Postcard of Stockton High Street, also showing Doggarts, The Royal Hotel, and the Empire Theatre in the background 
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
Postcard of Stockton High Street, also showing Doggarts, The Royal Hotel, and the Empire Theatre in the background
This postcard almost certainly dates from the sometime in the 1930s, Stocktons Open Staircase Double Deckers were first new in 1928,so the picture, if it shows a Stockton Vehicle, cannot be earlier than that date. Looking at the other vehicles and the dress style of the figures in the pictures,suggests the late 20s or the 30s. The other Buses in the picture escape identification for the time being.
The Double Decker Bus in this photo, may well be one of Stockton Corporations, Leyland TD1s from 1928/9. Stockton had two batches of open staircase Double Deckers at this time,and this is probably one of them. the livery at this time was a Vermillion and Cream, which was Stocktons pre WW2 livery. one of these Buses lasted long enougth to get in to the post war Green livery, and another lay derelict behind a farm near Thorpe Thewles until well into the 1950s.
Does anyone have any idea roughly what year this photograph was taken?
This is the first photograph I have seen of the United buses with an open stairs to the upper deck. I have told my wife that they were still in service in the forties but I do not think she believed me. Boarding one for a trip to Redcar (number 21 or 72/73) was a sometimes soggy experience. What luxury, when by the fifties they had been replaced by “posh” ones with an enclosed staircase!