A postcard showing Newcastle Police Fire Brigade, East End (Headlam Street) Station c 1922 
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
A postcard showing Newcastle Police Fire Brigade, East End (Headlam Street) Station c 1922
In the 1960s I was a fireman at this station, from memory the pole ran through 4 floors… quite a slide down, you had to look upwards from the lower floors!
My great uncle was a Station Officer during the 1920s his name was Johnson. My mother used to say when the bells sounded the horses in the early days of horse drawn appliances would start to anticipate the excitement…
When I worked there, the herringbone wooden tiles were still on the appliance bay floors, that allowed the horses to get a grip to pull the pump out. Nearby there was a toffee factory that gave of the smell of mollases… that got the horses going as well.
Ambulance in the left bay with a 1920 Tilling Stevens Braidwood pump in the right Reg no BB 4152, the Headlam St station opened in 1903