A late-Victorian corner of Darlington on the market for £400k as trends change

For 150 years, the fates of the theatre/cinema on Northgate and the large pub/hotel beside it have been connected as if by an umbilical cord – quite literally, given the amount of drink that must have flowed along the cord between the two venues over the years.

But last year, the cord was cut. The Odeon cinema gave up its long and valiant fight against the modern multiplexes and closed, and the gossip is that it is to be converted into an eastern food supermarket.

Next to it, the Bridge Hotel is on the market for £400,000. It is billed as a “former pub and hotel” and described as an “exceptional renovation opportunity” with 10 bedrooms and five bathrooms on its upper two floors.

The Bridge Hotel, on the market for £400,000The Bridge looks to be a late Victorian mock Gothic horror show of a building which screams “erected 1898” in its brickwork, but its history goes much further back than that.

It is built on the south side of the Cocker Beck where the Blue Bell Inn, the last pub in Darlington, once stood. The Blue Bell may well have doubled as the toll house where users of the “turnpike road” – the main, privatised road from Darlington to Durham – paid their fees.

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In 1825, though, it became clear to the Blue Bell landlord William Gray that times were a-changing. He could see the Stockton & Darlington Railway being built across the fields to the north. He could see it being marched over the River Skerne on a bridge that was the largest piece of infrastructure on the line, a bridge that was specially designed by an architect, a bridge that would become so famous that it would later come to feature on the back of the £5 note, a bridge that is today the world’s oldest railway bridge in continuous use.

Tornado passing over the Skerne Bridge which the hotel – the Railway Bridge Hotel – was named afterSo, shortly before the railway opened on September 27, 1825, he cannily renamed his pub from the rural-sounding Blue Bell to the bang up-to-date Railway Bridge Inn.

So although the pub stands beside a little bridge over the Cocker Beck, it is in fact named after the bigger railway bridge in the distance.

This could even be the very first pub in the whole world to have the word “railway” in its name.

During the 19th Century, the novelty of the railway wore off, and became known more simply as the Bridge Hotel.

An Edwardian postcard of Northgate with the Bridge Hotel and the Theatre Royal on the leftOn October 26, 1864, on the field to the south of it, young Elizabeth Scotson, of Haughton, laid the foundation stone of Darlington’s first proper theatre. After the ceremony, she and all the other womenfolk went home while the 30 men celebrated the stone-laying with a feast in the Bridge Hotel. They included Elizabeth’s father, George, who was the principal investor in the theatre.

But when the Theatre Royal opened on February 22, 1865, the landlord of the Bridge objected to it having a drinks licence. Magistrates refused the theatre permission to sell alcohol, so it only had two teabars with refreshments being hoisted up on a primitive lift to the “ladies retiring room” on the upper floor.

While the ladies retired to sip their tea, their menfolk rushed out into the theatre’s back yard and in through the Bridge’s back door to guzzle something much stronger. There was even an interval bell in the bar so they could fly back in time for the start of the second half.

The Theatre Royal in Northgate in 1937 after it had closed as a theatre and was about to be transformed into an art deco cinema, causing the loss of the all the external Victoriana. Pictures courtesy of the Darlington Centre for Local StudiesThe Theatre Royal had a very varied life. It closed in 1868 and was demolished in 1873. It was rebuilt and reopened in 1881 only to burn down in 1883.

This was a disaster for Mrs SA Jennings who had recently bought the Bridge Hotel next door as an investment after she had won a court case. To protect her investment, she bought the burnt-out theatre carcase and hired the first great theatre architect, Charles Phipps of Bath, to remodel the interior. After expenditure of £6,000, the theatre reopened in 1887.

In readiness, Mrs Jennings had been upgrading the Bridge Hotel. In 1884, the North Star newspaper reported: “About 250 persons sat down to a splendid dinner last night to celebrate the opening of the Bridge Hotel, a handsome structure which has been erected in Northgate.”

This, we presume, is the southern portion of the hotel abutting the theatre.

The Jennings were a theatrical family. One of Mrs Jennings’ sons became a fairly well known actor under the stage name Charles Herrick; another became manager of the Lyric Theatre in Hammersmith, London, while a third, Tom, who had trained as an architect, took over as landlord of the Bridge and director of the Theatre Royal.

Tom Jennings advertises in the North Star newspaper at Christmas 1873 thanking his patrons at the hotel and the cinemaHe made a success of it, and in 1897, the Jennings sold out for £1,700 to Albert E Hodgson, of Halifax, whose main line of business was making Gardner-Serpollet steam-powered cars to a French design. Mr Hodgson bought several small car workshops across the north of England to create the British Power, Traction and Lighting Company, based in York, all of which came crashing down in 1904 when he was declared bankrupt with debts of £33,000 (about £3.4m in today’s values).

This is Willington’s first steam car, a Gardner-Serpollet, with its owner Herbert Coates. From 1863 to 1996, four generations of his family ran the post office in the High Street, which was also a printer, a convenience store and a newsagent. Herbert’s fancy French steam car, with a top speed of 40mph, was bought in 1903 so must have come from the workshop of theatre owner AE Hodgson, who had the exclusive rights to build them in this country. Herbert even went out in delivering copies of The Northern Echo. The post office, now a Londis, still trades.However, it must be that during his seven years in charge of the Bridge and the theatre, he added the northern wing to the hotel which has “erected 1898” in Gothic horror writing over the archway into its yard.

A 1911 advert for the Bridge Hotel, when it was the home of Darlington FC. The advert appeared when the Quakers were having one of the best FA Cup runs in their history: they won five matches to reach the Third Round which was then the last 16, when they lost to Swindon TownIn the 1930s, the theatre adapted to the latest craze in 20th Century entertainment by becoming the Regal Cinema, with seating for 1,620 patrons. Since then, it has been known as the ABC, the Cannon and finally the Odeon before it closed on June 30, 2022.

Will next year be the year when this 19th Century corner of Darlington finds a new life for the 21st Century?

Now just a distant memory: the Odeon theatre in NorthgateThe theatre and Bridge Hotel todayREAD MORE: THE MUST-HAVE PRESENT IN DARLINGTON 100 YEARS AGO: THE HUMBLE UMBRELLA