Pictures: Darlington’s Skinnergate how it looked in years gone by

WE'VE had a delve into the Skinnergate packet of pictures in the Darlington photo-archive in The Northern Echo's library. The earliest inhabitants of the street were in the leather trade and a skin market was held here. Although regarded as a backwater, several of the buildings in the street date from the first half of the 18th Century. Many of these pictures were taken to mark the first Civic Trust scheme in the North-East to try to revive a retail street in 1963. The trust had devised a "sunny" colour scheme of greens and yellows, and each shopkeeper had been told to remove excess signage and what colours to paint his shop. Although there were grumbles, about 90 per cent of shopkeepers joined the scheme.