How the power station came to tower over the town

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1897

GODALMING in Surrey in 1881 became the first town in the country to have a public electricity generator and the idea of “manufactured sunshine” quickly caught on. However, in Darlington, the council owned the gas company, which provided street lighting, and so was reluctant to allow a private electricity company to compete against it. Having held out against electricity as long as it could, it decided to begin work on its own £26,000 electricity station on Haughton Road.

1901, March 11

THE first 40 electric streetlamps were ceremonially turned on in the market place. They were 23ft high and each produced the light of 2,000 candles. But electricity was only generated between 6am and 10pm, and batteries were used to light the night.

Darlington's first electric tram from 1904

1904

WITH an electric tram service starting and large manufacturing companies, like the North Eastern Railway, plugging into the council’s power rather than rely on their own generators, Haughton Road began generating around the clock. And it generated a profit: £1,500-a-year.

1930

DARLINGTON householders enjoyed the second lowest electricity prices in the country because their power came from the council-run station supported by the rates. Darlington paid 0.38d-a-unit. Only Rotherham was cheaper, at 0.32d-a-unit.

Station B from St Cuthbert's Church tower, with the camouflage on one cooling tower clearly visible

1940, May 5

THE 1900 station had aged during the 1930s. In 1935, the National Grid was created allowing Darlington to receive power from anywhere so there were plans to build a large station to cover all Teesside. However, as war approached, it became clear that a large station would be vulnerable to attack and so Darlington was encouraged to build a £324,000 replacement – known as Station B – alongside the old Station A on Haughton Road. When it came on-stream, on May 5, 1940, the notorious turncoat broadcaster Lord Haw-Haw crackled over the airwaves to say that with its three large cooling towers and three large chimneys, it would soon be attacked by the Luftwaffe. He ended his message by saying that the “Darlington Town Hall Clock” was two minutes slow – and he was right. Was there a German spy in town? Perhaps because of this threat, the cooling towers were painted with a camouflage pattern – one man fell to his death applying it – which clearly deceived the Nazis as they were never hit.

1948

POWER supplies were nationalised, and the new the British Electricity Authority promised to do something about the "artificial drizzle" emanating from the cooling towers – the smoke from railway engines mixed with vapours coming out of the three chimneys and joined the cooling steam from the towers in falling as a permanently dirty drizzle which prevented housewives in the Bank Top area from hanging their white sheets on the line.

1976, October 15

HAVING not generated power for a year, Station B was officially closed down.

The scaffolding is put around the last cooling tower, behind the Cricketers pub, on May 9, 1979

1979, January 29

THE first of the three towers was blown up, as our dramatic pictures last week showed. Demolition of the other two continued over that summer. Once they had gone, people all over town reported that their colour TV reception magically improved.

A man with a pneumatic drill starts the demolition of the last cooling tower on June 1, 1979

1982

THE tall, slender chimneys came down one by one as these on-the-spot pictures from John Hill show:

TODAY

DUNCAN BANNATYNE’S empire, including a large gym, occupies much of the site, but Station B’s control centre still stands beside the main railway line on Haughton Road. It is sadly derelict, with blinds blowing out of the broken windows, although over the doorway, there is still a vivid version of the Darlington coat-of-arms complete with motto, “floreat industria” (let industry flourish), over the front door – a reminder of how the council once powered the town with the second cheapest electricity in the country.

ROBERT WAUGH worked at the Haughton Road power station from 1912 to 1958 and wrote a little history of it which his son-in-law, John Lloyd of Darlington, has kindly sent in.

Robert wrote how the earliest plant at Station A “consisted of two 60Kw, and later one 120Kw, DC generators and two middle wire boosters with a battery for standby and peak loads. It provided a 3 wire DC supply of 230 volts and 460 volts across the outer wires”.

When the electric tramcars were connected up in 1904, they required a 500 volt supply and an earth return that ran along the rails. However, when all the trams were on the network the battery that supplied the power would begin to fail and so horses had to be sent out to bring the trams in.

“Later on, it was decided to enter into the field of alternating current and in 1913 a Richardson Westgarth turbine with Siemens alternator of 1000 KVA and two rotary convertors of 250 KVA and 750 KVA were installed,” wrote Robert. “In the steam raising plant, we had a complement of five Lancashire boilers and some Babcock and Wilcox water tube boilers until eventually a total of eight were in commission.”

But when Station B came on-stream in 1940, all of the old Station A was decommissioned.

Borough Road in 1962 with the power station behind and an ambulance on call

“WHEN I was an apprentice TV engineer at Patersons in Coniscliffe Road, we had to convert some TVs to run on Direct Current (DC) because there was a direct line from the power station that supplied power to houses in the Borough Road area,” says Don Eccles in Gainford. “This was 70 years ago.”

Memories is no electrical expert, but household supplies from the National Grid are Alternating Current (AC), so it looks like the houses in the shadow of the power station had their own private DC connection direct from the station, so all of their electronic goods must have been converted – if they had many.

If you can tell us anymore about the fall or rise of Darlington’s power station, please email chris.lloyd@nne.co.uk

READ MORE: STILL IN THE DARK OVER THIS WHITE BUILDING ON ALBERT HILL