Darlington Town Hall is a municipal building in Feethams, Darlington, County Durham, England. It is the meeting place of

Darlington Borough Council The Borough of Darlington is a unitary authority and borough in County Durham, Northern England. The borough is named after the town of Darlington, and in 2011 had a population of 106,000. It is in the Tees Valley mayoralty. The borough bord ...

History

Resurgence outside Darlington Town Hall (geograph 5494907)

In the late 1960s proposals were developed by the

Shepherd Building Group Shepherd Building Group Ltd is a family owned business, based in York, that manufactures, leases and sells modular buildings in the UK and Europe. Its Portakabin and Portaloo brands are frequently treated as generic terms for modular buildings ...

to demolish the town's market hall and redevelop the area: these proposals were supported by the

Conservative Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization in ...

administration on the Borough Council. The borough architect, Eric Tornbohm, subsequently developed plans, which were supported by the successor Labour Party administration to create a series of "concrete and glass boxes" in the area. After Alfred Waterhouse's town hall became inadequate, civic leaders decided to construct the first of these "concrete and glass boxes": the site they selected in Feethams had been occupied by the Lead Yard Bus Station which itself had been built on the site of the old Darlington Union Workhouse. The foundation stone for the new building was laid by the

Minister of Housing and Local Government The Ministry of Housing and Local Government was a United Kingdom government department formed following the Second World War, covering the areas of housing and local government. It was formed, as the Ministry of Local Government and Planning, ...

Anthony Greenwood Arthur William James Anthony Greenwood, Baron Greenwood of Rossendale, (14 September 1911 – 12 April 1982) was a prominent British Labour Party politician in the 1950s and 1960s. Background and education The son of Arthur Greenwood ( Depu ...

, on 30 November 1967. It was designed by Williamson, Faulkner Brown and Partners and was opened by

Princess Anne Anne, Princess Royal (Anne Elizabeth Alice Louise; born 15 August 1950), is a member of the British royal family. She is the second child and only daughter of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, and the only sister of K ...

on 27 May 1970. The design involved a long concrete tower block facing onto Feethams with another block jutting out of the rear. Internally, the principal room was the council chamber which was decorated with vertical strips of elm wood. A

zinc Zinc is a chemical element with the symbol Zn and atomic number 30. Zinc is a slightly brittle metal at room temperature and has a shiny-greyish appearance when oxidation is removed. It is the first element in group 12 (IIB) of the periodi ...

and stainless steel structure, intended to depict the resurgence of the area, was designed by John Hoskin and erected outside the town hall. When Princess Anne was asked to unveil a small plaque linked to the structure,

Michael Palin Sir Michael Edward Palin (; born 5 May 1943) is an English actor, comedian, writer, television presenter, and public speaker. He was a member of the Monty Python comedy group. Since 1980, he has made a number of travel documentaries. Palin w ...

records in his diaries that she turned to the journalist,

Kate Adie Kathryn Adie (born 19 September 1945) is an English journalist. She was Chief News Correspondent for BBC News between 1989 and 2003, during which time she reported from war zones around the world. She retired from the BBC in early 2003 and ...

, and exclaimed "F*** Me". The plaque referred to "The Spirit of New Darlington" but the structure subsequently became known as "Resurgence". The town hall initially served as the headquarters of Darlington County Borough Council and remained the local seat of government when the enlarged Darlington District Council was formed in 1974. It went on to become the headquarters of the new

unitary authority A unitary authority is a local authority responsible for all local government functions within its area or performing additional functions that elsewhere are usually performed by a higher level of sub-national government or the national governmen ...

, in 1997. The council chamber subsequently became an approved venue for marriages and civil partnerships. A new structure for use by the borough council, Feethams House, was constructed by

Willmott Dixon Willmott Dixon is a privately owned contracting, residential development and property support business. History The company was founded in 1852, by John Willmott.Government buildings completed in 1970 City and town halls in County Durham Buildings and structures in Darlington