Washday in the backyard of no.10 Park Terrace in Stockton. c1960. Photograph courtesy of Martin Spires. 
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
Washday in the backyard of no.10 Park Terrace in Stockton. c1960. Photograph courtesy of Martin Spires.
Thats my granny too! Used to visit her on saturday afternoons with my mam Brenda Beeton (nee Vickers). I remember falling backwards off a stool in that back yard and cracking my head. She always had country soup on the go on the range in the kitchen.
I was born in Park Terrace in 1959 and my Mother is Sheila Lathan, married to Jack Lathan (now deceased). My Nana was Elsie Rowntree, my Mothers Mum and Grandad Alfie Rowntree. Not sure what number in Park Terrace, but if anyone knows or has any photos I would be interested.
I have just found this site and although I never lived there can relive some memories as I was born up North. I am researching my Family history and think some of my family lived in 6 compton street.in 1871 census. They would have been Canns,from Norfolk ,so may not have been around long. Some moved to Blaydon. The names in Census are.Thomas Adames?Martha,William, Arthur, Hannah,Louisa and baby Fred who I think may have been my Great Grandad. This goes right back to 1871 though,so no one alive would remember them. This is interesting stuff on here and I love all the old pictures.
Hi Ashleigh nice to see another Eastall on the site. Your grandmother Elizabeth and my mother Lilian were sisters and I knew your grandfather Francois before they originally moved to Australia. Please give your nana my regards next time you see her. If you want to email me please ask “Picture Stockton” for my address.
Hey I am Ashleigh Eastall and Elizabeth Eastall(nee Hoey) is my grandmother. She is married to Francois Eastall my grandfather but I never got to meet him. Also my nana is living in New Zealand and she is 10 minutes away from my house.
Hi everyone, when i married 39 years ago,we bought our house and in the back with the house came a mangle and posser.In them days you got help set up home by our families. This became my first washer and when the children came along there was a lot of nappies to wash. I used this for two years then got my first electric one. It was always breaking down, even though the mangle and posser was hard work it was the best. I only gave it away about 15 years ago.
I WILL ALWAYS HAVE MEMORIES OF THE MANGLE, WHEN WE LIVED IN SWAINBY ROAD MY MOTHER HAD ONE, ONE DAY I WAS HOLDING SOME CLOTHING WHILST IT PASSED THROUGH THE MANGLE, AND I DIDN”T LEAVE GO, I ENDED UP IN STOCKTON AND THORNABY HOSPITAL NEEDING STICHES TO TWO FINGERS ON MY LEFT HAND, I STILL HAVE THE SCARS AFTER 55 YEARS. AND I REMEMBER IT AS IF IT WAS YESTERDAY.
I can relate to all the comments on the site I too remember my mother getting up at five in the morning and lighting the fire under the Copper Boiler in the back yard that was if she had something to burn, then bashing the clothes in the Wooden Tub with the old Possing stick then putting the clothes through the large wringer which had a handle attached to a wheel which I often turned while she guided the sheets and various clothes between the big wooden rollers. It was certainly hard work but seemed to keep us fit! There were many things like making mats with the plodders, sandstoning the step at the front door; getting Bathed in the Tin Tub, using candles and gas mantles as there was no electricity, soot coming down the chimmney onto the fire place sometimes, after catching fire through trying to get the fire going with paper. They were really hard times but most of us survived and felt fitter even though we were poor. No comparison to the present day with all the modern ways of life .
GOSH!! All this talk about possing sticks. I thought I was the only one on earth who remembered using a possing stick in the barrel for my mom. Stanley St. during the 40″s, cold water pipes freezing, freezing bedrooms where 6 of us had to sleep . They were not the best of times!! Such memories recalled by these photos and many comments make me doubly appreciative of my present life. But, it was a super neighbourhood in which to grow up.
Janine Connor: I lived in Compton street with my grandparents Jimmy and Lilly Hoey during the 1940″s as a small boy and went to St. Mary”s RC school for a while, I”m in my late sixties now. The Mrs. Connor I refer to could have been your great grandmother she did have at least one son. Another memory that sticks in my mind was that she kept ducks and I think chickens in her back yard very practical in those days of rationing.
Hey Stan – is there any chance please of contacting me? If you contact Picture Stockton they will forward on my email. Steve.
to Stan Hilton, you said that you remember a Mrs Connor living a few doors down from you at Compton Street, My grandfather Thomas Connor lived at 21 Compton Street when he was growing up. Is it the same Connor”s you remember? My great grandmother Thomas”s mother might be the one who shouted at you. Would you hear your memories of them if it is.
