Page 11 - High Row News Today

A SLIM leather-bound album containing a score of pencil portrait sketchings lies in Darlington library. On its first page, in immaculate…

“WHAT a brilliant and ultimately hilarious picture of the three men whitening the zebra crossing in Tubwell Row,” says Jo Jones, referring to…

Today’s Objects of the Week, the pride of a Darlington park, are among the largest we’ve ever featured. THERE are many fine trees in Darlington’s South Park, but there are two which stand head and shoulders above the rest. The giant redwoods, or Wellingtonias, planted in 1863 to commemorate the wedding of the future King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra, are two examples of the largest living organism on Earth – sequoiadendron giganteum. There are hundreds of other specimens at stat...

WE got our lefts and our rights mixed up when looking for Simpsons’ sports shop which was in Darlington’s Post House Wynd from the early 1960s until the late 2000s. It was on the northern side of the wynd, in the premises now occupied by Toni & Guy hairdressers, next to Robin Finnegan’s jewellery shop. “It was on the same side as Hoppers and Richardson’s the jewellers,” says Mike Walker of Middleton St George, one of many who pointed out the mistake. “There was a fish and ch...

Today’s Object of the Week is an unassuming plaque to a publishing giant on the front of a pub.

TAKING a tour of Darlington town centre more than a century ago, WJ Mountford walked off High Row and up Clark’s Yard. “The old houses and workshops that crowded this picturesque and narrow way have nearly all become warehouses,” he wrote in his unpublished memoires in 1908. Then he, like Memories 510, looked up. “There is an interesting old leaden spout at the south side of the yard which bears the initials ‘IP 1767’,” he noted, referring to the drainheader on the top of Jo...

FORTY years ago, Darlington’s mayor was a man who had profited from a life of crime: he was Bill Newton who wrote 125 thrillers, featuring heroic cops like Joey Binns and Miles Dresser, which had been translated into 13 different languages. Indeed, in the early years of his career, one of his stories was considered too racy for America where it was banned by magistrates and his publishers were ordered to pulp 1,200 copies. And his year wearing the golden chains of office began when he p...

The premises on Post House Wynd in Darlington Picture: ZOOPLA/THOMAS STEVENSON A WAVE of retail units just brimming with potential have gone on the market in and around Darlington town centre. From a former Topman in a prime location to a cosy little store on Blackwellgate, a number of retail units have come up for either rent or to buy. In what could be the perfect opportunity for start-up businesses, or even already established names, there are a number waiting to be filled. Weve sco...

The premises on Post House Wynd in Darlington Picture: ZOOPLA/THOMAS STEVENSON A WAVE of retail units just brimming with potential have gone on the market in and around Darlington town centre. From a former Topman in a prime location to a cosy little store on Blackwellgate, a number of retail units have come up for either rent or to buy. In what could be the perfect opportunity for start-up businesses, or even already established names, there are a number waiting to be filled. Weve sco...

A BLACK door, filthy from decades of roadsplash grime, opens directly from the street. On one side of it is a pizza shop; on the other a couple of kebab takeaways, and the downcomer beside it has rusted away at headheight so that when it rains, the water must splurge out onto the pavement. The fanlight above the door is so encrusted with dirt that no light filters into the narrow dark passage behind. The passage leads straight to another doorway which opens to reveal complete blackness. I p...