THE £12m restoration of Darlington’s hippodrome is on course to be complete for the start of the panto season, and this week gold leaf is being carefully applied to the auditorium ceiling and the original name of the theatre is being painstakingly rebuilt in mortar on the outside.

And yet another ghost has come out of the woodwork.

When the theatre opened in 1907, it was called The New Hippodrome and Palace Theatre of Varieties, with the words “palace” and “theatre” being emblazoned in foot-high lettering on the most prominent corner.

However, this long name was a bit of a mouthful, and the theatre soon became known as simply “the Hippodrome”. By the early 1930s, “palace” and “theatre” had been chipped off the walls and ever since, the panels looking down on Parkgate and Borough Road have been blank.

This week, though, the lettering has been rebuilt in the original, flamboyant art nouveau style.

Inside, the auditorium ceiling is taking shape, with the plasterwork in the four corners looking particularly impressive. When workmen reached the ceiling, the ornate designs were found to be drooping dangerously, but now they have been re-secured, and this week the 23 carat gold leaf has been applied.

Mark Peet, the senior building manager who gave the Darlington & Stockton Times a tour of the site on Wednesday, said each corner had taken about £4,000-worth of gold leaf which had taken a man nearly a week to apply.

The golden globe above the proscenium arch looks very grand, and is waiting for an artist to paint the Darlington coat-of-arms on it.

Mr Peet said: “The theatre is going through a full restoration, but we are also doing some remodelling with the extension on the back and the café inbetween the old fire station so it is a mixture of the old and the new.”

The theatre has been known as “the Civic” since 1958 but it will reopen in December for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs under its original name, the Darlington Hippodrome. Its seating capacity will be increased to 1,000 and its stage area enlarged, so that bigger productions can perform. There will be new bars and a restaurant, and the former fire station next door is being converted into a children’s theatre.

Just this week, scaffolding has come down revealing how a wooden box has been dropped behind the walls of the old fire station to create the 175-seater Hullabaloon venue. This has enabled the original exterior of the 1905 fire station to be retained, which also features the Darlington coat of arms.

Loads of other fascinating aspects have emerged during the restoration – the exterior paintwork, for example, is in a railway-related shade known as “Darlington Green” – including stories about ghosts. The theatre is said to be one of the most haunted buildings in the North-East with its founder, Signor Rino Pepi, regularly sighted along with various other key-jangling characters, but a recent group photograph of the constructors captured a ghostly builder from another era up in the gods.

There are up to 130 builders on site, but none of them could recognise the white-faced chap who popped up wearing headgear from a different time.