Mark Eastall. Some how I missed your entry, don”t know how, I”m here most days. You”re one Eastall I haven”t met. It”s great to hear from the New Zealand branch of the family again and I hope you enjoyed the site. Will email you soon.
To Stan Hilton – Stan my name is Mark, I was searching my family name on the internet and came across this site which mentions my mothers name. Your Aunt Betty is my mum Elizabeth Eastall (nee Hoey). She married Francois (Frank) Eastall later moving to Australia and is now living in New Zealand. If you are interested you can contact me by email: M.Eastall@hotmail.com
Glynis Bolton – My Grandmother Hoey was still living in 24 Compton Street when you lived there. She moved out to live in Roseworth during the late 50″s early 60″s but she had lived there with my grandfather from around 1912 and my great grand parents(King)probably before that. Mike Renwick”s description of his grandmother”s house echoes Compton Street to the letter but there was a long narrow pantry next to the range and a cupboard under the stairs in the other corner where the tin bath was stored. Mike”s reference to gas mantles also reminds me that there was no lighting upstairs so it was a matter of carrying your candle up to bed with you. In fact there were only two gas lights in the house, one in the kitchen/living room and one in the parlour, which was only used on special occasions. Some of the houses in the street had been converted to electricity but my grandfather thought it was too dangerous, prefering a naked defused gas flame for illumination. My aunt Betty Eastall (nee Hoey) also lived in Compton Street at that time, at the Talbot Street end.
This is a picture of my dear gran in park terrace – I want to reply to Stan Hilton whose gran lived in Compton Street – we lived there from 1955 to 1961 at no 14. I also wondered if anyone remembers the Vickers family from Park Terrace I would love to know.
Hello
I remember that view of my auntie Amy as if it was yesterday,how things have changed, must have been about 1945. My sister Dorothy caught her finger in that mangle and spent some time holding her bleeding finger on the front doorstep.
Hi Glynis
Its Paul your cousin, I remember being in the back yard that ringer was covered with a wooden plastic frame and I was scared of it also remember toby the Alsatian dog
My grandmother lived in a terrace house,35 Trent Street, that my parents later took over. A black lead range, gas mantle lighting, only a cold water tap which fed a shallow soapstone kitchen sink. There was a brick built washing copper with built in coal fire. As for the gas lighting, a couple of times, I had to burn the mantles prior to use. Before she moved my grandfather bought her a “washing machine”. It consisted of a zinc plated water container on a frame with a hand driven agitator and mangle. The latest in domestic appliances and the height of sophistication. To top all off the “usual offices” were outdoor in the back yard – nithering in winter!
Yes Jim times were hard , My father was out of work for almost 8 years, you could say I was a child of the depression Perhaps thats the reason we dwell on the good-times, the care of parents, of school and respect It may be “rose-coloured glasses time”, but were summers longer? With the trip to Seaton or Redcar more eagerly looked forward to that to-days Disney-World? and none of “I”m bored”. while the prsent children have never seen a real winter, not of 24 hr snow, a winter which started in Nov to end in Feb. Another past :- The daily sweeping of the pavement, (as done by Norah Batty in “Last of the Summer-Wine”), the same with any snow. “Donkey” stoning of the front step “Donkey Stone” a block of sandstone which left a white smooth finish on the front step and stone window sill. So called as it came in a wrapper featuring a Donkey
Yes, I remember the soap-in-a-cage for washing up, the hot water coming from the kettle because it was cold out of the tap, my mother boiling pans of it on Saturday nights so the kids could have a bath in front of the fire. I remember the poss and poss tub, the hand wringer and the clothes drying on the line in the back street, covered in that awful black stuff from Ashmores foundry. I remember sprinkling ashes in the backyard in the winter so we wouldn”t slip going to the toilet, laying coats down to keep the draughts out and then putting the same coats on the bed at night. I remember lying in bed on freezing mornings waiting for the fire to be lit before I’d get up to go to school, and the angry red marks on my mother’s legs when she sat too close to it in the evenings. I remember the house filling with smoke every few months, having to cover the fireplace and the furniture with sheets and climb up into the garret with the screw-together chimney brush to fix the problem, and the quite spectacular soot falls when I didn”t manage it in time. And I”m not that old. Let’s face it folks, the good old days weren’t that good.
