WORKING in a rolling mill, where the metal is heated to a blistering 1,300 degrees, is thirsty work, and so the street outside the gates of Darlington’s rolling mill was lined with thirst-quenching pubs.
Heading north along Whessoe Road, in the space of a few hundred yards there was the Globe, the Locomotive, the Rise Carr Hotel, the Stag's Head, the Forge Inn, the Prince of Wales Hotel, Warwick’s Brewery, the Elm Tree and then, finally, the Alexandra Hotel.
Yes, the Alexandra. Known as “the Alex” or just “the Blob”, it was a remarkable place: in the 1970s, it was the centre of whippet racing and in the 1980s, it was visited by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, when she was at the height of her powers.
It featured in our list of lost pubs in Memories 475, and we have been inundated with information about it.
“In the mid to late 1970s, I was a member of the Durham branch of Camra, and I well remember this pub which was in our local good beer guides for the excellence of the Camerons beers that it kept,” says Richard Morgan.
“It stood on the corner of Whessoe Road and Elmtree Street, opposite an area of green on which whippet racing took place on Sundays.
“In those days, Sunday opening hours were restricted to noon to 2pm and 7pm to 10.30pm, but the Alex was one of very few which had a licence to open on Sunday afternoons for the "convenience of persons attending the whippet racing" ¬- or, of course, anyone else with a thirst!
“In the days before all day licensing one got to know all the quirks, such as when each town had its market day as pubs were allowed to stay open for people attending the market, but this was the only pub I knew of with extended Sunday licensing.
“I never remember witnessing any whippet racing, but the pub did a good trade anyway.”
Our picture was taken in 1972 and shows the landlord Derek Wilson and his wife behind the bar with their whippets.
Neither the names of the whippets nor Mrs Wilson are recorded on the back of the picture, but Ron Nixon says: “The landlady was nicknamed ‘Fagash Lil’ because she had no problem pulling pints with a cigarette hanging from her lips – without dropping any ash into the beer!”
Whippet racing must have taken place on what is now the North Park football pitch. Can anyone tell us anymore about this?
Towards the end of the 1970s, the Alex closed as a pub and was taken over by the neighbouring rolling mills, which turned it into an executive suite with offices, board room, dining room, and hotel for visitors.
As it was the firm’s headquarters, Prime Minister Thatcher visited the Alex on September 11, 1985, before going on a tour of the mills. She was, of course, accompanied by Darlington’s new Conservative MP, Michael Fallon, who had won the seat from Labour two years earlier with a thin majority of 3,438 votes.
“I was only 13 at the time of her visit,” says Lynn Wylie, who grew up in nearby Longfield Road. “I remember it was late afternoon when she arrived at the hotel, and as we had gone along after school, we were still in our uniforms.
“My dad was the Darlington Labour Party secretary, so we were from a rather anti-Thatcher household.
“She arrived in a large cavalcade with her limousine and police bikes, which seemed to take over the whole of Whessoe Road.
“There was a fairly large crowd and we were all along the Whessoe Road path on the North Park side, with police keeping everyone under control.
“We were able to get to the front and opposite the hotel itself, so had a good view of her getting out of her car, and entering the hotel.
“I remember her waving and smiling to the crowd, and us shouting ‘Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, out, out, out.’
“The policeman near us didn't seem impressed by our shouting, and I remember him giving us a rather stern look. As we were kids, this frightened the living daylights out of us, so we stopped our welcome greeting, and stood there quietly until she disappeared into the hotel.
“I don't remember how long she stayed in there, as we soon lost interest - it was time for tea, so walked home.”
THANKS also to D Cleminson, Brian Ford, Mark Anderson of Middleton St George whose father used to drink in the Alex, Les Earnshaw, John Young and all the others who have been in touch.
THE rolling mills was formed in 1868 by Fry, I’Anson & Co, which had been formed by Theodore Fry and Charles I’Anson who were industrialists with Quaker connections. The first streets on Rise Carr were named after them: Fry Street and I’Anson Street.
The Alexandra Hotel must have been built at this early stage. It bears the name of Princess Alexandra of Denmark who married the Prince of Wales in 1863 – Denmark Street and Wales Street nearby in North Road are also named after the happy couple, who took to the throne in 1901.
In 1935, the mills was taken over by FR Simpson of Oldbury, Birmingham, and became known as the Darlington and Simpson Rolling Mills (DSRM). During the Second World War, it rolled sections for Nissen huts, armour-piercing shells, tanks and Bailey bridges, and was so important that Gracie Fields visited to boost morale in 1941.
After the war, it became part of British Steel. It gradually wound down during the 1970s and 1980s and its closure was announced, with the loss of 234 jobs, in October 1998.
OF those other pubs, the Globe and the Locomotive can still be seen on Whessoe Road. Both closed within the last 15 years and have been converted to residential use, but their corner doors still remain.
The Rise Carr Hotel was built in the late 1860s by eccentric stonemason Robert Borrowdale who decorated it with distinctive but grotesque carved heads. It closed in 2002 and was demolished in 2004. Disappointingly, none of Mr Borrowdale’s heads survived.
The Forge Inn and the Stag’s Head were both opposite the gates of the mills, although the Forge was wrecked by an explosion caused by a mouse in 1902. The mouse chewed through a gas pipe which was next to the kitchen fire.
All traces of The Prince of Wales Hotel in Fry Street and Warwick’s Victoria Brewery in I’Anson Street were destroyed when the 1860s terraces of Rise Carr were replaced in the 1960s.
The Alexandra survives because when the mills closed, the bridge club that met in the factory offices took over the hotel. It is now called the St George’s Bridge Club.
MIKE GUNN and John Waddleton have added to our list of lost pubs with names beginning A to G: the Alma, latterly the Brown Trout and Beer Engine, in Cockerton; Blacketts in Bondgate, which used to be a timber merchant and is now a doctors’ surgery; the Caledonian in Northgate; the Cleveland Arms on Albert Hill; the Dolphin in the Market Place; the Firth Moor on Burnside Road, and the Forge Tavern on Albert Hill.
If you have any memories or stories connected to any of these pubs, please let us know. And what more is there to tell about the pubs of Rise Carr: did you go whippet racing there, or did you see Margaret Thatcher there? Please email chris.lloyd@nne.co.uk
IT is impossible to keep the co-op out of our stories at the moment, and Trevor Jones remembers there was one almost opposite the entrance to the rolling mills.
“It was between Spring Street and Eldon Street,” he says. “There was also a Brittain’s bakery, a paper shop and a launderette, and on the corner of Spring Street and Lock Street there was a gents’ barber whose name was Clark.”
Bill Elgie used to run errands to the Rise Carr co-op. “It was quite a large shop and I still remember my mam's divi number 65 years later – 9416,” he says.
LAST week, we mentioned a fabulous collection of late Victorian Darlington shop poster-calendars that we have come by. This one was given away to customers by Timothy Thompson of the Rise Carr Provision Stores in 1889. He was at 52, Whessoe Lane and Hammer Street, so directly opposite the rolling mills, and as well as being a family grocer and tea dealer, he sold Wensleydale cheese and was a butter and egg depot.
The collection has several other Rise Carr posters, which we are putting on our new North-East Memories Facebook group. Please search us out and have a look.
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