A view of Norton High Street, shown on Postcard, with a view of tramlines and a horse and cart.Postcard showing a horse and cart at the side of tramlines in Norton High Street 
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
A view of Norton High Street, shown on Postcard, with a view of tramlines and a horse and cart.Postcard showing a horse and cart at the side of tramlines in Norton High Street
The cobbled yard to the North from Elcoats would be Bradley’s fish shop then a couple of houses with bow windows where Mr and Miss Thompson Teachers at Norton Board school lived then a large brick building and another yard belonging to the big white house Later flats. You passed that and there was a path down to the allotments on Billingham Road. A couple more very small cottages Mrs Samson (Salmon) lived in one and then the yard for the Corporation, a toilet block and the Tramsheds which were used during the war by the AFS and ARP. You then come to the houses in the picture which were private houses for some of the top people living in Norton at the time and have not changed much since this picture was taken.
What was the Tramsheds come Corporation yard is now a care home and apart from the odd building people from the time of the postcard would recognise exactly where they were today. I walked that route every school day from five to eleven then it was the bus to Stockton every school day to sixteen and then my job in Stockton. The high street was our shopping mall playground and the way we walked for our entertainment at the Avenue and Moderne Cinema then the Dance Hall near the Regal fish shop, our supper stop on the way home from the big boys dances in Stockton. Walking the High Street now (you have to as you can never get parked) I see the people long gone, the shops as they once where and those who lived in the big houses, in my time you doffed your cap to them which sometimes got you a brief conversation and a three penny bit or couple of coppers, big money to a lad, I also picked up and delivered a large basket of washing from those house to the washer woman up Station Road, my Saturday Job, A bob a basket or sixpence each way, very big money indeed.
This shows the Norton High Street, looking North, the junction to the right leads to the Norton Depot. It had four stabling tracks and outlet roads running North to Norton Terminus and South to Stockton
Was the depot (by the 1970’s) the cobbled yard just along from Elcoates sweet shop?