A DRAGON’S former den is on the market for just a few pounds short of £2m.
The Lindens is tucked away in the west end of Darlington with lovely views over rolling farmland down to the River Tees, and when entrepreneur Duncan Bannatyne put it on the market in 2004, it became the first house in the town to have a million pound price tag.
The Lindens, Darlington, in 2004 when it became the first £1m house in the town. It has since been extended to the left
The Lindens is a large 1930s property – in Mr Bannatyne’s day, it was described as having “a drawing room, dining room, garden room, three shower rooms, a double garage and a playroom. There is also a gymnasium, a detached housekeeper's cottage and a landscaped two-acre garden” – with a little mystery at its heart.
The front of The Lindens when Duncan Bannatyne put it on the market in 2004
It is off Carmel Road South and had previously been on the market in 2000 for £675,000. Today it is for sale for £1,950,000 and the estate agent says that it is “arguably one of the finest homes in Darlington” and that it has been “extensively refurbished and sympathetically extended” since Mr Bannatyne’s day.
It is thought that no house in Darlington has yet gone on the market for a full £2m.
Duncan Bannatyne and Joanne McCue around their kitchen table in the late 1990s
In 2004, Mr Bannatyne had already made a fortune through his care home and children’s nursery businesses, and was moving into health clubs. He was also exploring TV opportunities and in his biography, Anyone Can Do It, he says that that caused a split with his long term partner, Joanne McCue.
“I carried on living in our wonderful house in Darlington called The Lindens,” he writes, “but after a few months there on my own, I realised that it was full of memories and put it on the market.”
But, confusingly, this is not the only house in the west end to be called The Lindens, a name that refers to lime trees which must once have grown on the site.
The other Lindens is a stone’s throw from the dragon’s former den. It was the first of The Lindens, built in Coniscliffe Road in 1865 for industrialist Henry Maddison – he was a Victorian dragon. He was born in Stanhope and with his business partner, JR Ord, he came to control the quarries of Weardale, Teesdale and Wensleydale.
Ord & Maddison then diversified into agricultural implement manufacture.
The first Lindens in the 1880s. It was on Coniscliffe Road and now has a different name
Henry, a freemason, declined invitations to join Darlington council but when he died in 1891, he was a member of the Board of Guardians for Darlington and Stanhope plus a governor of the Queen Elizabeth Grammar School.
Henry (above: picture courtresy of the Darlington Centre for Local Studies) had had the Lindens built in large grounds near Salutation corner – the crossroads where Coniscliffe Road went over Carmel Road. Soon after his death, a new road, called Linden Avenue, was laid out on the edge of the grounds and a new villa, called The Knoll, was built.
The Lindens with The Knoll alongside in the 1890s
Henry’s son, William, took on both the company and The Lindens. He was an inventive engineer, and in 1910 gained a patent for his “rotary cylindrical screen” – a device which separated stones according to their size.
William died in 1917, and in 1924 the new owner of The Lindens, a gentleman called J Vart, changed the property’s name to Stone House.
This meant that when a handful of large properties off Carmel Road South were developed in the 1930s, one of them could be called The Lindens without creating any clashes. We think the first resident might have been a John Dixon, whose family may well have had a hand in developing these properties.
However, we would love to know more: who developed The Lindens and why would they choose the old name of a nearby property which was already commemorated in a street name? Any information would be welcome as we try to complete the story of the dragon’s former den.
Duncan Bannatyne in Haughton Road, Darlington, with the plans for his health club in the late 1990s
Back in 2004, Mr Bannatyne sold The Lindens within two months and moved to Wynyard. “It’s the kind of estate where you’re quite likely to bump into a Newcastle United footballer in the video shop,” he wrote in his 2008 book when there still were video shops on even the plushest estates.
Just to complete the story, having sold The Lindens, Mr Bannatyne and Ms McCue got back together. He threw a party in March 2006 to celebrate her 40th birthday at his Haughton Road health club which featured a set by the 1980s band The Human League, and they married in Norton in November 2006. However, their divorce in 2011 provided plenty of salacious column inches for the tabloids.
By happy coincidence, Ord & Maddison features in the new exhibition in the Darlington Centre for Local Studies in Darlington library. The exhibition has been put together by Robin Coulthard and is about a beautifully book produced in 1908 to promote North East industries to countries such as France, Italy, Japan, Argentina, and Australia. It was called England's Vast Industries, and it features colourful images and articles about many local companies, including Thomas Summerson, Cleveland Bridge, Darlington Wire Mills, Darlington Forge Company, Blake Boiler Wagon & Engineering Co and Parkin Ness. The Ord & Maddison even features in the bottom left hand corner a "rejector screen", which looks very similar to the "rotary cylindrical screen" that WHF Maddison, of The Lindens, patented in 1910
With thanks to Mandy Fay and Robin Coulthard for their help
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