Pub on track for historic listing for railway bicentenary
New listing celebrates pub’s place in railway history. Tony Henderson reports
Regulars will be raising a glass to a 200th railway festival celebration this week after their pub was listed to mark the bicentenary.
The Cleveland Bay pub, in Eaglescliffe, County Durham, is one of seven new sites to be listed by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport on the advice of Historic England to mark 200 years of the modern railway.
The new listings celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of modern passenger railway services with the opening of the Stockton & Darlington Railway on September 27, 1825, an event which ultimately transformed the world.
The Cleveland Bay is the earliest identified pub in the world to be built specifically in association with a railway line.
It was built for the chairman of the Stockton & Darlington Railway for the opening of the railway’s Yarm branch line in 1825. It is a prototype railway station, predating the Stockton & Darlington Railway’s own pubs, which saw the early development of the concept of the railway station.
Although the Cleveland Bay – originally known as The New Inn – was not built by the Stockton & Darlington Railway, it was constructed for the company’s chairman, Thomas Meynell, specifically because of the railway, to oversee the coal and lime depot at the end of the Yarm branch line.
The pub and the branch line opened together on October 17, 1825, with contemporary accounts documenting the close association between the inn and the operation of the railway.
The establishment proved to be a success and appears to have prompted the Stockton & Darlington Railway to commission their own pubs at the coal depots at Stockton, Darlington and Heighington in County Durham.
All four buildings can be seen as early proto-railway stations, built before the concept of the railway station had fully evolved.
The Cleveland Bay remains in use as a pub and is located within the Eaglescliffe Conservation Area.
Claudia Kenyatta and Emma Squire, incoming job-share chief executives of Historic England, said: “The development of England’s railway system was one of the greatest achievements of the Victorian era. These new listings highlight key milestones in its growth and demonstrate how the railway has shaped our local places today.”
The pub is one of seven new listings to mark the anniversary. The other locations are in Devon, Dorset, Norfolk and the Isle of Wight.
Historic England is asking people to add their stories about favourite listed railway locations for the Missing Pieces Project: Railway 200 project.