A 168-YEAR-OLD copy of The Northern Echo’s weekly sister paper has been discovered in the foundations of an iconic Tees Valley building at the start of its £6.3m restoration.
The Darlington & Stockton Times of September 25, 1858, was placed inside a sealed jar which was secreted in the foundation stone laid that day by the mayor of Middlesbrough as he formally started the construction of the old town hall clocktower.
The clocktower became the defining symbol of early Middlesbrough, and its place in history was cemented in 1959 when the celebrated artist LS Lowry included it in one of his “matchstalk men and matchstalk cats and dogs” paintings.
It was a brave decision to place the D&S in the bottle, which, the paper said, “contained numerous articles which may be of essential historical value to succeeding generations”, because that edition told of the drunkenness which pervaded the streets immediately at the foot of the new clocktower.
The bottle was very well sealed in 1858 as the paper is remarkably well preserved, as is a piece of parchment placed with it. The parchment contains the address made by the town clerk, JS Peacock, to the “considerable concourse of persons” who had gathered for the occasion.
He said: “This spot is one where, 30 short years ago, cattle grazed in peace, Middlesbrough then consisting of one solitary farmhouse, the site of which is a few yards to the north of the churchtower.”
Modern Middlesbrough was born when the Stockton & Darlington Railway was extended over the River Tees in 1829 to farmland, where it built a new riverside port, Port Darlington.
The land above the port was known as St Hilda’s because there may have been an ancient chapel here dedicated to the saint. Pilgrims prayed here on their journey between the religious centres of Whitby and Durham, and as it was roughly the midpoint, the area became known as “Middlesbrough”.
Houses rapidly sprung up for the dock and railway workers. Then came shops and pubs, a market place and, in 1838, a church. In 1846, a town hall with a covered market was built next to the church and discussions began about building a public clock – at the time, not many working people had clocks and watches.
There was a “long and anxious deliberation” about whether a clock should go in the churchtower, but this idea was rejected. Then an economic downturn delayed the project.
“But,” said the D&S in its report of the ceremony, “now that trade has to a certain extent recovered its former vigour, it has been deemed no long necessary to delay the work.”
The paper said the tower was going to be brick-built to match the town hall, with stone detailing from Brusselton, near Shildon. A Mr Robson, of Shildon, was going to supply the clock, which was going to have a bell that had been cast from the pattern of one that had recently been fixed in Balmoral Castle for Queen Victoria.
The tower was going to be completed by a trumpet-shaped cast iron top, weighing nine tons, that was going to be made by Cochrane & Co, of North Ormesby. It was going to 74ft tall at its highest point.
A plan of the tower was sealed in the glass jar along with the D&S, the parchment, an 1857 silver thrupenny plus a couple of other papers, the Middlesbrough News and the Stockton & Hartlepool Mercury. The mayor, Henry Thompson, performed the ceremony.
“He handled the trowel with true workmanlike skill and after formally applying the mason’s level and square, declared the clocktower to be properly laid,” said the D&S.
Then he made a speech.
“I am very happy in finding that we have this day arrived at the end of the difficulties which stood in the way of securing an eligible and commanding site,” he said. “We have got plans for, I hope, a very handsome tower and I trust the clock which will be placed upon it will long be useful to the inhabitants and ornamental to the borough.”
The D&S concluded its report by saying: “This speech was succeeded by loud and prolonged cheering in the midst of which the civic functionaries took their departure.”
IT was brave to place a copy of the D&S Times of September 25, 1858, in the time capsule because that week’s edition includes a report of the proceedings of the court held in the town hall where miscreants caught in the streets in the shadow of the clocktower were dealt with.
Their misbehaviour, said the paper, was “in most instances caused by having too freely imbibed in the cup which inebriates”. Using an ancient phrase for harsh imprisonment, it continued: “Those who were consigned to durance vile consisted of abandoned girls for whose reclamation there was hardly any hope.”
Harriet Malcolm, described as a drunken prostitute from London, was given one month’s hard labour, as was Sarah Scott who was discovered drunk in the Market Place. Thomas McGrath, an Irish labourer, who was found to be drunk and disorderly in nearby South Street, but was only fined 10 shillings.
Ann Broughton, “an old lady about 60”, was found to have broken eight panes of glass in William Hunt’s pub when he refused to serve her anymore alcohol because she was inebriated. She was ordered to pay damages.
But some drunks, like Sarah Peacock and James Farris from Liverpool, were let off, as was Stephen McCartney, who, said the D&S, was “a weaver from paddy’s land found wandering in a state of almost helpless intoxication”.
One of the few cases which did not revolve around alcohol concerned Alexander Miller. The D&S said he was “a gentleman who sported a moustache, described on the charge sheet as a barber”. He had wilfully damaged a market stall in East Street because it had been covered with so many goods that it blocked the view of his barber’s shop, harming his trade. He agreed to pay for the damage he had caused.
CONSTRUCTION of the clocktower was not without incident. In January 1859, when Cochrane & Co was hoisting the metalwork to the top, the “north side of the tower suddenly gave way and fell with a tremendous crash on the markethouse, breaking in the roof”. One man was slightly injured.
It was quickly rebuilt and the clock installed so that the 15,000 townspeople heard the bell chime for the first time at 8am on March 19, 1859.
By now, with the blast furnaces of the new iron industry opening, Middlesbrough was literally exploding into life – from a population in 1829 of only 40 to a population of 40,000 just 40 years later. More than any other building, the clocktower came to symbolise the identity of the new town.
On October 9, 1862, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, WE Gladstone attended a reception at the town hall and later, having visited the ironworks, proclaimed that, such was the energy of young Middlesbrough, it was the “infant Hercules” of the country.
IN 1889, Middlesbrough’s splendid new town hall – the biggest and grandest project in the career of Darlington architect GG Hoskins – opened in the new commercial centre of the town which had grown up away from the original railway docks in St Hilda’s.
This meant the downgrading of the old town hall, which became a courthouse.
In the 1950s, the streets in the shadow of its clocktower were cleared as slums; in the 1960s, its covered market was demolished, and in 1970, St Hilda’s Church was pulled down, leaving only a handful of headstones which bear witnesses to the lost lives of the community.
In 1996, the library and health clinic in the town hall were closed and the building and its clocktower became derelict.
The plan now is to restore them as part of the regeneration of the district in time for the borough’s bicentenary celebrations, which begin in 2028.
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