The Fothergill Fountain was unveiled in the centre of Bondgate. It was a memorial to Dr John Fothergill, who regularly prescribed a long drink of cold, fresh water for his patients, and who for twenty-three years had been president of the Darlington Total Abstinence Society. After his death, the society held a competition to design a memorial which was won by Septimus Hird, 17, the son of a pub landlord – he lived in the Green Tree Inn, Skinnergate – and who, tragically, had drowned while swimming in the sea at Redcar days after entering the competition. So before they could build the Fothergill Memorial Fountain, they had to erect the Hird Memorial Obelisk in West Cemetery.
The fountain’s unveiling ceremony, in front of ‘a vast concourse of people’ was embarrassingly interrupted by John Watson. A painter, Mr Watson was said to be ‘three sheets in the wind’ – despite it only being 1 p.m. He loudly gave a ‘sort of running commentary’ on the proceedings, according to the Darlington and Stockton Times, and then with ‘a heavy hiccup vented his dissatisfaction’ with the concept of temperance.
Nevertheless, the fountain was up and running – running so much that it overflowed, churning the earthen street into an ankle-deep muddy morass. In 1875, it was moved to the entrance of South Park, where it remains.
(Lloyd: A Walk in the Park)