A Stockton and Darlington miscellany £3.95

Hard Cover book Octavo, 9.75”x 7.75”, gilt-decorated reddish-brown cloth,  fronts. pp 315pp., five further full-page illustrations.

Fifty years  before the Railway Centenary celebrations, there had been a rather more modest event on 27 and 28 September 1875, marking the 50thanniversary of the Stockton & Darlington opening. “A Jubilee Memorial….” was published in advance of the celebrations, and is therefore a little tentative on detail, but the events were to include a banquet (no Victorian celebration would be complete without one!) There being no hall big enough in Darlington, a huge marquee, hired from Edgingtons, the London contractors, was set up on the cricket field, and the catering arrangements were in the hands of a firm, also from London, who normally did the Lord Mayor’s banquet. The unveiling of a statue of Edward Pease took place, and most interesting of all, an exhibition of locomotives at Darlington’s North Road locomotive works, but it was only open for two days.