THE weather is not yet right for cricket, but this rare picture of Darlington Cricket Club takes us back to the days of blazers, moustaches, trilbies and walking canes.

It is believed to have been taken in 1920, the start of the club’s golden decade: it had managed to escape its debts wracked up during the First World War and during the 1920s, its first and second teams won 14 trophies in seven years.

If the picture, which is among a collection which, until recently, has been in private hands, is from 1920, it was taken when the first team had won the North Yorkshire and South Durham A Division and the second 11 had become champions of the B Division.

The picture is amid a collection of yearbooks currently with antiquarian bookseller Jeremiah Vokes, in Darlington.

It was taken, with the 1883 pavilion in the background, at Feethams, the ground the cricketers shared with Darlington Football Club.

However, both football and cricket clubs ceased playing during the First World War, and a new sporting force emerged: Darlington Forge Albion.

The Forge on Albert Hill had a good war. It employed more than 1,300 strapping men – the second biggest employer in town after the railways – who built heavy munitions.

In 1917, the Forge’s local league football team, managed by the landlord of the Forge Tavern, JB Haw, moved onto vacant Feethams for its kickabouts.

Late in 1918, with the war over, there were moves to restart a football league in the North-East. Sunderland, Middlesbrough, Newcastle United, South Shields, Scotswood, Durham City and then Hartlepools United were all interested, but the Darlington club – founded in 1883 – was so deeply in debt that it couldn’t be resurrected.

So, at the last moment, Mr Haw allowed Darlington Forge Albion’s name to go forward as the eighth team, and the newly-formed Northern Victory League kicked off in January 1919. Haw recruited old professional players to bolster the works team, and he did up the stands – including building Feethams’ first dressing rooms.

At the start of the 1919-20 season, the Forge took a step back. The club’s name reverted to Darlington FC, the Forge works side returned to the local league, and until his death in 1960, Mr Haw was regarded as the saviour of football in the town.

Simultaneously, though, the Forge saved the cricket club.

In January 1919, the cricketers were £500 in debt. They’d managed to raise £230 off their own bat before the Forge Albion bowled in with a generous £500, which it paid for the “goodwill of football on Feethams”.

It can be no coincidence that the new president of the cricket club was Sir Thomas Putnam, managing director of Darlington Forge – he is probably in the centre of the picture, in the grey overcoat and the curved handle walking stick. Sir Thomas, a racehorse owner, had taken over the management of the Forge on his father’s death in 1897. He was at the helm when it built the enormous sternframe and rudder for the Titanic in 1911, and he remained in charge until the Forge was mothballed in 1932 and nationalised by the English Steel Corporation.

Who else is with him on the 1920 picture?

Somewhere must be Dick Healey, club captain during the golden age and a “nearly aggressive” batsman. He shared the run-getting with Jake Dobson, a Darlington Grammar School old boy turned NCB colliery manager.

Harry Moon, another colliery manager, was the opening bat – he was put at the top of the order because any lower, he became so nervous that he got stranded in the toilet.

Perhaps that’s why his style was known as “poetry of motion”.

There was Wilf Burnip, the manager of Barclays bank on High Row who batted in a flat cloth cap, and Sidney “Slogger”

Smith, from the Midland Bank. His explosive batting made up for Percy “Stonewall” Barlow whose style was described as “tedious to the point of distraction”.

The wicketkeeper was a professional, Joseph Coates, as was the opening bowler Stanley Crozier. Other notable bowlers included Ashley Goodrick, a left-armer who specialised in the “late-swinging toe-trapper”, and leg spinner Tiddler Bates.

George Henry Taylor may be on the picture, too. It is among his collection of 30 yearbooks and season cards which he amassed after joining the club in 1910. They are at Mr Vokes’ bookshop in Coniscliffe Road (01325- 469449).