Darlington's lost pubs - what memories do you have of them?

“One was the Cleaver Hotel in Skinnergate; another was near the Regal picture house (that’s the old name for the Odeon cinema on Northgate), and another was on Albert Hill.”

His question comes in response to Memories 475 in which the Cleaver Hotel featured in the first part of our lost pubs of Darlington. Can you complete the names of the other two Cleavers?

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This is the second part, and it is quite clear that we’ve already lost control of the agenda. We were going to do it in alphabetical order, but readers have been sending in thoughts about disappeared pubs willy-nilly. Which is great.

“I wonder how many people would remember where the Woolpack was, or the Rising Star, or the Butchers,” asks Fred, going backwards through the alphabet.

The Woolpack in Freemans Place just before its demolition in the late 1960s. Now the Halford’s car park is on its site

The Rising Star, seen here in 1962, was at the bottom of Lower Priestgate, on its corner with Clay Row. The big building in the background is Peases Mill. The pub, like all of the Clay Row area, was cleared in the late 1960s to make way for the inner ring

The Woolpack and the Rising Star can be seen above – does anyone have a clue about the Butchers, or indeed any of the other Cleavers?

Memories of any of these pubs, or any other lost pubs, would be very welcome. Please email chris.lloyd@nne.co.uk

Lord Nelson

ALAN BLEASBY sent in this picture of the Lord Nelson Inn which was in Parkgate. His father was licensee there in the mid-1950s.

“The Lord Nelson was a Magnet pub and it was demolished in the late 1960s to make way for the magistrates’ court,” says David Reed, who recalls visiting the Lord Nelson once when he was 15.

“Behind it, there was a lane which lead to an area where I recall travellers and showfolk used to reside,” he says.

"Another pub to add to your dead and gone list is the Waterloo in Darlington Market Place," says Ray Vincent. "John and Jean ran the pub when I met my wife there in 1967 when I was home on leave while serving in Royal Navy Submarine service

Today, the inner ring road sweeps on the east bank of the River Skerne in front of St Cuthbert’s Church, but in Victorian times this was the Clay Row area – a series of terraces crammed onto the river’s flood plain.

Consequently, flooding was a regular occurrence. In 1875, The Northern Echo reported that barrels of beer and spirits in the Lord Nelson’s cellar were "swimming about". "It is feared that some of the contents may be reduced below proof but up to last night this had not been ascertained," wrote the journalist, who was clearly very worried by the situation.

When the Lord Nelson was demolished, some of its fixtures and fittings apparently went to Beamish Museum – are they in the Sun Inn at the living museum (and, of course, the Sun Inn was a pub salvaged brick-by-brick from Bishop Auckland)?

The Railway Hotel, Darlington

LOTS of people drew our attention to the Railway Hotel near the Hopetown Cut. “It was known as ‘the red lamp’ because of the huge gas lamp directly outside,” says Fred Peacock in Shildon.

The Railway is an attractive building, overlooking the Stockton & Darlington Railway (S&DR). It is dated 1909 and in 2009, having ceased trading, it was converted into eight apartments and two houses.

It is really in Otley Terrace, which was probably named for Richard Otley, a surveyor connected to the S&DR in its earliest days. In 1830, he laid out the streets of Port Darlington, which was the settlement that grew into Middlesbrough where, in 1834, he started a pottery which is said to be Middlesbrough’s first business.

THERE is no one living who remembers the Black Lion which was one of the biggest pubs in the Clay Row area. It was on the corner with East Street – so near the rear entrance to the Wilko’s multi-storey car park.

When Darlington was a mill town, the Lion was called the Bishop Blaize Inn, as Bishop Blaize was the patron saint of wool-combers. Indeed, the bishop was said to have invented the wool comb, but because of his religious faith, he was tortured in his home town in Armenia, with his persecutors using his own iron combs to inflict pain upon him. He died from the persecution in 316AD, and many towns in the North-East had pubs dedicated to him.

Darlington’s Bishop Blaize changed its name in the 1860s to the Black Lion.

In 1909, the Lion was bought for £2,150 by Darlington council which demolished it to improve a corner where the electric trams struggled – the trams were kept in a garage where Bannatyne’s gym is today on Haughton Road and were having difficulty reaching the town centre.

The Hope Inn

THE HOPE INN in Yarm Road has closed in the last ten years. It looks a remarkably boring building, but beneath its squareness is quite a lot of history.

Because of its existence, Yarm Road was once known as “faith, hope and charity” – faith was St John’s Church at Bank Top, which was built in the late 1840s, and charity was the workhouse which from 1870 was behind the pub.

Players posing with a trophy outside the Hope Inn, in Yarm Road, Darlington. Any clues about the silverware on view?

But why was the pub called the Hope? There are two theories:

The pub was built around November 1825 when the Stockton & Darlington Railway took delivery of its second engine, which was called Hope;

Mary Hope was the first landlady, who created the alehouse from two private houses in 1859.

During the 1970s, the pub sign showed a picture of a Gloster Gladiator bi-plane. The Gladiator was Britain’s last fighter biplane, and its last major battle was the defence of Malta during the Second World War. Three biplanes saw off the entire Luftwaffe. Those biplanes were called Faith, Hope and Charity, and so the Hope Inn had one of them on its sign.

The Majestic, Houndgate

THE Majestic was an ancient inn with its front on Blackwellgate and its stables at its rear opening out onto Houndgate – the horses which pulled Darlington’s first fire engine were also kept in the Majestic’s stables.

The pub closed in 1909 after about 300 years of serving.

In its earliest days it must have had a different name as it is believed to have been named after the HMS Majestic which sank in 1816. When our front cover picture was taken, the pub sign had been updated to show the HMS Majestic launched in 1895 – this warship was sunk by a U-boat off the Gallipoli in 1915.

In the 1960s, a hideous building society building was constructed on the Majestic’s site. Since the Halifax left it, it has become occupied by a large hairdresser’s.