A general view of Bridge Road, Stockton looking towards Victoria Bridge, including the entrance to Stockton Goods Station. c1965 
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
A general view of Bridge Road, Stockton looking towards Victoria Bridge, including the entrance to Stockton Goods Station. c1965
Can anyone explain what appears to be a signal box against the wall of the goods yard. I passed here every weekday on my way to work at Thornaby either by bus or pushbike in the sixties but do not remember seeing it, although I did have to collect a parcel here once. A lovely photo of a sadly lost part of Stockton.
While there are the ends of some railway sidings behind this building I don’t think it’s related directly to them as the main windows seem to be looking the other way. Could be there just to overlook the yard entrance?
It looks like there were many random buildings & huts in the Goods Yard.
http://www.britainfromabove.org.uk/image/eaw043770
The left side of this picture shows the large billboards that we used to watch men gluing up huge pieces of advertising and a then suddenly a memory of what came after you passed there on the way to St Johns Crossing.
Where those ladies are standing was a monumental mason… gravestone production… and I seem to remember a little flower kiosk too.
My great uncle was a railway guard and he was given a railway house at St Johns crossing,the first ticket office. His name was Arthur Dawson and he lived there with his wife Jenny in the 40’s and 50’s. When the Queen Mother unveiled the plaque on the wall in the front garden, my great aunt was in the house and didn’t bother to go out to see the event. I often stayed there as a child and remember the sloping floor in the living room. The kitchen was on the landing, and the toilet a converted coal bunker out in the back yard reached by going down stairs to the cellar. My great grandfather had his bedroom in a room off the living room (the wall was cracked I was told when a bomb exploded nearby in the war.) and he died there. When Arthur retired he moved to Cleadon and was a ‘lollipop man’.
Bob Harbron – Bob I am too young (just) to remember these creations in LNER form & colour scheme, but I do remember the modern versions, with the rounded fronts in BR livery. I have actually seen one of the older examples in Keighly,it being refurbished it was non operational at the time I”m afraid. I believe this has now been accomplished. The remarkable thing about them was their tight turning circles, especially with trailer attached. Do you remember the coal delivery vehicle that served the back to backs in the area? Flat bedded with a single, but much larger front wheel. It could have belonged to the co-operative society, but I”m not sure after this length of time.
My uncle Ted Harrison drove a BR three wheeler delivery truck operating from this goods yard. During the war he drove overnight transporter to & from London. Must have been a hard job during the blackouts & into the London blitz. We have lost touch with his son (our cousin) Dennis Harrison, anybody know of his whereabouts. Lived in Thornaby would be in late 60s now.
I remember it well. The mass exodus from Head Wrightsons. From Bridge Street we climbed the stairs onto the main road above. On the opposite side of the road were the bus stops for the “O” and the “6” and “7”. Living in Norton I had the choice of all 3 buses but no matter which stop I queued in you could bet that the other bus came first. It was not long before I had my bike and waiting for the Bobby on traffic duty waving us across the road to go over Victoria Bridge. Then there were a further 3 Traffic duty Policeman through Stockton High Street Talk about traffic congestion to-day, it was nothing like the 50″s and 60″s. With working at the top end of Trafalgar Street I soon got sick and started going over Kelleys Ferry to miss all the traffic.
The three “Mechanical Horse”s” of both L.N.E.R and later B.R were “stabled” in South Shore Goods Yard , it later became a B.R.S British Road Service Depot The chimney on the sky-line was of the Generating-House of the Imperial Tramway Company, with the high peak of the tram-shed to the right, in Boat House Lane. The generating-house became part of Imeson and Finch workshop and on one occasion the shop-forman”s bicycle was hoisted to the top of the stack with the rope attached to the ladder half-way up The trees to the left are in Bowrons stone-masons yard, then a garage , St Johns railway – crossing , Labour -Excange or “Dole-Office” behind the tree. I think the trees on the sky-line (r) are alongside Thornaby Cemetery
During the 1950″s the printer that I worked for used to supply a good deal of Head Wrightson”s stationery and in particular clocking in cards and on one occasion while trying to get to the offices in Trafalgar Street, just a bit further down the road from this scene, with a proof late in the afternoon I stood and watched the mass exodus of men on bikes at the end of the shift. A policeman on point duty (not a sight you see these days) at the southern end of Victoria Bridge raised his hand and stopped them at the end of Bridge Street (I think). He held them there as they jockeyed for position lining up across the junction. Then as he stopped the traffic coming off the bridge and down Mandale Road he waved them away and they streamed out of the junction left and right towards Stockton and Thornaby. My bike provided my transport, pastime and sport but when anyone refers to the high numbers of bikes on the roads in those days it always reminds me of that occasion.
I remember all the three wheeled vehicles that used to leave here even the articulated three wheeled tractor units they seemed to come out enmass. Must have been after a train delivery
On this photo and another in the “Memories of Stockton on Tees” book shows Bridge Road in the 1960″s and what looks like then a busy road. what amazes me, is the number of bicycles using this junction. Unthinkable today.
The railway level crossing is where the original track of the Stockton & Darlington Railway crossed Bridge Road en route to its first terminus on the riverside at Stockton. This crossing was known as St. John’s Well.