(Photo courtesy of SBC Road Safety Team)
This looks like a view of Wolviston Road in Billingham -the old A19. The building to the right of the bus (as you look at the photograph) looks like The Swan. (This information was kindly provided by Lawrence Emm)
I believe this is a picture of Wolviston Road, Billingham (old A19) looking north. The building on the right is the Swan Hotel, and there is a petrol station and garage on the left. (This information was kindly provided by David McMann) 
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
My dad used to own the chemist shop opposite the Swan
I remember standing at the bus stop on the same side as the Swan and can remember the air raid siren. We moved into Grosvenor Road in 1950s
I live on Grosvenor Road now, do you have any photos of the street from the time you moved in?
I live in Grosvenor Road I have a photograph of Grosvenor Rd. from when the houses were built approx 1930. It was taken from a postcard.
I live in Grosvenor Road I have a photo of the road taken from a postcard approx 1930 when the houses were built.
To the North of Harkness’s was a row of shops (four of them, maybe?) one of which was Smith’s fish and chip shop, which did a land-office business after the War. Cod was 9d., haddock a shilling, and a serving of chips 3d., and since everything else was still rationed, we were frequent purchasers. I don’t recall Mr. Smith’s first name; his wife’s name was Alice (known to my mother ever after as “Greedy Alice” when the price of chips went up to 4d.). His brother, Maurice, had a newsagent and sweet shop next door (or next but one) where I bought lead soldiers, well before the effect of lead on kids was realised. Then yet another brother, Fred, had a similar shop on Station Road. Another of the shops was run by a Mrs. Idle; don’t know what she sold, because at that time, if I couldn’t eat it, read it or play with it, I wasn’t interested.
The photo appears to have been taken soon after Billingham’s post-war building boom had started. The dual carriageway divider and lamp standard appear to be new, as are the road markings. Where Marsh House Avenue was built, just to the south of this picture, there were earlier fields of wheat, pastures and hedgerows, running west a mile or more, to a thick copse of trees known to us as “Dixons’ Wood,” and south to Billingham Beck. It was farmed by the Dixon brothers. In my earliest years, Cambrian and Sidlaw Roads ended in fields, as, for that matter, did Roseberry Road to the East (where the Technical College, Kennedy Flats and Town Centre were subsequently built.) There, we caught tadpoles in the ditches, and got harrassed by the local Law, for scrumping apples from the trees in the grounds where the College was being built, left over from the farm that had been demolished to make way for it. We didn’t know it at the time, but we had the joy of both an urban and rural childhood.
I think the first name of Mr Smith the fish shop owner was Albert. His nephew Malcolm Smith played for the Boro in the 1970s
Not certain which year it happened but one Saturday lunchtime there was quite a serious fire in fish shop and the business was closed for some time. Could have been the mid 1980s at a guess.
When business was quiet Albert would nip across the road into the Swan
I think his name was ‘Alec’ Smith, not Albert. My hubby Dave remembers him well and said he was a lovely chap. 🙂
Albert Smith
I remember the tent club very well. One night a band turned up and the lead singer stood on one leg playing a flute… It was Jethro Tull.
Does anybody remember the Tent club at the Swan in Billingham in the late sixties or very early seventies?
I also remember Harkness Garage as I lived round the corner in Northfield Rd. The garage is now a modern JET filling station with a shop and car wash facility, although part of the back walls still exist so there could be some of the bricks that Bill laid! My first drink (underage) was in the Ship at Wolviston but the Swan became a regular meeting place before going on to the La Ronde later.
Re Harkness garage wolviston Road, I worked on a large extension on this garage would be about 1955/6 whilst serving my bricklaying apprenticship with Stephen Coates a Middlesbrough builder who built thousands of council houses in Billingham, Middlesbrough areas in the years after the 2nd world war, is the garage still there as I live away now from the area for 30yrs. The Swan was where I had my first drink with my late father, just a half of Vaux bitter if I remember right, as I was under the legal drinking age at the time, just was 18yrs just a matter of weeks away, how daring in those days.
This is indeed The Swan Hotel on Wolviston Road, Billingham. Harkness”s Garage (opposite) was the local MG agency. The pole to the right of the bus is carrying an air-raid siren.