The sixth part of our history of Darlington's South Park sees the unemployed of the town set to work to create some 'Venetian splendour', but this is County Durham not Italy, and what resulted was a boggy morass that was no good for boating.

After the lagoon came a lake, a huge expanse of water on the south skirting of Darlington. It was dug by the inter-war unemployed and was boated upon by a generation of Darlingtonians. Today the only sign of it is a road named Lakeside, because there is no longer a lake for it to be beside.

Last week's Echo Memories told how, in the late 19th Century, the River Skerne was dammed at Parkside and a little lagoon dug out so the Victorians could enjoy some punting in their straw boaters.

A new century brought a new monarch and new problems for Darlington.

In 1908, the Labour Bureau's figures showed there were 150 skilled men and 130 unskilled men in the town without a job.

It was proposed that the council should buy ten acres of land cheaply from Sir Henry Havelock Allan, of Blackwell Grange, and the unemployed be put to work digging a lake that would "beautify an already attractive park". These ten acres, opposite the Grange, were called "the Skerne Park" and included the ancient Blackwell Mill.

The build-up to the First World War prevented the scheme from starting, because all hands were at work preparing to fight.

Peace, though, did not bring prosperity. When the 1920s dawned there were 2,835 on the dole in Darlington (2,527 of them were men).

Funded by the Ministry of Labour in London, the council set up job creation schemes and in 1921, 500 unemployed local men were paid 6d a week to dig out the Cocker Beck sewer and to build a road from Grange Road to Neasham Road.

The new road became known as Parkside, and it featured a new bridge over the Skerne.

When it was completed, the dole queues showed no sign of receding, and so thoughts returned to the boating lake idea.

Twenty-two acres of the Skerne Park were bought from the Havelock Allans, and from late 1921 to early 1924 as many as 250 men were employed transforming 103/4 acres into a lake holding 12 million gallons of water.

There was obviously a great deal of scepticism in the town about whether the lake would be watertight. But in mid-April 1924, the sluice gates at Blackwell Mill were closed and within a day the Skerne had flooded into the lake.

"Darlington's new lake has confounded the pessimists who predicted that it would never hold water!" said the Darlington and Stockton Times.

"In the sunshine of yesterday, it sparkled with almost Venetian splendour and made quite a fine picture with which visitors to South Park were fascinated."

The lake was formally opened on April 22, 1924, by Darlington's first Labour Mayor, Councillor George Loraine. He revealed that the lake had cost £9,000 (about £250,000 in today's prices), half of which went on wages.

"The expense has been considerable, " he said, "but have we not got something beautiful and of great use to show for the money?"

With 3,000 people watching and Darlington Forge Band playing, the Mayor stepped ceremonially into a motor boat.

Naturally, enough, the boat refused to start.

With embarrassment growing, the civic party drifted into the middle of the lake with the red-faced boatman yanking desperately on the started handle.

Eventually, the engine started, and they sailed around the lake without further mishap. When he returned to the landing stage, Alderman Tommy Crooks, chairman of the parks committee, declared that it was a lake so wondrous that it would make a perfect film set for the shooting of Alice in Wonderland.

YET who was living in wonderland? Building the boating lake definitely kept many families' heads above water during the difficult 1920s.

The inter-war generation of Darlingtonians certainly enjoyed messing around in boats on the lake.

But the problem was the wandering River Skerne. It rises on Garmondsway Moor, six miles south-east of Durham City, near the old Raisby Hill Lime Works. As it flows past Trimdon Colliery, it is joined by tributaries from Deaf Hill and Station Town. It meanders between Fishburn and Sedgefield, before passing Preston-le-Skerne where it collects Woodham Burn, which rises to the south of Shildon, and includes Rushyford Beck, which flows from Middlestone, Leasingthorne and Chilton.

All of these south Durham communities were pit villages.

Most of the water in the Skerne had flowed out of their pits, picking up large quantities of coaldust, which it dropped as soon as the current slowed.

Sadly, it slowed when it came to the weir at Blackwell Mill.

And it jettisoned all its coaldust into the boating lake that the unemployed men of Darlington had dug. Very quickly, the lake silted up.

Darlington council bought a "special appliance" and every 12 months dredged the lake. In between dredges, most of the town's unemployed men were kept employed digging out the coaly sludge.

