Northern Astronomy The Darlington Telescope

The story of the telescope begins in 1890, when the vicar of Eryholme, in Richmondshire, North Yorkshire the Reverend Walter Stewart, had it installed in his home, Ellcott House, in Hurworth near Darlington.

It was "a 5-inch equatorially mounted refractor" built by T Cooke and Sons of York.

It cost £374, (£60,000 at 2024 prices) and was regarded by one and all as a very fine instrument ,this was  a vast amount of money at the time.

In 1904, Mr Stewart, who was born in Hurworth, was offered a new posting in Longley, Gloucestershire. Because Longley is a long way, the telescope had to remain, and so Mr Stewart offered it to Darlington council for about £130 (£20,000 at 2024 prices).

It seemed natural to place the telescope at the new technical college in Northgate, built in 1896, but the college was still in 1904 £2,163 (£330,000) at 2024 prices) in debt and the councillors were in no mood to increase its overdraft for the sake of a telescope.

At the last minute, 29 of the town's leading citizens emptied out their pockets and scraped together enough money to prevent the telescope being sent to the saleroom.

They formally presented it to the town on November 8, 1904, and the following year it was set up in the college's back yard. I don’t know if it was installed in a small observatory or was left outside but covered up against the weather.

But its view of the skies was not good, and it was planned to move it to the college roof for "an uninterrupted view of the heavens".

But an astronomical advisor reported: "If the telescope is to be regarded as a pastime, then that position would be satisfactory enough, but if a scientific use is to be made of the instrument the position is absolutely unsuitable. The ordinary tram and other forms of traffic set up a great deal of vibration."

North Lodge Park, next to the college was dismissed as a site because town centre smoke would have obscured the night sky. So, a site at South Park was next to the bowling green was chosen

 

The telescope was installed in December 1906 in its wooden, revolving observatory. Students of the skies had to pay 6d (£3.00 at 2024 prices) each, and inform the park superintendent if they intended to arrive after the park gates were locked in the night. In February 1908, Professor Dixon, one of the telescope's supervisors, even started an astronomy class at the technical college to make use of the instrument.

But in October 1910, the class was discontinued because it had no students. Unfortunately it was reported in 1912, that "very little use is being made of the telescope", and following World War 1  there was even less. In January 1931, the Darlington and Stockton Times reported: "The telescope is seldom used now; in fact, very few people know of its existence."

At the request of Darlington Grammar School, which is now the Queen Elizabeth Sixth Form College, the telescope was removed to playing fields off Abbey Road. There, the site of the observatory was not very popular with residents of Westbourne Grove. I assume it affected their skyline in some way.

More problems occurred in February 1951 when the observatory was broken into, but fortunately police recovered the stolen equipment a couple of months later in June of 1951.

I have no information following 1951and it would be over 20 years in 1979 that it was reported by Barry Hetherington then chairman of the Cleveland and Darlington Astronomical Society, that the telescope needed a major overhaul. This can hardly be surprising if it had been laying around for decades not being used.

The final and sad end to the story of the Darlington Cooke telescope was that  in 1992, there was a fire which destroyed the wooden observatory which housed the Cooke telescope. I don’t know how it started. After the fire a lump of melted metal was sold as scrap. Six months later, someone seems to have realised that this lump was in fact the remains of the Darlington Telescope!

There was some vague talk that one day a new observatory for Darlington should be built, the price of the telescope and observatory being around £50,000, at late 1990s prices, today that would be well over £100,000 but that that idea was quietly eclipsed.

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