Darlington Darlington started as an
Anglo-Saxon settlement. The name derives from the Anglo-Saxon
Dearthington, which seemingly meant 'the settlement of Deornoth's people' but, by Norman times, the name had changed to Derlinton. During the 17th and 18th centuries, the town was usually known by the name of
Darnton. Darlington has a historic market area in the town centre.
St Cuthbert's Church, built in 1183, is one of the most important early English churches in the north of England and is
Grade I listed. The oldest church in Darlington is
St Andrew's Church, built around 1100 in
Haughton-le-Skerne. When the author
Daniel Defoe visited the town during the 18th century, he noted that it was eminent for "good bleaching of linen, so that I have known cloth brought from Scotland to be bleached here". However, he also disparaged the town, writing that it had "nothing remarkable but dirt"; roads would have typically been unpaved in the 18th century. The so-called
Durham Ox came from Darlington; born in the early 19th century, this steer became renowned for its excellent proportions which came to inform the standard for Shorthorn cattle. The
Stockton and Darlington Railway ran steam locomotives designed for passengers and goods, built to a standard gauge, on a permanent main line with branches. On 27 September 1825,
George Stephenson's engine,
Locomotion No. 1, travelled between
Shildon and
Stockton-on-Tees via Darlington, an event that was seen as ushering in the modern railway age. The population at the time of the 1841 census was 11,008. Later in the 19th century, the town became an important centre for railway manufacturing. An early railway works was the
Hopetown Carriage Works (est. 1853), which supplied carriages and locomotives to the Stockton and Darlington Railway. The engineering firm of
William and Alfred Kitching also manufactured locomotives there around this time. The town eventually developed three significant railway works: • The largest of these was the main line
Darlington Works; its main factory, the North Road Shops, opened in 1863 and remained in operation until 1966. •
Robert Stephenson & Co. (colloquially: "Stivvies"), moved to Darlington from
Newcastle upon Tyne in 1902. It was renamed
Robert Stephensons & Hawthorns in 1937, was absorbed by
English Electric around 1960 and had closed by 1964. •
Faverdale Wagon Works was established in 1923 and closed in 1962; in the 1950s, it was a UK pioneer in applying mass-production techniques to the manufacture of railway goods wagons.
Quakers and the Echo During the 19th century, Darlington
Quaker families such as those of
Pease and
Backhouse emerged as major employers and philanthropists. Industrialist
Joseph Pease gave Darlington its landmark
clock tower in 1864. The clock face was crafted by
T. Cooke & Sons of
York, and bells cast by
John Warner & Sons of nearby
Norton-on-Tees. In 1853,
South Park was laid out, over , with financial support from the Backhouse family.
Architect Alfred Waterhouse, famous for work including London's
Natural History Museum and
Manchester Town Hall, designed Darlington's
Grade II listed Old Town Hall and Market Hall, Darlington in 1860. Four years later he contributed Backhouse's Bank building that is, , a branch of
Barclays bank. In 1870,
The Northern Echo newspaper launched. Its most famous editor,
William Thomas Stead, died on the
Titanic. Facing the present
Northern Echo building on Priestgate is the William Stead
public house named for him.
Wars Cannon from
Sevastopol in South Park In 1939, Darlington had the most cinema seats per capita in the United Kingdom.
Tornado and the brick train Starting in 1993, rail enthusiast group
A1 Steam Locomotive Trust worked on building an all-new steam locomotive, the first to be constructed since the 1960s. It was intended to be the 50th member of the long withdrawn
LNER Peppercorn Class A1 engine, called
Tornado and numbered 60163, from scratch in the 1853 former
Stockton and Darlington Railway Carriage Works at Hopetown. Many of the original fleet had been built at
Darlington locomotive works in the late 1940s.
Tornado was completed in January 2008. To commemorate the town's contribution to the railways,
David Mach's 1997 work
Train is located alongside the A66, close to the original Stockton–Darlington railway. It is a life-size brick sculpture of a steaming locomotive emerging from a tunnel, made from 185,000
Accrington Nori bricks. The work had a budget of £760,000.
21st century In 2001, Darlington became the first place in England to allow same-sex
civil ceremonies and it hosts an annual
Gay Pride Festival at venues across the town, the next scheduled for 8 August 2026. A 2005
Darlington Borough Council project to
pedestrianise areas of the town centre, this included some
Victorian features along High Row. In August 2008, a fire, in which nobody was killed, caused damage and weeks of closure until the damage was fixed for several shops (including
Woolworths). The King's Head Hotel was also affected with damage to the roof and 100 bedrooms, the hotel was able to reopen in 2012. ==Governance==