Queen Victoria, the first monarch of the railway age, ‘most graciously consented’ to break her journey from Balmoral to the Isle of Wight and stopped briefly in Darlington.
‘The Bank Top Station was repainted, and hung with evergreens and banners, platforms and terraces were prepared, floral crowns furnished, and all the petty splendour a rural town could muster was brought to bear on the event,’ wrote historian William Longstaffe. Thousands turned out. All the church bells pealed and, at 1.35 p.m., as the royal train appeared, the band struck up the Royal Anthem.
But Victoria did not alight. She sent her Home Secretary, Sir George Grey, to accept the bouquets and gifts. She was seen through the window wearing ‘a light plaid shawl and white silk bonnet, trimmed in the simplest manner’, sniffing at the bouquet prepared in the Grange Road garden of John Harrison. ‘After remaining about 15 minutes in the station, the train moved slowly through the crowded lines of spectators for York, amid repeated peals of cheers,’ said Longstaffe. ‘The day was completely a holiday, the shops were closed, and a glorious bonfire and heaps of noisy fireworks, with an illumination or two, made night cheerful.’
The queen, though, was not amused. Even though the Bank Top shed had been repainted, she expressed surprise that the birthplace of the railways did not possess something more grand.
(‘Memories’, The Northern Echo, 2011)