EVERY town anywhere in the world that has ever been touched by a railway has had a pub, a tavern, an inn or a hotel with the word “railway” in its name.
But which was the first of the railway pubs?
In Memories 577, we told of the 200th anniversary celebrations of the Inauguration Day of the Stockton & Darlington Railway when, at St John’s Well on the edge of Stockton town centre, the first rail was laid by chairman Thomas Meynell, of Yarm.
When the railway opened on September 27, 1825, it built a pub near the site to refresh its passengers, so the Railway Tavern at Stockton vies with the Railway Tavern in Northgate, Darlington, to be the world’s first railway pub.
However, hanging on the wall in Donald Raper’s home in a Teesdale village is a document that reminds him of another contender with perhaps the strongest of all claims.
He has the printed minutes of a meeting held at Darlington Town Hall on November 13, 1818, in which the railway pioneers resolve to build a railway or tramway, and not a canal, from the south Durham coalfield to the mouth of the Tees at Stockton “and to carry it into effect with as little delay as possible”.
They resolve to raise money for such a purpose and to ask Parliament for permission to build the line.
This document, complete with a map of the railway’s route (below), hung for many years in the George and Dragon in Yarm, as part of its memorabilia connected to another important S&DR committee meeting that was held in the pub on February 12, 1820.
The Toulson family who were landlords of the Railway Inn, now the Cleveland Bay, in Eaglescliffe. Parents Julia and John are on either side of their children Doris, Alice, Hannah, Jack and Julia
Donald’s great aunt, Louisa “Weeza” Birch, was landlady of the George and Dragon before the Second World War and when she left, she gave the document to her sister, Julia Toulson, who was landlady at the Railway Inn at Eaglescliffe, at the north end of Yarm bridge.
Donald was always told that the Railway, now known as the Cleveland Bay, was the world’s first.
It was built by Mr Meynell (above) at the terminus of the Yarm branchline, which ran about a mile off the main track of the S&DR.
The branchline opened on October 17, 1825, when the Durham County Advertiser reported: "In the evening about 60 respectable tradesmen met at the new inn at the end of the Yarm Branch of the Railway, to celebrate the event, as also that of opening the said inn, where an excellent supper was provided by the landlord, Mr Snowdon.”
It remained the New Inn until the mid-1850s when it adopted the name of the Railway Inn.
The Cleveland Bay in Eaglescliffe - the world's first purpose-built railway pub. This picture was taken in 2013 before creeper covered the front of the pub
The late Brendan Boyle, who researched the pubs of the line for the Friends of the Stockton & Darlington Railway, believed that this was the world’s first pub purpose-built to serve a railway – a fabulous claim to fame of which the Cleveland Bay is still very proud.
Landlord Peter Rafferty outside the creeper-covered Cleveland Bay
“When I was a boy, I used to be allowed to stand behind the bar when it was full of Canadian airmen from Goosepool,” says Donald, who lives with his wife Valerie in Winston. “They made quite a fuss of me, giving me cards out of the Canadian cigarettes, and there was always a piano going in the back room.”
When his family left the pub after the war, the framed document went with them to record their place in railway history.
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