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Darlington is a market town in the Borough of Darlington, County Durham, England. It lies on the River Skerne, west of Middlesbrough and south of Durham. Darlington had a population of 107,800 at the 2021 Census, making it a "large town" and one of the largest settlements in North East England. The town is linked to London, Leeds, York Newcastle and Edinburgh by the East Coast Main Line and the A1.
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.
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:
Darlington Mechanics Institute was opened in 1854 by Elizabeth Pease Nichol, who had donated towards its cost. 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.
During the period, George Gordon Hoskins was responsible for much of the town's architecture, designing buildings such as The King's Head Hotel.
Darlington Free Library, a Grade II listed building in Crown Street, was built for £10,000 by Edward Pease. His daughter, Lady Lymington, opened the building on 23 October 1885 and presented it to the town council who agreed to operate it in perpetuity. , it contains a library and "centre for local studies".
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.
On the night of 13 January 1945, a Avro Lancaster piloted by Pilot officer William Stuart McMullen of Canada was on a training exercise when one of its engines caught fire and it crashed on farmland near Lingfield Lane. McMullen heroically stayed at the controls while his crew parachuted to safety and directed the stricken aircraft away from the houses below. He was killed on impact. His heroism was honoured by renaming Lingfield Lane "McMullen Road" and erecting a memorial monument.
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 brick. The work had a budget of £760,000.
Darlington was an ancient parish. It was historically divided into four townships: Archdeacon Newton, Blackwell, Cockerton, and a Darlington township covering the town itself and adjoining areas. Such townships also became in 1866. A body of improvement commissioners was established in 1823 to provide infrastructure to the more built-up parts of the Darlington township. The commissioners were superseded in 1850 when the whole Darlington township was made a local board district, governed by an elected local board.
The local board was in turn replaced when Darlington was incorporated as a municipal borough in 1867. The borough boundaries were enlarged on several occasions, notably absorbing the Harrowgate Hill area from the parish of Haughton-le-Skerne in 1872, Cockerton in 1915, Haughton-le-Skerne in 1930 and Blackwell in 1967. In 1915 the borough was elevated to become a county borough, taking over county-level functions from Durham County Council.
The borough was substantially enlarged in 1974 to take in most of the surrounding Darlington Rural District, such that the modern borough of Darlington covers both the town and a surrounding rural hinterland. The enlarged borough was also reconstituted as a non-metropolitan district as part of the 1974 reforms, with Durham County Council once more providing county-level services to the town. The borough was made a unitary authority on 1 April 1997, regaining its independence from the county council. The borough remains part of County Durham for ceremonial purposes.
Since 2016, the council has been a member of the Tees Valley Combined Authority along with Hartlepool, Middlesbrough, Redcar and Cleveland and Stockton-on-Tees. Unlike Darlington, the other four districts in the combined authority had all been part of the short-lived county of Cleveland between 1974 and 1996.
, the Member of Parliament (MP) for the Darlington constituency is Labour's Lola McEvoy. Former members of parliament for the town include Peter Gibson, Jenny Chapman, Alan Milburn (the former Secretary of State for Health under Tony Blair's Labour government) and Michael Fallon (who was Secretary of State for Defence under David Cameron's coalition government and Theresa May's Conservative government).
| Tees Valley |
| Historic county town and closest city |
| Combined Authority area |
| Combined Authority area |
| 729 |
| 768 |
| 971 |
The Civil Service’s Darlington Economic Campus (DEC), opened in 2022 at its temporary home in Feethams House, is home to staff from various government departments including:
Darlington Building Society is based in the town.
Darlington Borough Council announced that the site for the DL1 complex, previously a car park for Darlington Town Hall, was also to be redeveloped to house riverside office space for the Department for Education to replace its previous office on the edge of the town in Mowden, in an effort to safeguard Darlington jobs. This was officially opened on 19 March 2015. The Northern Echo, 19 March 2015 The Disclosure and Barring Service has a national office in the town. Amazon UK operates a warehouse facility, which opened in early 2020, employing 1,300 full-time staff, one of the town's biggest employers.
EE is the largest private sector employer in the town, with 2,500 staff. The company took over its operations from one of its predecessors, Orange Mobile.
Local engineering firms include:
Retailers in the area include:
In November 2012, a deal was signed between Darlington Borough Council and developer Terrace Hill for a £30 million re-development of the site of the former Feethams bus depot. The proposal had an expected completion date of late 2014, though this did overrun with completion early 2016.
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Darlington Borough Council', Darlington & Stockton Times (9 November 2012).
The nearest large airports are Newcastle () and Leeds Bradford ().
Darlington railway station has a large Victorian era clock tower, which can be seen from most areas of the town.
The town is also close to other major trunk routes, including the A66 trans-Pennine route connecting Darlington to Stockton-on-Tees and the A19.
