Two views taken from the Head Wrightson site showing the River Tees frozen over in 1963. 
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
Two views taken from the Head Wrightson site showing the River Tees frozen over in 1963.
Picture Stockton Archive 
I have a couple of memories of the 1947 winter, when I was five years old.
The first is standing in the back kitchen of 17 St Annes Terrace, with my grandmother, waiting for the electricity supply to come back on, while there was deep snow around. Coal trains could not get through to the power stations and there was a shortage of manpower in the coal mines, so output was down. The shortage of electricity hit us hard as unlike most working class people, we cooked by electricity. Fortunately, the house, although built around 1935, had an old fashioned cast iron coal range.
My second memory was that the snow was so deep, I thought it would be an idea to keep some. I put some in a wooden vegetable box and put it in a shed in the back garden. Long after the snow had melted I went to look for it and was annoyed to find it was still there but had turned in to a dirty block of ice.
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It would appear that I have an apology to make! Ihave mixed up 1993 with 1963. Whether it froze or not in 1993, I wouldn”t know. I moved to Coventry years before the Barrage was built, when the Tees was free to move backwards and forwards at Stockton with the tides. So if it froze in 1993 I wouldn”t know, but in 1963 I do know that it did not freeze over. The reason I can be so sure the river did not freeze in 1963 is this – I was working in Head Wrightson,s R&D.Dept which was situated right on the quayside at Thornaby. Our toilet facilities were situated further along the quay and to visit them, one had to go out and walk alng it. As one did so, you got a pretty good view of the river and in 1963 it never did freeze over! Hope this puts the record straight. In a different vein, in those days the Tees Conservancy launch used to patrol the river as far as the bridge and then go back to whence it came from. Does it still do so, can anyone tell me? If not, I”d appreciate chapter and verse as to what happened, why and when. Over to you!
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I remember when the tees froze over in the 90″s, I was rather amused at the police delivering a warning over the local radio to “please do not ride your cycles under Victoria Bridge”. The following week the temperature had risen and we had huge ice flows all the way down to the barrage.
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The Tees did indeed freeze solid in the early 1990″s.I took my kids down to the river in Stockton to see it.
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Re river tees freezing over. In my comment I forgot to mention that I had never seen it frozen over , but I had seen Ice flowing from further up the river in the severe Winter of 1947. I remember when I was about 14 years old my grandad telling me that it had frozen over when he was a young man in the 1870s.
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Talking about the severe Winter of 1947 I remember we built igloos out of ice blocks we had made from packing snow into boxes dousing them with water at night and the next morning building our igloo. I think the remains of those igloos were still visible the following March, so you can see how severe the winter was in 1947. Ropnar Park Lake was a popular ice skating venue that year… another pastime we had was pouring water down the middle of the road at night, this formed into a black ice which was very slippery in the morning and provided us with a wonderful slide. The Corporation bus drivers were not impressed, as the Number 8 bus traveled up Hawthorne road in those days.
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I agree with Ian I”ve never seen the Tees frozen down on the Stockton riverside but I do remember it frozen a few mile upriver from Worsall where I used to stay during the last war.
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Talking about the River Tees freezing over I seem to remember that in 1947 the shallows at Redcar had ice formed on them does any one else remember this happening?
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The captions to the photographs read as follows: “Two views taken from Head Wrightson site showing the River Tees frozen over IN 1993!!!” I stand by what I said.The river is NOT frozen over and DID NOT freeze over at this point at any time in 1993. Obviously it could have frozen over at other times.During the ice-age it froze over quite a lot ,as did Stockton and most of Great Britain, but not in 1993.
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[Re the River Tees freezing] I remember my granddad telling me some years ago when he was a young fellow the River Tees did freeze over and and an Ox was once roasted on the river near Butterwicks field not far from the Victoria Bridge the field used to hold an Annual Fair, I remember being taken to the Fair as a young lad were there were Coconut stalls etc and Roundabouts and seeing a man called Dare Devil Peggy jumping from a stage built on scaffolding into a round Tank filled with water 12ft in Diameter and 6 to 8 ft deep . the highlight was the night show seeing him douse himself with petrol set his clothing on fire and jump into the tank,some time later I did hear that he missed judged the jump and hit the side of the Tank,
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A few words of correction regarding the caption for the two photos.What you see in the two shots is actually ice from further up river(probably from Yarm or even further upriver).The river at Stockton never did freeze over,due to the large tide rise and fall(10 or 12 feet at least) which would cause any ice which might have formed to be broken and washed away twice every 24 hours.What actually happened is as follows.The river,well above Yarm and away from tidefall DID freeze and after weeks of sub-zero temperatures, froze very well indeed.When the thaw set in it happened suddenly almost overnight.The sudden onslaught of meltwater under the ice caused it to fracture and flow downstream bringing lots of debris,i.e. twigs,branches and the odd tree tunk and that is what we see in the photos.Lots of ice but in fact moving in pace with the river, like a very fast moving glacier.Just thought I”d put the record straight.
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I can remember 1963 winter very well we loved it ,and yes only the well off had bought sledges we had to do with home made or had the famouse ICI sledge ie:Blue fertiliser Bag, it was the days before central heating and Flu ,we used to get up on a morning and scrape the ice of the inside of the window to see if it had snowed, as far as Global Warming I have my own reservations , Im convinced its due to all the underground atomic tests, seen on another site of a nuclear test and the ground sank 350 feet in the desert,so if its done that whats it done to the planet,surely its tipped the axis,and with all this crazy weather we have been getting it makes you wonder if the equator has moved
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The photo was taken by Alan Simpson, the works photographer,just outside the back door of Head Wrightson R&D workshops. The people in the picture are as follows. From left to right Joe Broadbent-electrician, Albert Harrison-labourer, Colin ??????-fitter,and on the right is me, Ian Russell-apprentice electrician. In the background, in the white lab coat, is Tommy Gallen who worked in the lab.
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Could be Colin Waugh it has a look of him but picture very blurred, he was working in R&D at that time.
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What wonderful photographs of how life was most of my life. Many people kept their own ice skates and skated on Norton Duckpond, Billinham Bottoms and flooded fields around Norton and Stockton. Norton showfield was the place to sledge, this happened each year. Nobody went into long trowsers until 14 years old and our shorts used to freeze around the bottoms and chaff your legs. Most people built their own sledges only the wealthy could afford bought jobs.
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Wonder if the River Tees will ever freeze over again? Probably not with all the talk of global warming.
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