THERE was a bloomer in last week's Echo Memories which featured Jimmy Blumer's old aerial photographs. It had nothing to do with our esteemed photographic friend, but was entirely of our own making.

Many people spotted that it was not the Darlington Building Society that sandwiched the pub in the 1970 photograph of Tubwell Row, but the Darlington Co-operative Society. No one, though, could remember the name of the pub.

"It's not the Queen's Head, that's further up, and it's not the Golden Cock," said one caller.

"What the hell was it?"

It was the Raby Hotel, demolished in 1988 and already disappeared from the memory.

But the Raby, in its day, was one of Darlington's oldest and most used watering holes. It even boasted its own ghost.

It started life deep in the mists of time as the Pack Horse Inn. It was already well established when, in 1792, George Peacock became landlord - a position he retained until his death there, aged 66, on July 16, 1834. He left two sons and four daughters.

His youngest daughter had married a John Brown, who took over the lease.

In turn, their son, George, became landlord, and he has a place in Darlington history as the town's first taxi proprietor. In the 1860s, his green four-wheeled horse-drawn cab was the first to carry passengers for fares.

But the Pack Horse in this period was also deeply traditional. It was said to be the last pub in town with a closet bed. Once common, closet beds were separated from the bar by a curtain or double doors. Their use can only be guessed at - but surely nothing more untoward happened between their sheets than a customer, who had over-indulged and had temporarily lost the use of his legs, sleeping it off?

The owner of the Pack Horse had been, since time immemorial and like much of Darlington, the Vane family of Raby Castle.

In 1842, William Harry Vane, the first Duke of Cleveland and third Earl of Darlington, died. His affairs were so complicated that an Act of Parliament was required to sort them out.

The Duke of Cleveland's Estate Act was passed in 1867. The blurb on the front of it says: "An Act for authorizing building and improving leases and sales of certain parts of the estates at Darlington, Barnard Castle and Wolverhampton comprised in or subject to certain deeds of settlement and the will of the late William Harry, first Duke of Cleveland."

The contents inside the Act are even more impenetrable, but among the list of properties to be disposed of is the Pack Horse Inn which, in 1867, was rented to George Brown at an annual rate of £24.

The purchaser of the pub was Joseph Kimber Wilkes, himself an interesting man. He had been born in Southwark, London, in 1826. His father was "a large bookseller" (whether he sold very large books, or whether his bookshop was very large, or whether he was portly of stature, the history books do not explain) who sent Joseph to school at Startforth, near Barnard Castle.

To get to school, the young boy sailed up the coast from London to Stockton and then caught a stagecoach to Barney.

After leaving school, Joseph worked for the Great Western Railway and then for Flowers, the brewer, in North Wales.

In the 1850s, he returned to marry Miss Minikin, a Barney lass, whose father was "a large pawnbroker" (see above). In time, Joseph inherited the business.

He also joined the town council in 1879, became mayor in 1885 and was made an alderman in 1888. He died in Westwood House, Woodlands Road, in 1903 - the "passing bell" in the old town hall tolled, the municipal flag flew at half-mast, and a street off Corporation Road was named after him.

Anyway, it was this Joseph Kimber Wilkes who bought the Pack Horse around 1869 and demolished it. In its place he built a new hotel with six bedrooms, seven stalls for horses and a 50ft by 15ft concert hall. In 1870, he approached the second Duke of Cleveland for permission to call it the Raby Hotel and to use the Vane arms as its sign. Permission was granted.

In 1871, Mr Wilkes put the Raby Hotel up for sale. He estimated its rental value at £200 per annum - a princely increase on the £24 the Duke had been earning four years earlier.

Also in the sale were three two-roomed cottages in the yard behind the Raby. The new owner, John Baty, seems to have used these as a the venue for his monthly horse sales, and they also became the holding - and slaughtering - place for geese at the Monday market.

So the Raby Hotel became established in Tubwell Row, even gathering its own ghost. The town was reminded of its long past in 1957, when a 10ft deep red-brick well was re-discovered in Raby Yard with 4ft of "pure water" in it.

But since the 1930s, the Darlington Co-operative Society had been avariciously eyeing the Raby Hotel. The Co-op had bought up properties on either side of it and was desperate to complete its run. But John Smith's Brewery stood firm, and so, in 1962, the Co-op began to sandwich the pub.

Perhaps it was the Co-op's way of gaining revenge on the reluctant Raby that two such hideous buildings should be built around it, their loudspeaker architecture drowning out Wilkes' modest Victorian design.

It may even have been these abominations that caused the Raby Hotel's ghost to appear for the last time in the mid-1960s.

She was spotted, in a long white gown, combing her hair on a bed in the attic, but never re-appeared.

In 1976, the brewery changed the Raby's name to the Pied Piper, and as such it traded until 1987, when Pengap bought it.

Pengap was the developer of the Cornmill Shopping Centre, and while there were a few tears the following year when the Raby was demolished, there were absolutely none when its Co-operative neighbours were also reduced to rubble.

If you have any information or memories about any of the subjects in this column, please write to: Echo Memories, The Northern Echo, Priestgate, Darlington, DL1 1NF, or email chris.lloyd.co.uk