Once common, the lack of public toilets is surely now an inconvenience

Whatever you call these places that you go to when you need to go, one thing is for certain: they are all going. In fact, most have gone.

In recent weeks, we have counted at least 20 public conveniences which once lined the streets and adorned the parks of Darlington. All of them have gone. Most other towns have been caught just as short.

In Memories 297, we heralded the red, late-Victorian cast iron urinal in Great Ayton as the greatest toilet of our time, but several readers have pointed us in the direction of the black, post-1880 cast iron urinal that is a fascinating feature in the Victorian street in Stockton’s Preston Park museum.

It was manufactured by Walter Macfarlane and Company’s Saracen foundry in Glasgow. So much Victorian cast iron municipal metalwork came from Macfarlane’s – regular readers may remember that the bandstands in Darlington’s South Park, in Stockton’s Ropner Park, in Beamish Museum and in Ripon are among the many Macfarlane bandstands pattern number 279 that still survive. The lavish metal drinking fountain in Shildon’s Hackworth Park is from Macfarlane, as are our urinals.

“They were used by men and women, but mainly men as the Victorian public were concerned with ladies risking their privacy,” said an expert in toilets at Preston Park. “They developed alongside public spaces in the Victorian period. In towns and cities at this time, many toilets were built underground due to space issues.”

Unfortunately, there is no catalogue of conveniences that tells us where these facilities were placed, but they were once very common.

For example, Gordon emails from Spennymoor. “When I was a young lad in the late 1930s, I would often pass a urinal built into the wall outside an iron foundry In Merrington Lane,” he says. “It was used mainly by the foundry workers but was open to the public.

“It consisted of a panel of cast iron about six foot high and eight foot long with short end panels pointing inward at right angles. The top foot of the panel was filigree cast so than an adult could see out but, looking in, you could only see the person’s head.

“The trough was directly behind the panel and, as far as I can remember, there was no water to dilute the urine or the smell.

“As a lad, I would call in on my way to see my relatives in Merrington Lane and was always fascinated by this advice cast in the iron: “PLEASE ADJUST YOU DRESS BEFORE LEAVING". As an innocent young lad, the mind boggled at the thought of a female trying to use this place!”

The urinal in Preston Park museum is extremely similar to the one that once graced Merrington Lane.

Back in Darlington, Barbara Timmens writes to bring to our attention a hitherto overlooked convenience which was at the Cockerton end of Brinkburn Road. It backed onto the Railway Athletic cricket ground and was for men only.

Through the powers of synchronicity, John Long has emailed a picture of the same convenience, taken by historian Peter Ryder in the late 1970s. It looks to have been the remains of an ornate, Victorian cast iron urinal – probably a Macfarlane, looking at the design – around which a brick shelter has been built.

It seems to have been in use into the early 1980s. It must, therefore, be within someone’s toilet-going memory. Who can tell us about it, and why was it there: for people using the sportsground or for men walking to work at Whessoe and the other Hopetown industries at the other end of Brinkburn Road?

And where else were they? Please let us know your tales of these long lost temples.

TALKING of subterranean toilets, we mentioned Darlington’s High Row conveniences in Memories 296. The toilets closed in 2007, and now they house the pump for the water feature that used to trickle down the steps.

The only other subterranean toilets in the area that we can think of are in Barnard Castle Market Place. These are said to be Victorian, but they have had a varied life recently, having closed in 2004, reopened in 2005, closed in 2006 and then reopened once more in 2011 after a £60,000 refurbishment.

Are they really Victorian, and are there other underground temples of relief in our area?

BRENDA BOARD of Northallerton has been “intrigued” by the recent articles on public toilets.

“As an 81-year-old handicapped person, I deplore the lack of easy access toilets in Darlington and North Yorkshire towns these days,” she says.

It wasn’t always thus. For 30 years, Brenda and her husband lived in Darlington and she remembers many of those that have featured here. Indeed, in one of those conveniences – in Stanhope Park – in the early 1970s, moved her to poetry.

It is a lovely little verse, which sums up the highs and the lows of the toilet-going experience that the current generation of toilet-free townspeople will never know:

Public Inconvenience

Why is it, when you’re desperate,

That you can never see

The thing that you are needing most –

A public lavatory!

With great delight I spotted one,

Down in a little park,

Passed the rose and the dahlias,

In a corner, dank and dark.

I vaguely thought of cleanliness

As through the gates I scurried;

My need was very urgent

And I wasn’t very worried!

I peered inside and looked about,

The floor was very clean;

Just newly washed and rather wet –

The attendant must have been.

There was no seat, no window pane,

No toilet roll at all,

No clothes hook and no door lock;

Just graffiti on the wall!

With great relief I pulled the chain,

And leapt back with a shout

As water showered over me –

More vandal tricks no doubt.

I washed my hands – the tap still worked –

There was no plug, that’s true.

There was no waste pipe, either –

So it all went on my shoe!

A naughty thought crept in my head

When walking down the footpath:

If only I’d a bit of chalk

To write “Ladies shower and footbath”.

IT is true to say that the toilet articles have been receiving worldwide interest.

Tim, who grew up near Darlington, emails from Texas. “I did find the article interesting. It seems strange that so many public loos have gone when people’s need to go still remains,” he says.

However, his wife is Texan. “She still finds it funny that most British towns have public toilets in the town center,” he says, slipping into an Americanism. “It’s rare to find anything like that over here.”

THE most photographed public toilet in recent weeks is in Aycliffe Village, where both David Lewis and Geoff Carr have both sent us pictures of it in its ivy-covered glory, and County Councillor William Blenkinsopp has been tasked with finding out information about them.

The toilets are in the centre of the village and once the Great North Road flowed past their doors, so these were a convenience for motorists. They were probably originally built by the Darlington Rural District Council, although their upkeep was down to the parish council.

“Maintenance was undertaken to replace damaged toilets in the 1990s with a stainless anti-vandal toilet pan,” says council information released to Cllr Blenkinsopp. However, despite having an anti-vandal toilet pan, the conveniences were shut in the late 1990s and were used as storage by community groups until Durham County Council sold them in 2012.

HERE’S a toilet statistic: the last standalone public convenience in Darlington was in East Row beneath the Covered Market. In April 2011, a 20p charge was introduced which caused usage to drop off – people migrated to the free toilet in the Dolphin Centre. But still 2,889 people a week used it, bringing in nearly £600, but this was not enough, and it closed in 2012.

TWO disappointments in our quest for toilet information. There is a large bricked up arch in the stone wall in Darlington’s Parkgate which holds up the land on which North Eastern Terrace stands. This is the southern approach to Bank Top station and we have information to suggest that inside the arch there was once a travellers’ toilet.

Sadly, no one has provided us with photographic evidence of such, but Martin Monk confirms it existed. “It was a very convenient convenience during the walk home to Brunton Street after a night on the town,” he says. “It was always dark inside, usually overflowing so you had to step carefully, and was extremely odorous!”

The second disappointment is that two weeks ago, a correspondent wondered if the curious building on North Road, at the foot of Cumberland Street, was ever a toilet. Katherine Williamson, in Darlington library, disabuses us of the notion, and tells us that it was a “trolleybus relay station” which was connected to the overhead wire electricity system.

To make up for this disappointment, Katherine delved into the Valerie Portass collection of photos, and found one taken by George Flynn in 2003 showing the sign for a toilet that was once in Haughton Road railway bridge. Once, we really were awash with toilets.

ANY toilet talk? Please email chris.lloyd@nne.co.uk

BLOB Many thanks to Paul Wilson of Stockton council for his help with today’s article.