Allonby and its buildings

For such a tiny village, Allonby contains a remarkable number of interesting and historic buildings. These are four of the best.

The Reading Room was erected around 1862 at a cost of £1,500. £200 was raised locally and the rest was donated by Joseph Pease, a Quaker Industrialist from the North East of England. It was designed by Alfred Waterhouse, a promising 32-year-old from Liverpool. Waterhouse went on to become one of the country’s most distinguished architects. He was responsible for the Natural History Museum in London and the ornate office buildings of the Prudential Insurance Company in Manchester and many other British cities.

As well as a library, it contained a billiard room. By the early 1970s, it was used very little and the trustees put it up for sale. It was bought by a local property developer but became derelict. It has recently found new owners and is being converted into a private residence.

North Lodge was built about 1840 by Thomas Richardson of Darlington. The central pavilion provided him with a summer home. At each side of this were three smaller cottages which were occupied, rent free, by local widows or spinsters each of whom also received a yearly pension of £5. The building is still owned by The Society of Friends and used as low-cost housing.

The Square, with the baths on the right, as
it may have been in Victorian Times.

Allonby Baths have a fine classical portico and are located in ‘The Square’, a cobbled area behind the main road. They opened in 1835 on land donated by Mrs Sarah Brockbank Satterthwaite-Clark, a member of the Quaker shoe manufacturing family.

There was an upstairs meeting room and, on the ground floor, nine private cubicals which could be hired by the day or week by those desirous of ‘taking the waters’. The building is now privately owned.

The Church dates from 1845 and replaced an earlier building on the same site. The adjoining Sunday School was originally used as the village school. This rather plain, undistinguished building fits particularly well with its landscape.