Veiws of Church Road railway bridge and from the bridge looking towards the town centre. c1985 
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
Veiws of Church Road railway bridge and from the bridge looking towards the town centre. c1985
Benny – puddling clay was a very clean form of clay with any stones or other rubbish removed. It was a very high solids content material and was originally used to seal, puddle, the bottoms and sides of a canal cut, thus rendering waterproof. I would guess therefore that it’s function was to protect the concrete from our somewhat wet climate.
I remember my father, also Benny Brown, telling me he worked on the construction of this Bridge, and they had some problem that my father suggested could be fixed with ‘Puddlers Clay’ which did the job. What Puddlers Clay is I have no Idea, does any one else? Dad was a Shipwright by trade but worked for his most of his life as Carpenter. He had once job in Whitby and used to cycle there and back every day until he burst a blood vessel with his cycling efforts and had to give that job away. He finished his working life as a maintenance Carpenter at the Titan Chemical Works. I remember him coming home with holes all over his working clothes where he had be spashed with Acid. We forget some of the conditions our Parents and Grand Parents had to endure to put food on the table for the family, it was little more the slave labour in some instances.
Yes, Mick, Herbert was lovely. I was telling mam and as they do… “well you know that’s Margaret Turner’s lad”. Can’t always make the connection at the time. Was talking to your mam outside St Bede’s and to John Turner in the Leeds. I sat with Kathy for a good while and caught up with Pat and the families, was years since I’d seen them. I’m busy looking for some photo’s of Portrack, got them somewhere. Will send them in if they scan okay.
Wonderful photos of this bridge, sadly no longer there, but if walking from Portrack to the town, if you look to the left just past where the bridge used to be, you will see the sight of the five minute car wash, on the side of the building that used to be Minories. It’s recognisable by the patch of maroony coloured paint on the side of the wall, a wall I painted when I worked at the car wash back in 1962. Must have been good paint in them days for it still to be visible. Also, that’s a nice tale about Kath Howells (my cousin). Her brother Herbert was a lovely gentle man. I was also at his funeral, I think you, Irene, may have been sat next to my mother Margaret in the Leeds after the funeral. I was sat opposite her with my wife Ann.
I can remember a group of us playing down Church Road near the bridge, probably around the early 50’s. Someone dared one of the older girls, Kathy Howells, to walk across the very top of it! She would’ve been around maybe 13 and took up the challenge. She got halfway across and someone shouted that her older brother Herbert was coming! She stood rooted to the spot for a while then decided to complete the ‘dare’ and continued across!! We didn’t dare cheer in case Herbert heard, but she got lots of pats on the back later!! It was also a short cut across the railway lines to the river I think.
I was an apprentice chipper working in the repair bay of the new pipemill at the Malleable when the storm hit. There was me Alfie Hoyle, Tommy Rutter, Ginger Hodgson and his son Kevin. It was quite scary when it went black. I was watching through the big doors when it started. The big hailstones made a lot of noise bouncing off the tin roof. When the rain started pouring through the roof on to the shop floor I dived inside a pipe to get out the way of it. A lot of people were relieved when it started to get light again.
The date of the storm in 1968 was actually Tuesday July 2nd. A detailed account of it is here – http://rememberwhen.gazettelive.co.uk/2008/07/the_dark_day_tuesday_july_2_19.html
On the day of the storm I was working during the Summer as a Wharehouseman at Joshua Wilsons cash and carry on Portrack Lane, prior to going to University. The water, almost as soon as the Heavens opened, breached the doors of the warehouse and we were left for the next few hours attempting to stem the flow and move all the produce on floor level up on to higher shelves. A considerable amount of damage was done to stock and for the next few weeks we were discovering damp and damaged goods. I have only once since witnessed a rain storm of equal ferocity and that was in Nepal at the start of the monsoon season.
I too remember the Great Storm of 1968. I took shelter in Smiths in Stockton, which was at that time quite an old fashioned bookshop with small panes of glass in brown wooden frames. When the storm hit, the sky turned completely black and the streets were like rivers. But it only lasted about 20 minutes. The RAF reported that the storm clouds were eight miles thick. On the way home, going under the Church Road bridge, I saw at least one car that was fully emersed up to its roof. The amazing thing was, by the time I reached the bridge, the pavements were completely dried out.
Ken Howells mentions Johnny Jones and his pal who died in the reservoir on the Malleable Works. The year was round 1950. It was believed that they had been playing Tarzan, swinging over the reservoir, and one of them fell in. He was pulled under by the pumps and his friend jumped in to try to save him, but he too was pulled under. There was a very big funeral, forming a prcession down Portrack Lane. It was well reported in the Evening Gazette.
Coming home from the Plaza on the way to Portrack my brother Dave and I were caught in an air raid and took shelter under the bridge. My Dad had come to meet us and took us home – he said under the bridge was probably not the place to be. He was right, after the war the Gazette published pictures from the Luftwaffe. The bridge was one their targets – just past the bridge going to Stockton there were some steps leading up to a resevoir – a good friend and classmate of mine(Baily Street) Johnny Jones drowned there aged 11, his parents had a shop on Portrack lane – we were in Mrs Greens class – what a wonderful teacher – after St Anns it was like coming out of the dark into the light.
