Darlington Co-op

As exciting as Willie’s squeezebox playing may be, the local interest is in the record sleeve. The shellac disc must have been bought at the Darlington Co-operative & Industrial Society in Priestgate where, as the sleeve says, you could get anything, from gramophones to cycles, prams and folders, from wire mattresses to curbs and tidies…

Today, it is difficult to imagine how large Darlington Co-op was – although if you have got last week’s aerial special to hand, you will get an idea. It occupied both sides of Priestgate and then sprawled right through the town centre until it spilled out into two entrances on Tubwell Row.

Those two entrances, it has to be said, are among the worst examples of 1960s architecture ever inflicted on any town centre.

The co-op was formed as the Priestgate Co-operative, Industrial & Provident Society in 1868. Its first shop on the street was opened on May 29, and the first shopman, selected from 35 applicants, was Simon Calvert of Skipton. Unfortunately, he was compelled to resign the following year when he was found to be drunk on the premises.

His replacement, a Mr Smith, fared little better because he was dismissed in 1871 after being discovered drunk and abusive in the drapery department.

Perhaps it was something to do with the way the co-op treated its employees – or “servants”, as it called them. In 1871, its first female employee, Miss Bently, requested a couple of days holiday and had to find a friend to cover her absence before she was allowed to go – no holidays were allowed in a servant’s first year in the business.

But after this shaky start, it soon expanded. The Priestgate premises grew, and branches opened in Albert Road, Harrowgate Hill and St John’s Terrace, while a Co-op cartman visited Croft, Fighting Cocks, Heighington and Aycliffe on his weekly rounds.

In 1893, after the rival Bishop Auckland Co-op had sent canvassers into Darlington to pinch trade, the Priestgate co-operators held “propaganda meetings” on the village greens in Barton, Middleton Tyas, Eppleby, Aldbrough St John and Melsonby. In 1895, it employed eight tailors in Priestgate making suits; in 1896, it opened a branch in Newbiggin, Richmond; in 1899, it introduced a line of dentist-designed artificial teeth.

In 1900, it employed 80 people, had about 9,000 members and was still growing: in 1906, it opened a grocery and butchery branch in Dinsdale; in 1925, it opened a shop in Leyburn, and in 1927, it went into milk delivery.

It celebrated its 60th anniversary by starting to rationalise the hotch-potch of buildings in Priestgate that it had acquired over the decades. The first purpose-built store opened on the north side of the road behind the King’s Head Hotel in 1931, and then it gradually filled the south side of Priestgate before knocking right the way through into Tubwell Row.

In the 1940s and 1950s, the top floor of this super-store was a much-loved dancehall – perhaps they even spun an eightsome reel up there to the sound of William Starr on the gramophone.

In 1936, it took over the Barnard Castle Co-op; in 1937, it bought its first motor hearse; in 1939, it opened a social and athletic club on Carmel Road; in 1946, it had a Chemistry Department in Horsemarket, and by 1958, its membership had topped 50,000 for the first time.

The highpoint of co-operation was the mid-1960s. In 1964, Darneton House was completed onto Tubwell Row. Two vast entrances looking like hifi loudspeakers drowned out the traditional elegance of the Raby Hotel that they sandwiched.

Finally, on January 20, 1968, the Darlington Co-op merged with the Bishop Auckland Co-op and together they served every sphere of their 70,000 members’ lives, quite literally from the cradle to the grave with the mortgage somewhere in the middle.

Retail trends were changing: supermarkets were becoming hypermarkets and moving out of town, and most town centres were being converted into under-cover shopping malls.

The Co-op closed its Priestgate departments in April and May 1986, allowing the bulldozers onto the site in the early 1990s so that the Cornmill Shopping Centre could open on August 27, 1992.

Now, therefore, the only reminders of the days when you could get anything in the Darlington Co-op are things like William Starr’s 78rpm.

The book fair is Saturday, October 22, 2016, from 10am to 4pm at Durham School in Quarryheads Lane, DH1 4SZ. Further information on 01833-622181.

Do you have any leftovers or memories from the co-op days? We'd love to hear from if you do: chris.lloyd@nne.co.uk