"I have seen people carting it into their backyards where it is dried and used for fuel, " said Alderman William George Chandler, in 1949.

Alderman Chandler was the chairman of the parks committee who was faced with an increasingly unpleasant problem. The lake had been undredged for a decade since the start of the Second World War.

It was now a sludgy bog that needed £30,000 spent on it before a boat could be sailed upon it. The people of Lakeside and Loraine Crescent - which was built on the lakeside between 1937-39 - were complaining of a plague of mosquitoes that bred in the stagnant water.

After five years of wrangling, the Wear and Tees River Board took the plunge. It channelled through the middle of the Skerne Park, tossing the black alluvium on to the sides.

By the end of the summer of 1954, the lake was no more. The Skerne flowed quickly between two grassy banks and toppled rapidly over the reduced Blackwell Mill weir.

Today, judging by the tyremarks in the muddy grass, this is a joyrider's exercise ground.

There is a footbridge over the remains of the weir and a curious bywater that has accumulated the most comprehensive collection of discarded polystyrene burger cartons in the kingdom.

Although the Skerne Park and the filled-in lake are regarded as part of South Park, they lie outside the area that is receiving £3.9m of National Lottery money to restore its Victorian elegance.

Perversely. this probably is to the area's benefit. Granted, the watery museum showing burger cartons through the ages could do with a tidy up, but this is a dog-walker's paradise. It is the hinterland where the town bleeds into the countryside, and has a scruffy beauty of its own - and the last time man tried to do anything with it, he ended up with a lake you couldn't sail a boat on.

POOR James Stephenson fatally discovered how boggy the boating lake could be. Two days before Christmas 1930, he set out to see the Quakers play at Feethams.

Mr Stephenson, 50, had been gassed so badly by the Germans during the First World War that he was barely able to speak. He had recently been laid off by Darlington Forge, and he lived with his sister in Leafield Road.

The alarm was raised by a young boy on Parkside bridge who pointed out to his father a set of footprints that stumbled across the mudflat of the Skerne Park. . . and disappeared.

A policeman ventured out gingerly and tragically by his torchlight spotted a head sticking out of the morass.

There was no movement. The next day it took three men to haul the body out of the bog.

"For some unknown reason, " reported The Northern Echo, "Stephenson set out to cross the waste of mud and slime."

The paper pointed out that crossing the Skerne Park meant a large detour in the deceased's route from his home to the football ground.

"At first the mud was fairly hard and gave sufficient foothold. Gradually, as he progressed, he found himself sinking deeper and deeper until finally he sunk so deep he was unable to pull himself out."

An inquest concluded that he died of either exposure or drowning. It ruled out accidental death, but as neither foul play nor suicide could be ruled out, it returned an open verdict.

BLACKWELL Mill was a landmark for centuries.

When travellers from the south saw its hulking silhouette standing, often shrouded in mist, beside the River Skerne, they knew they neared Darlington.

So ancient was it that in 1183 it was described as one of the "finest old mills in the north of England", and all the people of Blackwell for centuries were bound to take their corn there for grinding.

As last week's map showed, a mill race was dug alongside Grange Road to power the 4ft 6in wheel - the Skerne in centuries past preferred to meander to the east of the Skerne Park, beneath Lakeside.

In the 1920s, the unemployed men dug out the land between the western mill race and the eastern river to create the large boating lake. The mill ceased working in 1907 and gradually fell into disrepair. During the 1930s, it was used to store hire boats. By 1937 it had become dangerous, so in February 1938 it was demolished.

All that can be seen of it today is the entrance to Mill Lane, which is beside the gateway into Darlington Rugby Club's Blackwell Meadows ground.

As ever, Echo Memories is indebted to many sources, especially this week to Ivor Wade, of Darlington, and to the Darlington Centre for Local Studies for the pictures.

If you have any information to add, or boating memories to tell, please write to: Echo Memories, The Northern Echo, Priestgate, Darlington, DL1 1NF, call (01325) 505062, or e-mail chris. lloyd@nne. co. uk.

Published: 11/03/2003

Echo Memories, The Northern Echo, Priestgate, Darlington DL1 1NF, e-mail chris.lloyd@nne.co.uk or telephone (01325) 505062.