Exploring New Shildon, England’s First Modern Railway Town

Shildon and the railway

Today we think of the arrival of the railways as transformative for landscapes, places and industries, bringing swift, intense change to the population. So it was for Shildon, a small community in rural County Durham, when the Stockton & Darlington Railway (S&DR) was constructed on its doorstep between 1822 and 1825.

In 2021-23, Historic England researched the buildings and planning of New Shildon, as this newer section of the town was initially known (today the original and new parts of the settlement are collectively known as Shildon), as part of our contribution to the Stockton & Darlington Railway Heritage Action Zone initiative of 2018-23. This research culminated in a Historic Area Assessment.

New Shildon plays a central part in the story of the S&DR and railway history in general. Once the home of the S&DR’s engineering works, it now houses Locomotion, part of the National Railway Museum, and it is celebrated as England’s first railway town. The museum brings visitors to this part of the historic line – much of which remains in railway use – and the town retains buildings which express the history of the railway and of other industries, as well as reflecting national changes in religion, education and housing.

The origins of Shildon

Before the railway, Shildon was a small linear settlement built on the south-facing scarp of a hill just over 2 miles (4 kilometres) south-east of Bishop Auckland and about 8½ miles (13.5 kilometres) from Darlington. It was a hamlet of 100 or so inhabitants, without its own church or market, and most people’s jobs were in the surrounding farmsteads. Its geology made the area suitable for coal extraction and quarrying, activities which boomed during the 19th century. But coal was heavy to move, and it was carried by road as the Rivers Wear and Tees were unnavigable nearby.

In 1768, and then again in the 1810s, colliery owners and industrialists debated building a canal to connect the coalfields to ports for distribution, but the decision was made in 1818 to construct a public railway, powered by horses, which was expanded to include steam power in 1821-3. The chosen route described a wide arc to the west and south of the village of Shildon at the upper end of the new railway as it headed north-west towards the River Gaunless, Etherley and Witton Park. The terrain to the south was a low-lying marshy landscape, but once drained it provided a plateau where the main line and several branch lines converged. The first buildings associated with the new railway in the Shildon area were constructed by 1825 at two places along the mainline: one was just south of the original village of Shildon (and soon known as New Shildon), and the other was to the west of it at Brusselton, where one of the stationary engines was positioned.

New Shildon and the railway

The earliest buildings in New Shildon housed the workmen and engineers constructing the line. Inhabitants included Timothy Hackworth (1786-1850), who joined the S&DR that year as engineer and locomotive attendant at the railway’s workshop west of the Mason’s Arms, where the new railway crossed the road connecting Bishop Auckland to Darlington. He then set up his own Soho Works to build locomotives in the east of New Shildon, where his house and associated back-to-back cottages of 1833 survive, their sandstone walling typical of early buildings here.

The settlement was soon growing. A map of 1839 shows the S&DR’s Shildon Works to the west, with grey blocks of housing representing the end of streets leading from the road between Bishop Auckland and Darlington.

More houses were built within two triangular-shaped areas to the north and south of the railway line, as shown on the Ordnance Survey map surveyed in 1857.

The railway brought economic opportunities on which entrepreneurs such as Messrs. Kilburn capitalised , building a large warehouse close to the line for their ironmongery business in 1826. The nearby Soho works leased it in 1842 and later it was bought by the North Eastern Railway (NER, the successors to the S&DR). Now known as the Soho Engine Shed, it is, with the nearby Goods Shed of the late 1850s and Soho House and cottages, one of the group of historic structures managed by Locomotion.

The importance of coal

The coal industry also drove the expansion of New Shildon . By the middle of the 19th century, a large number of mines operated nearby, their wagons travelling into New Shildon to be formed into trains for onward transport to Middlesbrough. Vast sidings, occupying 16 acres by 1869, filled much of the plateau where Locomotion now stands. A coaling station (see the article here by Marcus Jecock) was first built in 1846-7 to refuel locomotives, its dramatic arches dominating the north side of the line.

Coal extraction then moved into the heart of New Shildon, just to the south of the railway line. Shildon Colliery opened in 1870, connected by rail spurs to the mainline and sidings. Its owner, George Pears, is commemorated by Pears Terrace, the row of stone-fronted brick houses built in the early 1890s which once overlooked the colliery. Further mines operated on the periphery of the town and by the late 19th century as many people were employed in the mines as by the railway.

Housing and serving the workers and their families

More housing was required to deal with the population increase: over 2,500 lived there in 1851 and by 1891 the combined settlement of Shildon was home to 7,870 people. Station, Victoria, Soho and Mill Streets were built on the north side of the railway in the 1850s and 60s, connecting Soho Works to the east with the S&DR works to the west

The focus of development moved south of the line in the 1890s to 1910s, off Redworth Road, which with Byerley Road continued to be the main artery connecting old and New Shildon. These brick rows of houses are generally faced with stone on elevations facing a main road. Houses were not large, with either two or three bedrooms and back yards serviced by alleyways, but they accommodated the growing population.

Schools, chapels and churches were added gradually across the settlement: the original Shildon acquired its Anglican church in the 1830s and New Shildon gained All Saints in 1868-9, while places of worship for Wesleyan and Primitive Methodist congregations were built by 1855. A National School and a Mechanics Institute were erected in Station Street and further schools were built in both parts of Shildon.

Adapting to 20th-century change

Though the railway industry boomed until the middle of the 20th century, with the NER (later LNER and British Rail) works moving into wagon construction and repair, coal production rapidly declined. Shildon Colliery closed in 1924; it was demolished in 1937 and its site was developed into the Dabble Duck industrial estate. Housing on Dalton Crescent and Ferens Terrace was built to the south-east of it in the late 1940s. Little coal mining remained in the immediate area after the Second World War.

Post-war clearances removed rows of early housing on both sides of the mainline, in some cases replacing them with winding streets of modern houses and in others leaving the space undeveloped. British Rail closed Shildon Works in 1984, causing massive job losses. Many of its vast brick buildings still stand [Figure 9], adapted for other engineering uses and renamed the Hackworth Industrial Park, reminding us of Shildon’s railway heritage.

Looking to the future

The opening of Locomotion in 2004 and its recent expansion in 2024 brings visitors to Shildon to celebrate all things railway. This year’s celebration of Railway 200 and the bicentenary of the S&DR brings our focus back to Shildon and its significance, not just a town of railway and coal but a monument to its people. This research provides a broad understanding of the town’s historic buildings and landscapes, and shows how the arrival of the Stockton & Darlington Railway made Shildon a part of the nation’s story of industrialisation and its transition into the post-industrial present.

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