What is the story behind this Darlington streetlamp?

A dog passes the mayor's lamp, with the inevitable result, in February 1980 in Lewes Road when Cllr Alan Gill was mayor

It is a tradition that has flickered in and out of life for the best part of century, but now the light seems to have gone out on it, beaten by rust and cost.

The gaslamp was originally one of the four ornamental lamps which stood around Pease’s statue on High Row, which was unveiled in 1875. The first lamps around the statue were globe-shaped, but they were soon replaced with the more conventional canopy top.

The first lamps beneath Joseph Pease's statue were glass globes - the fence has yet to be built around the statue when this picture was taken

The globe lamps have been replaced by the canopy lamps, one of which became the mayor's lamp. This picture was taken before 1890 when the old King's Head was demolished to be replaced by the existing hotel

The lamps disappeared from the statue’s foot around the end of the 19th Century – perhaps with traffic increasing on what was then the Great North Road, they had become a hazard.

But someone then had the bright idea of placing one of the leftover Pease lamps outside the home of the town mayor during their year of office.

This is a custom carried on in towns throughout the United Kingdom and across the world. It seems to have originated when, after a great ceremony, a newly appointed mayor processed through the streets to his home. At the head of the procession were lantern bearers who placed their lanterns outside the mayor’s house – this explains why in quite a few towns, there are two ceremonial mayoral lamps.

The burning torches not only reminded the mayor, who may have over-celebrated his election, where he lived, but they pointed out his residence to townspeople who were in trouble and needed the immediate assistance of the first citizen.

As in many towns that follow this tradition, the glass in the lamp was decorated with the borough coat of arms and the word “mayor”.

When the mayor’s year of office came to an end, the lamp was uprooted and taken to the pavement outside the home of the new mayor.

A local poet wrote a rhyming ditty about the migrating lamp, called The Mayor’s Lament:

Farewell, farewell, aesthetical Lamp
Next week you will go from my door
And your beautiful light
Will illumine the night
And show where I live no more.
Peripatetic, elegant Lamp
Very soon you’ll no longer be there,
In the dark of the night
To proclaim by your light
That AWR is the mayor.
Mayoral, Borough Armorial Lamp,
To some other house you will go.
When I return late at night
No more by your light
‘Puffing Billy’ and the ‘Pick’ will you show.

Darlington’s first mayor, Henry Pease, was elected in December 1867 but we can’t spot anyone in the list with the initials AWR to date this poem, and we don’t know what antics Puffing Billy and the Pick would be getting up to in the dark.

The custom died out during the Second World War, but was revived by Alderman Ben Dodd in 1945 who had it placed outside his Cockerton home.

The mayor's lamp goes up in Pierremont Drive in 1964 outside Cllr Alf Bird's house. Also on the pic is the mayoral car, the extremely rare Chrysler Coronado, reputedly one of only eight in Europe

It then died out once more only to be revived in 1963 by Alderman Alf Bird. Lots of people got in touch to say that our “mystery” picture in Memories 539 showed the standard being placed outside his home at the end of Pierremont Drive.

Cllr Bird (above) was a builder by trade and a director of Darlington Football Club. He first stood for the council in 1953 as an independent, even though he was a member of the Conservative Club – he believed party politics should not enter local affairs. By the time he became mayor, he was firmly in the Conservative camp.

Alf Bird's advert, courtesy of Mark Cooper

After Cllr Bird, the custom faded away, but The Northern Echo archives are full of mayors saying how they were reviving the historic tradition after a couple of years of darkness – and how they were paying for it at their own expense.

For example, Eric Jackson revived it in 1970 (above, outside his home in Staindrop Road), Cliff Hutchinson revived it in 1974 and it then kept going until 1983 when Jim Skinner decided it wasn’t worth the candle.

In May 1980, the mayor's lamp was taken from outside Cllr Allan Gill's house in Lewes Road to the home of the new mayor Cllr George Priestley, right, who lived in Hurworth

But Barrie Lamb had it outside his toy shop in Cockerton in 1989; Stella Robson had it outside her home in 1995; Doris Jones resurrected it in 2002 in Middleton St George where it became a tourist attraction. "It is absolutely beautiful," she said when it was installed. "It had more visitors than the Eiffel Tower last weekend. People, not necessarily just from the village, rolled up to admire it."

Then Bryan Thistlethwaite (above) revived the lamp once more in 2010, and Charles Johnson in 2013 may be the last mayor to have had the full kit and caboodle of the ornamental pole and the light.

By the time Nick Wallis became mayor in 2019, the pole was too corroded to be safe, so Chris McEwan in 2020, had the lamptop placed on a neighbour’s ornamental pole.

The current mayor, Cyndi Hughes, who we reckon is the 150th person to be Darlington mayor since 1867, would have had to place the fancy lamp on top of a bog standard pole, and so she opted for another way of marking out the mayoral residence.

“I have a flagpole and it has a mayoral flag flying from it,” she says. “Perhaps this is a new tradition.”

So the lamp is back in storage. It is a shame, because every mayor says how much local people like the tradition and ask after the lamp. The lamp also serves a very visible reminder of the presence of the mayor and the council.

However, due to the ravages of time, the corrosion of rain, the stones of vandals and the conversion from gas to electricity, it is unlikely that any part of it survives from the days when lamps stood around the foot of Pease’s statue.