Hi Jim, I remember everything you say, also the chilblains, the army coats on the bed, the ice on the inside of the windows. Oh happy days.
Excellent memories Bob – and a good recycling argument, although we never thought of those years as being particularly “green”. I wonder how many of our younger generation would be any good at lighting a coal fire. I suppose it was an art-form that we all learned, followed thereafter by being able to successfully “bank-up” the fire at night so that it stayed on until the morning. I remember us having a little cage on a stick that we put the remains of the soap into to help froth up the water for washing up – in the days before washing up liquid was invented.
Washday In the era of this photo and earlier, did we have a better re-cycling programme than all the present schemes ? Newspapers were never thrown out , they were used for fire lighting and “blazing”the fire, rolled up tight to help coal stock ,put under the Clippy-Mat for extra insulation, used as cover around exposed pipes and above all cut and hung on a nail in the toilet Clothing was passed down the family, always cleaned. In rag form “clippy-mat” or rag-and bone man. Shoes were home-repaired and in the last instance burnt on the fire. Packaging was in paper not plastic, again the fire place. Peelings to the allotments for poultry and pigs. Bottles, with deposit back to the shop. Ashes had their use as covering on back-yard or pavement in frosty weather, Even the water from the poss-tub was used to “swill “the yard or front. re “Blazing” how many remember the newspaper catching fire and a rush to prevent the chimney catching fire ?
Bob – many thanks for your excellent description of the proddy – hooky or clippy mat. I was interested to see on the Net that people now run courses on making proddy mats to keep this traditional art & craft alive ! Martin – the “plosher” that you refer to is probably what was known as a “possing stick”. A 4 ft. long wooden shaft with handles at one end, and at the other either what looked like an inverted collander, or a three-legged stool ! By working your possing stick up and down, and clockwise and anticlockwise, amongst your washing in the tub you got your washing powder into all of the washing, and helped it to get clean. With the introduction of electric washing machines the possing stick went the same way as washboards, carpet beaters, mangles and the like.
re Proddy Mat – Before lino or carpets the wooden floor of many workers houses were covered with a “Hooky-Mat /Proddy-Mat , . This was a hessian sack backed rug , into which off-cuts of clothing ,curtains in fact any cloth , cut into 4″ x 2” strip was hooked through the “wood-framed stretched” Hessian. It was possible to buy both hooks and off-cuts from a number of corner-shops, but most were D.I Y. When not in use the frame, made in “spare-time ” at work, was unbolted and stored in the yard. A pattern was sometimes traced, with black crayon on the hessian sacking , most of which was obtained from the local fruit shop. All were involved cutting, Prodding taking about a week to make a fire-side rug. In cold weather it was not unknown to put the rug on the bed for extra warmth , those were the days when you scraped frost from the inside of your bedroom window.
Cliff, what is a “proddy mat” and what is it for. Just curious to know. My Granny and also my Mam had a plosher to wash the clothes with. I thought they were marvellous things, I would love one.
They still used it in Hardwick
Yes that looks like a state of the art mangle to me, but that box on legs in front of it appears to be a zinc hand operated washer that had paddles inside the lid, which when shut were operated by a long handle using pure muscle power. They were tough people our grandparents. I can remember my grandmother in Compton Street, Tilery would light up her wood fired “copper” every Monday morning to boil the water for her corrugated galvanised tub then beat the dirt out the washing with a “poss stick”, before putting it through the mangle and pegging it across the back-street filled with clothes lines hung with flapping sheets and shirts etc. Shortly afterwards I would run down to Tilery Rec. dodging through the washing with Mrs. Connor two doors down threatening all kinds of retribution if I marked any of her sheets.
Call that a “mangle” Norman ? 🙂 Has anybody got a photo of a proper mangle, one with the two thick wooden rollers, and enough unprotected cogs and sprockets to give a health & safety inspector a fit. You needed both hands to turn them around round, especially when the “proddy mat” was having its annual wash.
Ah, the memories that old mangle evokes! I remember my old grandmother using just such a device – even though she had a perfectly good “twin tub” in the kitchen!
This is my beloved Granny,(nee James) who is doing the unthankful task of washing the clothes. She seemed to be enjoying it somehow. 10 Park Terrace is situtated where the Wobbly Goblin pub stands now. I was also born in that house.