Town in County Durham, England
Darlington
A Quaker town where a steam locomotive pulled passengers on the pioneering Stockton and Darlington Railway in 1825, and where a former safecracker built a stadium.
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Key information
- County
- County Durham
- Nation
- England
- Known for
- The Stockton and Darlington Railway of 1825, a pioneer of public steam railways carrying passengers
- What locals are called
- Darlingtonians
- Famous people
- Edward Pease, Joseph Pease, Elizabeth Pease Nichol
- Football clubs
- Darlington (the Quakers), formed 1883
About Darlington
The day a town set off at walking pace and finished at the speed of the future
On 27 September 1825, a locomotive called Locomotion No. 1 pulled a long train out of the Darlington area towards Stockton. It carried coal, flour and hundreds of passengers who had climbed into wagons for the ride. It was a landmark moment: a steam locomotive hauling a public railway train carrying passengers. George Stephenson was the engineer. The Stockton and Darlington Railway had been built to move coal from the Durham pits to the river Tees, and it ended up changing how the world travelled. The town's nickname for itself, Darlo, sounds modest. The ambition behind the railway was not.
The Quakers who bankrolled the revolution
The railway happened because of a family. Edward Pease, a Darlington wool merchant and devout Quaker, put in serious money and backed Stephenson when plenty of investors hesitated. The Pease family went on to shape the town's mills, banks and industries. His son Joseph Pease was elected in 1832 and became the first Quaker to take his seat in the House of Commons, in 1833. Another family member, Elizabeth Pease Nichol, born in Darlington in 1807, became a prominent campaigner against slavery. Quaker habits of plain living, hard work and good bookkeeping left their mark here. They are partly why Darlington's Victorian streets feel so orderly.
A bridge on a banknote
Skerne Bridge, designed by Ignatius Bonomi and finished in 1825, carried the original railway over the River Skerne. It is a modest stone arch, but it is still in use today, and it is one of the oldest railway bridges in the world to survive in service. It was famous enough to appear on the Bank of England £5 note issued in 1990, alongside a portrait of George Stephenson. The old North Road station is now part of Hopetown Darlington, which opened in July 2024. Locomotion No. 1 itself moved to Locomotion in Shildon in 2021. Darlington's engineers kept going long after the pioneering years, and the Cleveland Bridge Company of Darlington built the Victoria Falls Bridge in 1905.
The safecracker, the stadium and the Quakers
Darlington's football club, nicknamed the Quakers after the town's religious heritage, was formed in 1883. For most of its life it played at Feethams, a ground tucked beside the town's cricket pitch. In 2003 the club moved to a brand-new 25,000-capacity stadium, far larger than its crowds needed. It was the pet project of chairman George Reynolds, a former safecracker who had made a fortune in kitchen worktops. The stadium became a grand, mostly empty monument, and the club's finances collapsed. The club that rose after the original went out of business in 2012 played as Darlington 1883, reverted to the name Darlington FC in 2017, and plays at Blackwell Meadows.
Market day and the clock tower
Darlington's Victorian covered Market Hall, opened in 1864, still anchors the town centre. The clock tower beside it is one of the town's best-known landmarks. The market square draws shoppers from across south Durham and North Yorkshire. Many of them still say they are going to Darlo, not Darlington. The town sits on the main East Coast line, so a fast train from Bank Top station will put you in London, York or Edinburgh in short order. That is a fitting legacy for a pioneer of passenger steam railways.