IT is exactly 100 years since a Darlington landmark building opened at one end of High Row.
The Echo’s sister paper, the Darlington & Stockton Times, hailed it as “the finest banking premises for many miles around” and, because it hadn’t mastered the art of photographic reproduction, produced a great drawing of it.
The drawing shows the colonnaded recesses and Corinthian columns of the new Midland bank, on the corner of Prospect Place and Northgate, which was one of the last works by an architect known as “the Yorkshire Lutyens”.
The D&S confirms that the bank had been designed by the York firm of Brierley and Rutherford, which was headed by Walter Brierley who died later in 1926 aged 63. Mr Brierley designed more 300 buildings across Yorkshire, from stately homes to banks, but only rarely ventured north of the Tees.
Most notably in our area, he built the £33,000 County Hall at Northallerton (1904-14), which is still the home of North Yorkshire council where they still refer to the Brierley Building and hold meetings in the Brierley Toom. He also built the water tower at Ingleby Arncliffe in 1915 for Middlesbrough ironmaster Sir Hugh Bell, to prevent water from running out during wartime, which is near his Blue Bell Inn.
Brierley also built the brilliantly curious Yorkshire Penny Bank in Newgate Street, Bishop Auckland, in 1898, and, in 1899, one of Shildon’s most striking buildings: the York City and County Bank at the top of Main Street. Neither are now banks, but the Brierley in Shildon has recently bloomed into a florist’s.
In Darlington 100 years ago, the D&S considered the new bank “an imposing and beautiful erection in Portland stone”, and commended the stonemasons. It said: “The whole of the stonework has been worked by hand at a mason’s yard in Darlington not far from the site, and the quality of its workmanship reflects great credit on the craftsmen employed.” But it doesn’t name the yard or its craftsmen!
The paper noted that the bank had been deliberately set back from the old roadline to make the Northgate corner less dangerous.
A bank has stood on this corner since 1831 when the old Sun Inn – once Darlington’s premiere meeting place – was demolished and replaced by the Darlington & District Joint Stock Bank premises. It was rebuilt as a typical Victorian Gothic building in 1875 and it survived a bad fire in 1887.
Over time, the Darlington bank had merged with others until it had become part of the London Joint Stock Bank which, in 1918, amalgamated with the London City and Midland Bank.
Inside Brierley’s new branch of the Midland were stations in the banking hall for 44 clerks to sit behind positions made of “specially selected figured Indiana walnut”.
The D&S said: “The fittings in the banking hall have been the subject of special care and consideration, not only from the point of view of convenience and smooth working, but also from the architectural side.”
The bank – which now has “HSBC” emblazoned across its classically unshowy grey front – was opened on March 10, 1926. Now it has passed its century, let’s hope it can survive for a few years more – following the closure of Binns, Darlington cannot afford to have two boarded landmark buildings at either end of High Row.
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