Cricketers pub in Darlington set for new innings in the town

Ever since a batsman known as “The Major”, who played against WG Grace, became landlord 150 years ago, the pub overlooking the inner ring road has been known as The Cricketers, but with the help of a celebrity drag queen called “Miss Annbag”, on Monday it will be reborn as the East End Working Men’s Club.

The club (above), formed by railwaymen in 1913 in a couple of terraced houses in St John’s Place, is being made homeless by the regeneration of Bank Top station, so landlords Paul and Michelle Gill are moving it to the pub (below, in the 1960s) which has a direct connection to the earliest days of cricket.

Darlington’s first cricket ground was a field off Park Street, somewhere near where the police and fire stations are today. Gentlemen with big whiskers and tall top hats played there from the 1830s as the game began to become popular. They had a scoreboard and “a large wooden erection” in which Mrs Raper served tea, and “numerous and well spirited spectators smoked their church wardens, drank their beer and criticised play in tones intended to reach the players’ ears”.

Darlington from the air in 1954. The Cricketers is the thin building in the middle of the picture, next to the great hulk of St Hilda's Church

In 1848, an All England 11 played against a Darlington and neighbourhood 22 on the ground which was described as the “pleasantest in England”. This may be an exaggeration because although it had the River Skerne and the elegant spire of St Cuthbert’s Church as its backdrop, the ground was surrounded by squalid terraces of slums.

Nevertheless, a crowd of 2,300 watched the second day of the game, which the Darlington 22 won by nine wickets.

It could have been that the peculiarly narrow pub on Parkgate was the cricketers’ local, but it was then known as The Malt Shovel. At the start of the brewing process, the maltster has to turn the germinating grains, which are laid out on the brewery floor, every eight hours to stop their roots getting hold and he would use a shovel that would have been personally made for him.

On October 3, 1866, the cricketers played their last game at Park Street and on November 1, they signed a £75 contract with Silas Usher, a drainage contractor from York, to create a cricket field a few hundred yards away on a boggy bit of land beside the Skerne. This would become Feethams, still the home of Darlington Cricket Club, and Mr Usher agreed to “cut and cart away from the old cricket ground” sods of turf which he relaid at the new ground ready for the start of the 1867 season.

One of the leading players of the day was Harry “the Major” Thompson. He had joined the club as a 19-year-old in 1856, and had scored his first 50 on the Park Street ground in 1864, but he really came into his own at Feethams.

He was a batsman, wicket-keeper and lob bowler, and in 1873 he starred as 18 Darlington players took on the United South of England XI led by WG Grace at Feethams. In the first innings against “the cracks” who were the best and fastest bowlers in the country, the Major “commenced to play the balls merrily” and top-scored with 46. In the second, he had reached a commendable 39 when Henry Charlwood, who played in the first Test match for England against Australia, come on to bowl his “underhand lobs”. Charlwood’s third lob deceived the Major, hit him on the leg and rolled onto his stumps, dislodging the bails.

Henry Charlwood, who bowled the Major at Feethams in 1873. He ended up running a hotel in Scarborough

The Major played for Durham County Cricket Club in their first proper match in 1882, and before he retired in 1884, he had scored 1,723 runs and taken 66 wickets for Darlington.

In 1872, he had become licensee of the Malt Shovel in Parkgate and changed its name to The Cricketers. Perhaps it was he who commissioned the famous plasterwork on the front of the pub showing three stumps, two bats and a cricket ball (below).

In 1878, the Major became the first groundsman at Feethams, a position he held until 1901. With his wife and four daughters, he ran the refreshment tent on match days, and with his skill and dedication, he turned the ground into one of the finest in the north.

Lord Hawke (above), the Yorkshire and England captain, commended the Major on Feethams and said “the Yorkshire XI have never played on a better wicket at any time”. He gave him a life member’s ticket for Yorkshire and Harry “often availed himself of the privilege and visited many of the champion county’s engagements”.

He moved on from the Cricketers to the Cleaver in Skinnergate and then to the Black Swan Hotel (above) in Parkgate which, like the Cricks, was just a good outfield throw from the first ground.

He died at the Swan in 1903 at the age of 66.

“Every effort was made to deal with the malady from which Mr Thompson was suffering and he visited Newcastle and London several times,” said the Echo’s obituary. “As recently as last week he visited the metropolis for the purpose of being operated upon but the specialist consulted deemed such a proceeding inadvisable.” He returned home and died a few days later.

An almost iconic view of the Cricketers with the three slender chimneys of the power station looking like three cricket stumps behind it - the chimneys were demolished in 1982

For 125 years, The Cricketers retained the name the Major had given it, until the 1980s, when it became Walkers. In the early 1990s, it was tripled in size so it lost its tag as the narrowest pub but at least it regained its cricketing name.

Lynn and Kenny Beagle, with mayor Eric Roberts, celebrate the reopening of the Cricketers in March 1991 after they had doubled the size of the pub that was once Darlington's narrowest

In 2016, it became an American diner called Huckleberrys which specialised in serving supersize burgers, but for the last couple of years it has been empty at least on its ground floor – there’s a dance academy on the first floor and a theatre company at the top.

The Cricketers this week dressed up as the East End WMC

It is great that this historic building is getting a new lease of life but that does mean a big upheaval for the East End which is leaving its home of 110 years.

“It is very sad,” said manageress Michelle. “We would be staying, and bouncing, if it wasn’t for what’s going to happen with the station. Some of our members are in their nineties and have been coming in since they were boys – one of them was in the army, so he got in when he was 18 otherwise he would have had to wait until he was 21.”

The club has 425 members – it costs £8-a-year to join and new members are welcome – and the mayor and Miss Annbag are going to open its new home on Monday evening when there will be a buffet and a 5s and 3s tournament with £100 going to the winner – the Cricketers’ name might have gone but the Major would surely have approved of the sporting connection being continued.

READ MORE: EAST END CLUB'S LAST NIGHT

The Cricketers on the far right of this 1950 photo, with the power station dominating the skyline behind