Bridges of Barney: Why this landmark opened with no ceremony at all

The footbridge was built to carry millworkers from the Startforth side into the heart of Barney’s mill district.

It was the second bridge on that curve of the Tees. The first was built in 1871, with money donated by the millowners, Messrs Holroyd and Fieldhouse.

Men bearing placards had walked round the town proclaiming that the first bridge, which replaced a set of stepping stones, would be opened with great ceremony, but on the morning of the celebration, the town crier shouted out that the proceedings had been cancelled.

“For reasons stated elsewhere,” said the D&S Times of April 23, 1871, without stating those reasons, “an imposing ceremonial for opening the new bridge at Barnard Castle on Thursday was altogether foregone.”

“The excuse made for this sudden fiasco was the weather,” said The Northern Echo, “but the floating rumours abroad whispered of more cogent reasons than such watery ones as this.”

The “floating rumours” seem to have been gossip that the bridge, constructed by the Skerne Ironworks of Darlington, was in fact resting on the riverbed rather than securely attached. The ironworks had made great play that theirs was a “cheap construction”.

Sadly, in March 1881, the bridge bore the brunt of a once-in-a-century flood. It wobbled and bent before the Tees in full flood, and a huge crowd gathered to watch it go.

“About ten minutes to 12 o’clock, a loud crack was heard and all eyes were immediately turned with breathless anxiety to the bridge which was now observed to be fairly in motion,” said the D&S Times. “The frail structure literally snapped in the centre and in the space of a moment, the entire bridge rolled over and was swept away in halves.”

Several people had decided that the best vantage point was on the bridge itself and they – William Thwaites, 40, a watchmaker from Barney, and Richard Gargett, 50, a gamewatcher from Bowes – were swept away to their deaths.

Unfortunately, the Skerne Ironworks on Darlington’s Albert Hill had collapsed financially in 1879, but bravely, a committee of Barney men approached its successor company, Wilson Bros foundry, to build a replacement.

This was one of the first bridges Wilson Bros constructed, and as it neared completion in the summer of 1882, thoughts turned to its opening. At the August Local Board of Health Meeting, Mr Burn asked if there would be a ceremony.

“The chairman, Mr Hilton, was understood to say that there would be a ‘feed’ provided by some gentleman,” reported the Teesdale Mercury. “Mr Burn: Has that gentleman been found? The chairman could not say that he had.

“Mr Burn: Have you any reason to hope that he will be found? (Laughter). The Board shortly afterwards adjourned.”

Perhaps no gentleman with deep pockets could be found to pay for the feed, or perhaps there was still embarrassment about the fatalities, but the bridge was opened without ceremony in the early days of September 1882.

“The new Thorngate footbridge is now opened and is a very neat structure,” was all the D&S said of the bridge’s beginning of service.

The Mercury devoted a paragraph to the new bridge, complaining that the grass on either side of it needed trimming, but adding: “The view from the middle of the bridge, either up or down the stream, is of a charming character, and few persons, I should think, could pass over it without pausing for a moment to take a glimpse of the scenery.”

The lack of ceremony robbed the reporters of a chance to wax lyrical over the new bridge and describe every jot of it, which is a shame because they might have mentioned the two metal protuberances that stick up at either end.

The oil lamp brackets at either end of Thorngate Bridge in Barnard Castle, as photographed by Laura Angel

A month ago in this column, we were investigating iron frames which had once held oil lamps. We started this very important line of inquiry in Richmond, where there are the remains of one lampholder on Green Bridge. Then we went to Leyburn, where there is one above the Town Hall door, and we finished on Croft Bridge where there is an extremely similar square frame to the two on Thorngate bridge.

“We have often wondered what these fittings on Thorngate Bridge were used for,” says Laura Angel, sending in some pictures. “Have you solved the mystery?”

Looking Back is certainly claiming that it has.

THERE is still a plaque on the Thorngate Bridge noting that it was built by “Wilson Bros & Co, Engineers, 1882, Darlington”.

Two years after the successful spanning of the Tees, Wilson Bros merged with the Darlington Waggon Company on Albert Hill to form the Darlington Waggon & Engineering Company (DWEC) which, in its brief heyday, built bridges around the world: Mexico, Egypt, France, Ireland, Spain, Argentina, Japan and particularly India and Bangladesh.

The Great Indian Peninsular Railway leaves its headquarters at the Victoria Terminus in Bombay – a building that is regarded as one of the great wonders of the British Empire and which is today called the Chhatrapti Shivaji Terminus in Mumbai – and in its first 100 miles, it crosses 24 bridges, 22 of which were made by DWEC.

There are 28 DWEC bridges around Chittogram, Bangladesh’s second largest city, on the Assam Bengal Railway, which was built to carry tea from the plantations.

However, it is not known if any of these Darlington-made bridges have any square fittings on top of them which once used to carry oil lamps.

And has anyone even been to the extraordinary station in Mumbai? It was built between 1878 and 1887, and is lavishly decorated in a style that combines English Gothic and Indian mysticism. Inside is a series of friezes that tells the history of the railways: one frieze is dedicated to George Stephenson and another to the Stockton & Darlington Railway. Has anyone ever seen them?

The Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (formerly Victoria Terminus) in Mumbai in India, which had friezes depicting the Stockton & Darlington Railway

BACK in Barney, the Thorngate Bridge has withstood all that the Tees can throw at it and everything that man can rain down on it.

In 1924, the dye house of Holroyd and Fieldhouse’s cloth mill collapsed onto the town end of the bridge, catapulting two pedestrians into the river. They were not badly hurt, and the bridge was repaired so that it still carries foot traffic today – just as many of its sister bridges around the world still carry rail traffic to this day.