TODAY, it is exactly 200 years since Thomas Meynell was pulled by 300 cheering, singing navvies in his carriage from his home in Yarm five miles into Stockton, with the Yarm Town Band in front, playing joyfully away.
Stockton had seen nothing like it since June 1815, when the whole town had turned out to celebrate the defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo.
This was the “Inauguration Day” of the Stockton & Darlington Railway (S&DR), when the first rail was laid and the first railway rip-off was experienced.
A new film recreating this great moment in history is to receive its world premiere today in Stockton.
May 21, 1822, was declared a half-day holiday in the town, which was richly decorated for the occasion.
“The ships in the harbour displayed all the bunting they possessed, the town hall was gay with flags, and from many private houses streamed well worn banners which had done good service in commemorating in bygone years the successive victories by which the French had been driven off the ocean, and the hated Bonaparte deprived of his dreaded power,” said The Northern Echo in 1875.
Mr Meynell (above), of The Friarage in Yarm, was the chairman of the railway. With him in his carriage was Benjamin Flounders (below), who owned linen mills at Crathorne and who at the behest of his fellow Quakers in Darlington had invested heavily in the railway.
At the town hall that Thursday, Mr Meynell and Mr Flounders met the mayor of Stockton, Richard Jackson, and the recorder, Leonard Raisbeck, a solicitor who had also long been involved in the railway. Together, and with the band still playing, they processed down to St John’s Well, Stockton. The well – a spring of allegedly health-giving water gushing out of the ground – was near the riverside and just outside the town centre.
It was where, in October 1821, George Stephenson had grabbed a spade and, without any ceremony, turned the first turf to get proceedings under way.
Construction of the railway had properly begun on May 13, 1822, with the railway company awarding contracts to private individuals to prepare mile-long sections of ground. The greater the number of cuttings or earthworks in the section, the higher the value of the contract.
The wooden sleepers for the rails to sit on arrived promptly by boat from Portsea in Hampshire, but soon the navvies doing the digging ran in to other difficulties. On May 21, 1822, Stephenson wrote to the S&DR committee: “The dryness of the season and the strong nature of the clay in the cuttings have greatly hampered the spirits of the undertakers (the diggers), in consequence of which I think it prudent to advance the prince one penny per yard more than their bargains. I hope they will now go on cheerfully.”
Perhaps this was why, two days later, the navvies were in such a cheerful mood as they dragged Mr Meynell through the streets amid the bunting and the celebratory notes of the band.
Laying the first rail, on May 23, 1822, as imagined by John Wigton
At 3pm at St John’s Well, everything fell silent as Mr Meynell, the lord of the manor of Yarm, laid the first rail. He was a man of few words and didn’t feel the need to make a speech, or indeed say anything at all.
Instead, a celebratory cannon was let off in a nearby field and the band struck up the National Anthem.
“It was but a little rail, but it was a potent sceptre – the most potent sceptre by which man has ever ruled this planet,” said the Echo in 1875, explaining how this was the railway that got the world on track.
Then and now: St John's Crossing, Stockton, where the first rail was laid 200 years ago
Perhaps the lack of a speech added to the good mood of the 300 navvies who must have been tired after dragging Mr Meynell’s carriage for miles. It enabled them to adjourn without further ado to the Black Lion Hotel where they were treated to free bread, cheese and ale, while the VIPs returned to the town hall for a celebratory meal.
The Black Lion Hotel on the far right, before it was demolished in 1969
It probably grew into one of those long, hazy evening lubricated by plenty of free alcohol, and before closing time, an entrepreneurial boy toured the streets selling souvenirs of the historic day. At a halfpenny a time, he sold a document which said it was “a full and faithful report of what Mr Meynell said at the opening”.
The boy pocketed the souvenir-seekers’ ha’pennies and scarpered sharpish.
The purchasers opened up their mementoes only to discover to their horror that they had bought a blank sheet of paper.
“Hey,” they yelled after the fleeing boy, “there’s no speech here, you young rascal!”
“Ah knaw that,” replied the youth in a good local accent. “He m’yad n’yan!”
The important railwaymen sit down for their celebratory banquet in Stockton Town Hall, attended to by Margaret Foxton, as drawn by Sandra Johnson for the new film, The First Rail
A 20 minute film has been made of the events of exactly 200 years ago and will receive its world premiere at the Arc in Stockton on the evening of the anniversary.
The film, The First Rail, tells of the day through the eyes of Martha Howson (played by Angela Pickering), who was the landlady of the Black Lion Hotel where the workmen had their bread and cheese, and Margaret Foxton (Sandra Johnson), who laid on the banquet in the town hall. The taciturn Thomas Meynell (Martin Peagam) puts in an appearance along with a fictional navvy Jackie Thompson (played by Barry Thompson). All the “actors” are members of the Friends of the Stockton & Darlington Railway, and artwork by Sandra Johnson also helps tell the story.
The Arc is opening specially for the 6.30pm showing, which is free (although there will be a donations box), and tickets can be booked via the Arc’s website. The film will be followed by a Q&A session.
A First Rail Ale is being brewed by Three Brothers Brewery, of Stockton, for the anniversary and it will be in the Half Moon and House of Hops in Darlington, and the Golden Smog, Wasp’s Nest and Hope & Union in Stockton. It is said to be a traditional dark English beer of the style drunk in 1822.
Sandra Johnson's drawing from the new film which shows the Yarm Band in the streets of Stockton celebrating the laying of the first rail
ST JOHN’S WELL is now believed to be beneath where the 1825 Way dual carriageway meets Bridge Road.
It is extremely doubtful that any of the buildings that now stand on this corner stood in 1822 when Thomas Meynell laid his rail. The most well-known of the buildings is the Weigh House, which was built in 1825 beside the tracks where the first rail was laid. A weighing machine was placed in the tracks so the railway company charged people by weight for using the tracks. The machine operated from July 1826 until 1830 when growth of quayside traffic caused it to be moved elsewhere.
A drawing of how St John's Crossing looked in its railway heyday
THE ”navvies” that built the railway got their name from the word “navigator”, as they plotted the course of the line across the land. The first navvies built canals, but it was the railway that made the word stick in the English language – the Oxford English Dictionary’s first recorded written use of the word is in 1829, just four years after the opening of the Stockton & Darlington Railway.
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