Stunning black and white photographs of 1960s Darlington

A little older still and he went up to Cambridge university. The photographing of his hometown stopped, even though it is clear that he had a real eye for it, in terms of composition, subject matter and human interest.

You may remember from Memories 437 in 2019 that after university, Richard rarely returned. He worked for British Steel and then for Cardiff City Council, rising to become head of corporate services.

AND: EMOTIONAL PICTURE OF A LITTLE GIRL IN RISE CARR

But in his youth he had amassed a remarkable collection of black and white images of a town on the cusp of real change. In the 1960s, the inner ring road was blasted through the centre, cutting a swathe through scores of terraces and causing the demolition of hundreds of houses.

Darlington power station from Freeman’s Place, where Halford’s is today, showing the dereliction of the town centre in the late 1960s as it waits for the ring road to come through

It was a 20 year project, which was never completed: in 1990, a public inquiry decided that the final stage of the ring road was too environmentally damaging to be allowed to go ahead. So Darlington has a ring road that doesn’t form a circle – although it still forms a noose around much of the town centre, cutting it off from the residential areas, forcing people to sprint across four lanes of traffic to reach it.

A train coming into the north end of Bank Top station with the power station in the background

Richard’s pictures capture the town beginning to undergo that immense change, but they also gave a glimpse of the town as it was, when it was still dominated by railways and industry, when the skyline was filled with the three enormous cooling towers and the three slender cricket stump chimneys of the Haughton Road power station, and when every street corner really did have a shop on it.

A stylish late 1960s lady marches into the corner shop on Park Place with the Victoria Road New Connexion Methodist Church in the background. The shop has been replaced by modern housing but the steps are still there, and the church is now a bathroom

Darlington library has accepted more than 300 of Richard’s images and a selection of them form this month’s exhibition in the Centre for Local Studies, which runs until June 30. His pictures are a remarkable record of a town as it once was.

Bowman’s grocers and off licence on the corner of Backhouse Street, which ran from Victoria Road northwards along the bank of the River Skerne, opposite St Cuthbert’s Church. The riverside was largely lined with industrial premises, including, opposite the town hall, Backhouses’ linen mill. With all its windows broken, Bowman’s looks ripe for demolition as preparations are made for the inner ring road

We think this is Model Place looking towards the Haughton Road power station

A slushy day on a back lane off Victoria Road, so perhaps the corner shop selling coats had a good day. Can anyone tell us which corner this was on?

We think this is Darlington Forge, on Albert Hill, with the East Coast Main Line train crossing Five Arch Bridge – is that correct?

Darlington Forge in the late 1960s, beside the East Coast Main Line on Albert Hill, by Richard Gaunt

Looking over the railway lines at the north end of Bank Top station with Pensbury Street on the left and the Haughton Road power station to the right. You can still see the outlines of the camouflage shapes that were painted onto the towers during the Second World War, in the hope that these vast hulks were disappear from the Luftwaffe’s view

The Freemasons Arms, now the Old English Gentleman, in Bondgate with the Odeon cinema (formerly the Majestic) in the top left. Perhaps most interesting is Darlington’s first Wimpey bar, the town’s first burger joint, which opened in May 1961 next to the pub. Are these old cars of any interest? We have done this for a while, but can anyone identify the car nearest the camera, the car turning into Commercial Street or the car going out of the picture on the right? Email chris.lloyd@nne.co.uk if you can