HOUSING associations are usually thought of as running streets of houses or building blocks of flats, but North Star also plays an important role in regenerating sites that have fallen into disrepair and in finding a new use for historic buildings that would otherwise have been doomed. And so North Star finds itself owning a pub, a police station, a railway station, a bank, old almshouses and an industrialist’s headquarters that was once the powerhouse of the Tees Valley. Here are just a few of the unusual stories to be found in its substantial property portfolio.
.. READ FIRST: FROM CATHY COME HOME TO THE FORMATION OF A HOUSING ASSOCIATION Gainford station Gainford station by Ray Goad, taken on February 26, 1965.
Picture courtesy of Richard Barber and the JW Armstrong Trust ONCE, the Gainford stationmaster’s house fronted onto the platform at which trains stopped on their way from Darlington to Barnard Castle and then over the desolate tops of Stainmore into Cumbria. The station opened on July 9, 1856, with a waiting shed to the west of the house. However, the house was only single storey but, about 15 years later, the roof was taken off, a second storey was added and the original roof plonked back on again.
In the late 1850s, the house was also adorned with a Stockton & Darlington Railway property plaque. The railway seems to have been recording its property portfolio. It gave each of its lines a letter – F, in the case of the Barnard Castle line – and each property .