A view of the pond, housing and shop on Norton Green, seen through the trees on the Green c1950.
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
A view of the pond, housing and shop on Norton Green, seen through the trees on the Green c1950.
Picture Stockton Archive 
On Monday May Bank Holiday this week I had visited my daughter on Crooksbarn and decided to go sit on the Green in the sunshine. Turning off the ring road onto the green I had to come to a stop. The traffic was backed up by badly parked cars, the green was crowded with masses of people still making their way onto the green which had bouncy castles stalls and with children running and playing as I once did eon’s ago. It was the Green as I remembered bank holidays the “0” buses bringing in people from Stockton and Tilery, others walking up the High Street as they were on Monday and the picnic on the green or in the show field behind our house in Mill Lane. Mother would open the door in the back garden wall and set up a stall with home made lemonade tea and let people use the outside toilet, probably charged for that as well. The children with happy faces getting fresh air instead of sitting in bedrooms with electronic gadgets, it made me realise what a great place Norton Green is and always was, my playground where lifelong friendships were made, through wartime with its smoke burners and mobile Ack-Ack guns, wardens fire watchers and AFS. VE parties and happy years courting on the Green and now getting a sausage roll from Blackwells sitting on the green with all those memories.
Not on Monday though, it was standing room only so I drove on down the High Street crowded with people walking to the Green and more memories. Stockton Norton and the places between were our stamping grounds, it had all the entertainments we needed, a tuppeny bus ride to the dances cinema’s school or work, we were a close knit community back then. I hope all who attended the Green had as much joy as we got all those years ago.
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Sorry Billy, that old Oak was an Elm, I saw it cut down during the Dutch Elm crisis. Coming up the High Street one day we were stopped by a barrier across the road so had a front seat view of the poor old tree I had played under, courted under and sat under getting over my first drinks before daring to go home, cut down and disappear. The round iron seat that was there would have a tale or two to tell. That too was vandalised and removed a long time ago. The Green is still there and one wonders how long it will last as they look for more car parking around it.
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When I was a small boy living in Greta Road Norton duckpond was a wonderful place to spend the day. Sitting under that magnificent old oak tree watching the blacksmith working on the huge shire horses. Close by were two other favourite places for small boys. The show field and the old mill (wasn’t one of the bells of Big Ben was cast there?)
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The paper shop was owned by Tony Canty at one timewho, in his youth, was a bundle of dynamite on a football field playing many years for I.C.I. Cassel Works in the Teesside League.
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Debby Brisby. The gable end of the shops where the sun blind is across from the Pond is where your Dad and his friends met. The white shop is a Newsagents where your Dad as a young teenager did a delivery round from. In those days it was called Fosters. To the right of the picture out of sight was the Unicorn where we started having our first alcohol.
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