The £5.9 million A66 Darlington eastern bypass opened on 25 November 1985. The Darlington Eastern Transport Corridor, linking the Central Park regeneration zone (Haughton Road) and Darlington town centre to a new roundabout on the A66, was opened in the summer of 2008.
Stagecoach North East operated originally in the town until 2007, when it sold its operations to Arriva. Stagecoach returned to Darlington in 2023, following the decision by Arriva to end its service 12 from Hurworth to Middleton St. George and Teesside Airport; it took over this service on 23 September 2023, renumbering it as route 6 (6A on Sundays) and extending it to Stockton, via Eaglescliffe, Yarm and Ingleby Barwick.
The 2007 Town Centre Pedestrian Heart Project, an investment of £10 million, saw some of Darlington's town centre modernised; there was an emphasis on vehicles becoming less common in the centre and some roads pedestrianised completely. Other improvements were to cycling facilities and routes, linking the town to the national cycle route network. Darlington is the only place to win both sustainable travel and cycling demonstration town status.
The town has one further education college, Darlington and two sixth form colleges: Queen Elizabeth and Carmel.
There are several secondary schools including: Wyvern Academy, Haughton Academy, Hummersknott, Hurworth School, Longfield and St Aidan's. Polam Hall is a former independent school and is now a free school.
There are also numerous primary schools, including: Federation of Abbey Schools, Mowden School, West Park School and Skerne Park.
Local news and television programmes are provided by BBC North East and Cumbria and ITV Tyne Tees from the Bilsdale TV transmitter.
Local radio stations are BBC Radio Tees, Capital North East, Heart North East, Smooth North East, Greatest Hits Radio North East, Nation Radio North East, Hits Radio Teesside and Darlo Radio broadcasts from the town.
In November 2009, the town appointed an official Twitterer in residence, the first of its kind in the UK. Mike McTimoney (known on Twitter as ''TheDarloBard' ) is a local regular user who has been officially charged with tweeting for and about Darlington, and to help promote The Darlington Experiment 2.0, the town's social media campaign.
In August 2022, Darlington Borough Council confirmed that it would be placing a bid for Darlington to host the 2023 Eurovision Song Contest. However, the town was not part of the shortlist of potential host cities released on 12 August.
Several sketches from the BBC comedy programme The Fast Show were filmed in the town centre.
Darlington FC is known as The Quakers because of the contributions made to the town by men such as Edward and Joseph Pease, members of the Religious Society of Friends. Before the 2012 administration, played at the 25,000 capacity Darlington Arena (after 120 years at the Feethams ground) when it opened on Neasham Road in 2003. In the 2010–11 season Darlington won the FA Trophy however they were relegated from the Football League, into the then Football Conference. Administration caused Darlington to play home games at Heritage Park in Bishop Auckland and relegation by four divisions to Division One of the Northern Football League, of which the club was one of the founders of in 1889, for the 2012–13 season.
It moved back to Darlington from the 2016/17 season with a long term groundshare arrangement with Darlington RFC at Blackwell Meadows. Darlington's first home game at Blackwell Meadows (a 3–2 home win against Halifax Town) took place on 26 December 2016. In the subsequent season, the club was allowed to change back to its current name.
The club celebrated its 125th year in 2016, with anniversary games held at Eastbourne Sports Complex and was also the first club in the UK to be granted a licence via England Athletics new systems whilst the country was coming out of the COVID19 pandemic.
In 2019, the club was awarded the Queen's Award for Voluntary Services (QAVS), which was created in 2002 to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II's Golden Jubilee. This was previously known as the Queen's Award for Voluntary Service (QAVS). Equivalent to an MBE, this award (changed to KAVS since King Charles III came to the throne) is the highest award given to local voluntary groups in the UK. The club was also winner of the 2021 and 2022 Regional England Athletics North East Volunteering Club of the Year awards.
In 2015, the club also moved away from the 'D' vest which had been introduced in the late 1970s, moving initially to Darlington Harriers before a new club logo was introduced in 2018. The new logo shape is the DL postcode area, includes the towns landmarks in Joseph Pease's statue, the town clock and the brick train which represents the town's history in the railway industry. The club has also introduced further events to its athletics calendar in recent years, adding to the existing 'Pitstop' 10km race which has been running since 2001. Multi-lap events held at South Park include South Park 10 (mile), South Park 20 were introduced in 2016 and The Marathon Paarlauf in 2022. The athletics track where the club are based at Eastbourne Complex received a make over in 2023 as part of a £1.6 million re-design of the complex with a new Blue 8 lane track to match the club colours.
The other athletics-based event is the Darlington 10km and 3km road run, which is held every August; it attracts around 2,000 competitors and is managed by the local council.
The Dolphin Centre, which provides a wide range of sporting facilities, was opened by Roger Bannister in 1982. It received a £5 million refurbishment in 2006 which was later officially opened by Redcar athlete Tanni Grey-Thompson.
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