Park at N54º31.325 W001º28.364 which is the old level crossing at
the station of Fighting Cocks. The old station is the white house
next to the track.
This section of the track bed of the Stockton / Darlington
railway was opened in 1825 and has been closed since 1973, though
it was only used for goods since 1887. The existing rail link to
Stockton still uses much of the old route, but deviates just before
Middleton-St-George to allow it to link to Darlington’s new station
at Bank Top. This was built in 1887 to accommodate the East Coast
main line.
Darlington’s other station built in 1842 (now North Road
station) is a stop on the other section of the old line which runs
through to Bishop Auckland. It is also a fantastic museum to the
old railway with one of the original engines ‘Locomotion’
There has been a lot of clearance of the
undergrowth along the track leaving the cache in a slightly exposed
place. Please make sure it is well covered.
Now for the history lesson.
Most of this was gleaned from some local
history articles written by Chris Lloyd and published in The
Northern Echo and reproduced with their permission.
In 1767, the year that his younger brother Jeremiah was in America
surveying the Mason-Dixon Line which separated the southern
slave-owning states from the northern ones, George Dixon built his
own small stretch of canal on Cockfield Fell. He had inherited his
fathers coal mines, but they were not much use unless he could find
someone to buy the coal. Cockfield Fell, up the Gaunless Valley, is
miles from anywhere. The canal went in the general direction of
Raby Castle from where he hoped either to reach the Tees at Barnard
Castle or build a proper canal to the sea. The Earl of Darlington,
though, was not impressed and said he would not pay for Dixon to
conduct anymore experiments.
Undeterred Dixon came into Darlington and gathered a group of
like-minded entrepreneurs. They instructed James Brindley, the
foremost canal engineer in the country, to work out a route which
would connect the Durham coalfield with the sea at Cleveland. The
cost and logistics made the plan unworkable and it was
forgotten.
The idea had a number of resurrections including one when
Christopher Tennant of Stockton employed surveyor George Leather to
have another go. The result was a meeting at Stockton Town Hall on
July 7, 1818, which was attended by Edward Pease and Jonathan
Backhouse (the grandsons of the men who had attended the first
meetings in 1767).The men were dismayed at what they heard. The
canal by-passed their hometown, of Darlington, missing it by some
eight miles, threatening to turn it into an industrial
backwater.
Almost immediately the Stockton meeting was over, the Darlington
contingent set about organizing themselves. By November, their
views had crystallized. At a meeting on Friday the 13th 1818 in the
town hall, they decided to build “a rail or tramway throughout the
entire line presented between the collieries and Stockton”. It
would be 35 miles long, terminating at Etherley Colliery. There
would be a further 16 miles of branch lines to Yarm, Croft and
Piercebridge. It would even have a name: the Stockton and
Darlington Railway. After a stormy passage and much opposition it
received its Royal Assent from George IV. on April 19 1821.
On the same evening two strangers approached the front door of
Edward Pease's home in Northgate, Darlington. It was in the kitchen
in Northgate that Edward Pease, perched on the kitchen table, was
introduced to Nicholas Wood, the manager of Killingworth Colliery,
and George Stephenson, the colliery engineer. It was here that
Stephenson convinced Pease of the benefits of steam locomotive
power.
Some time in October 1821, in a field near the River Tees at
Stockton, George Stephenson accosted some farm labourers. “Come,
give me a spade,” he shouted in his broad Northumbrian accent. “Let
it never be said that we haven’t made a beginning.” With that, and
without further fanfare, he turned the first sod of what was to
become the world’s first passenger railway.
On May 23, 1822, the blocks near St John’s Well, in Stockton,
were ready to have the first rail ceremonially laid upon them. At
3pm, a gang of navvies pulled a carriage bearing Thomas Meynell,
chairman of the S&DR, down Yarm Road to the Town Hall in the
High Street. There he joined railway solicitor Leonard Raisbeck and
they processed back down the High Street to Cottage Row,
accompanied by the town band. Everyone fell silent as Meynell laid
the first rail. He refused to make a speech but instead a cannon
roared in a neighbouring field.
On September 16, 1825, the first locomotive completed by Robert
Stephenson and Company, in Forth Street, Newcastle, was loaded in
pieces on to three low wagons. Horses, provided by a carrier called
Pickersgill, dragged it down the Great North Road to Aycliffe
Village The dawn of Tuesday, September 27, 1825, found thousands of
people heading on foot, horseback and by carriage to see the
entrance of a new era of transport: the railway. At 8am, at the
foot of Brusselton Bank, midway between West Auckland and Shildon
the opening procession began. Thirteen wagons – 12 of coal, one of
flour – were attached by a 1/2 mile rope to the stationary engines
at the bank top. With hundreds of people clinging to the sides of
the wagons, the engines pulled the train 1,960 yards to the top of
the bank, then lowered it 880 yards down the other side.
There, steaming in readiness was Locomotion No 1. Soon,
Locomotion was pulling its 80 ton train and its 553 passengers at a
speed of eight miles an hour. The train arrived in north Darlington
at midday. It had taken two hours to cover nine miles, with three
stoppages totalling 55 minutes, and so its average speed was 8mph.
When the train left Darlington at 12.30pm, a man riding on
horseback preceded it carrying a flag. That man is believed to have
been John Dixon, after whom a street is named in Darlington.
The line curved south through Fighting Cocks and Middleton St
George to Goosepool, where Stephenson again stopped to replenish
the water barrel. By the time Locomotion was ready to move off,
there were probably about 700 people onboard – a majority of them
clinging to the sides of the coal wagons.
From Preston Park, the line ran adjacent to the main road from
Egglescliffe to Stockton (now the A135). Suddenly, Locomotion
(passengers 700, horses nil) drew alongside a stagecoach
(passengers 16, horses four). For a while, they were neck-and-neck
at 15mph, but quickly Locomotion ran out the winner as the horses
tired.
Its victory lap led it into Stockton at 3.45pm where, at the
Company’s Wharf beside the River Tees, a 21-gun salute greeted its
arrival. After the 1975 Rail 150 celebrations, Locomotion was moved
to North Road Railway Museum, where the grand old lady of steam
resides to this day.
Early in 1828, Joseph Pease sailed up the River Tees towards
what he was calling Port Darlington. His brain was working
overtime. In front of him were 520 acres of bleak salt marsh
spotted with a handful of houses occupied by no more than 40
people. Joseph Pease then concluded the deal of his life. With four
other Quakers from London and Norwich, he purchased the
Middlesbrough Estate of 520 acres of salt marsh for £30,000 from
William Chilton of Billingham, and Pease began planning a model
town for his dock workers.
The first train bound for Port Darlington (modern day
Middlesbrough) left Darlington at 10am on December 27, 1830, pulled
by the Globe - Hackworth's new locomotive. Middlesbrough was born -
the first railway town in the world.