Bob Harbon – Yes I can remember the storm of 10/8/2003, being my birthday and decided to cycle to Great Ayton with my mate for a birthday ride stopping at Suggitt”s for a cuppa. We were passing Tanton and my mate looked to the West and said to me, look at them clouds and I said don”t worry about it. saying to him it will pass quickly. 5 minutes later, we were doing hell for leather to take shelter in drive-way. I never seen a storm like that since the great storm of 1968, I was at School and thought the world was going to come to a end. nevertheless we reached Suggitt”s feeling a bit wet.
I remember that storm so well, I was taking a typewriting test at school. I also remember the Sunday before the storm was one of the warmest days I can remember. I was at Redcar with some friends and there was not a breath of air. There must have been some kind of link to the two days. Obviously a “weather breeder” of a day as my mother used to say. Back to the storm though, my dad had an allotment opposite Tarmac Roadstone Holdings Offices and he was so upset because he said you would have thought that someone had gone round his allotment and chopped up all the cabbages and other veg and flowers. All his produce was decimated by the hailstones.
Passing through the bridge, at the top end on the right, there used to be a car repair & spraying firm. I remember a story regarding the rebuild of an Austin A90 Atlantic. The job was finished & one of the apprentices decided to take it “for a spin”. On re-entering the site he managed to catch the gates & scratch the newly renovated car. Allegedly, as the customer was due to pick up his pride & joy, the quickest repair in automotive history took place. If this story isn”t true it should be!
Yes that was the machine shop. I can remember the barrow and the test pieces though they didn”t mean that much at the time. Strange as I now, and have for some years, run the materials laboratory at the University of Teesside. I can still see the pullies that used to provide the drive for the machines from the days when there was one big motor at the end of the shop. There were always lots of cats about, I remember one of the kittens getting too curious about the moving machinery with fatal results. Looking back the safety first was almost non existant, with exposed gearings, pullies and drive belts plus the place was dark on the brightest day. One night shift we had a bat flying about. Altogether another century.
Anthony, was that the machine shop down near the WF and Malleable Head Office? I was working in the test house back then when we used to get the test pieces from both the pipe mills (old and new) machined for tensile, charpy impact and bend tests etc. We would take them down there in an old red wooden barrow marked “test house” and then collect them the next day. I remember the Goldsmith brothers who worked as fitters in the machine shop. Their dad was a foreman in the pipe mill. The manager of the Malleable football team also worked in the machine shop as I recall, can”t think of his name. Small world.
June 68 “Night at Midday ” comment I was in I.C.I at the time of “Doomsday” and the works was put on “Lightning Alert”, a number of flare stacks were opened to get rid of any dangerous pressure, all process workers were taken off outside plants, the fire-station had all its machines manned on the fore-court or road.all loading or off-loading of road and rail traffic stopped. The weather changed from mild to cloudy about 11-00 , by 12-00 cars and vehicles required light. the darkest being about 12-30-12-45, when an errie silence hung about Teesside. My wife shopping in Stockton said everybody went under cover as the clouds seemed to be ground level and a horrible thunder-storm in the offing. The Evening Gazette caught the scene. A misty cyclist with his lights on, riding past Thornaby Town-hall, the clock showing 12-20. The met people said it was caused by industrial smog, cold sea-air and warm S.W wind layering and stationary up to 2 miles above Tees- Valley. No storm, rain or even thunder, by 14-00 the sky was clear as Doomsday lifted from Teesside. Any other recollections ?? We had another short burst Sunday 10th August 2003, !0-40/11-10 , with darkness , 80/90 mph wind and horizontal rain storm.
June “68, the sky turned green then black. “Night at Noon” as the Gazette had it, a cloud burst flooded the area. I was working in the machine shop at the Malleable and we were sent home as the power failed. There were two cars floating about in the dip in the road under the bridge.
Wish I had a quid for every time I had walked along that footpath and under the bridge. There was a set of steps up the embankment on the right hand side which led to the Malleable Works Head Office and a shortcut through the works rather than walking down Portrack Lane.
I used to walk that route and up the steps to the Malleable when I was an apprentice there 64/69 and until I left in 71.
Church Road Bridge with Steel works around it. This bridge was too low for heavy vehicles and high loads and any traffic from the Mallable or Head-Wrightson had to go via Billingham New road and Norton to travel North or South. Built as part of the Government direct employment scheme for the unemployed it was opened by the then Minister of Transport Mr Hore-Belisha, who also introduced traffic lights. The height restriction also applied to Ashmores Bensons and Parkfield loads to Billingham I.C.I became a major traffic operation (Sunday”s). During W.W II a concrete wall was built to slow down “Tanks”, this was soon removed when dozens of work buses “Choked, at this point. The wall was removed and a series of holes capped with concrete covers laid and steel girders were stored in the field alongside the bridge near Harkers engineering, to slot into the holes as anti-tank obstructions, demolition chambers were also cut into the supports. Now gone, only the bank of the railway on the north side is visible, to the rear of Portrack Mill, Maritime Road.