Leslie Browns record shop at 95 High Street in Stockton. c1950. Photograph courtesy of Mr Ged Hutchinson. 
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
Leslie Browns record shop at 95 High Street in Stockton. c1950. Photograph courtesy of Mr Ged Hutchinson.
Picture Stockton Archive 
What year did Leslie browns open?
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Thanks to Mike for the information about no. 95. Wilson Howard was my great great granduncle. I am descended from his brother Charles through the latter”s daughter Lucy.
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Number 95 High Street in 1881 was occupied by my ancestors. The owner Wilson Howard ran an Ironmongers shop at the premise. His wife Mary Ann was the daughter of Henry Smith Iron Founder of The Eaglescliffe Iron Foundry Husband and Wife are buried at Northallerton Cemetery with two of their sons who died early in life, Charles was lost at sea in 1899 and Stanley died whilst serving in the York and Lancaster Reg,in 1920. Happy to hear from anyone who may have connections with this family.
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While a sixth former at Grangefield I worked in Lesley Brown”s shop (1965 ish) on Saturdays both selling new models and toys and also repairing them. I earned 17/6d a day, enough to cover one BSM driving lesson! I subsequently went back for Christmas jobs driving the delivery van with all the secrecy that entailed contacting householders to smuggle Santa”s deliveries where necessary. Some will remember a colleague Stuart in the LP record area, who is now an established orchestral conductor.
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Ahhh Leslie Browns… What an amazing shop that was. My train set was bought there in the 60″s – The Blue Pullman. Bought every single Beatles 45 ever released in that shop. Unfortunately an aunt threw them all out in 76 by mistake. Anyone remember the Leggo Ship liner…I suspect it was glued together as I could never manage to make it with the rather worn out pieces of leggo I had. Yes I remember the steam engine models and the chemistry sets… Why did it close? It was pure magic for my generation growing up in the 80″s and 70″s. I suspect usual attitude of people buying cheap stuff with no regard to the value offered by these kind of shops. Paul.
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An old saying in the 80s that we used to have, when sufering with a hangover, “Ive got a head like leslie Brown”s”.. with the meaning of all the toys going full belt in the shop…. Many younger poeple would ask.. “who”s Leslie Brown?”.. How things have changed!!
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As a child in the 1970s and early 80s this was an amazing shop to visit, my memory is of the ground floor, where there was a playmobil display (also known as play people) complete with a road layout and diggers and pretend tarmac.
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I had the great privledge to work in this store from 1989 to the last day of closure. It was very much a family run place. Mr and Mrs brown and their son Tony. Mrs Brown”s sister also worked on a Saturday and other busy times such as selling fireworks. It was a lovely place to work although hectic at the run up to christmas. I remember when we were clearing out for closure and coming across toys from probably the 60″s which had fell down in the window area, dinky cars in boxes and other small items which of course were sold in the closing down sale to staff.
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I remember Leslie Brown”s I collect toy soldiers possibly because of the amazing experiances I had as a child in this shop. On the left handside as you walked in, was the britais deetal range, and timpo soldiers. Fantastic!
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I used to love going into Leslie Brown”s, there was a certain magic about the place. Saying that, I would spend my pocket money on the joke & magic stuff which was in a glass cabinet. When I was working at Asda in West Row, me and my work-mate George went to Leslie”s on our lunch-hour and purchased some stink-bombs. Later on back at Asda, in the warehouse, which is below. I let one of the bombs off and the smell was vile, like rotten eggs. At that, the store manager was wandering around and said what is the smell. We said must the drains and he believed us.
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Spent many a Saturday morning drooling over Meccano parts wondering what to buy with precious pocket money! School boys paradise!
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Les Brown – Any ex Stocktonia would have to look hard for the type of shop Les Brown , Burdons or Army & Navy store provided To-day 2006, the block on the photo, from the present Post-Office to Ramsgate is now “Cafe-Society” wine-bars and Charity Shops, though some small shops still exsist in the Yards and Silver street, none have the pulling power of those well remembered shops. Working with Les in the 1990s he told of the hectic “Guy-Fawkes” deliveries he personally took to shops as far as Thornton-le-Dale and Upper-Teesdale in the 1950s-60s. As for Christmas it was a 14 hour day, going as far as York and Leeds, if his stocks were running low, no “E” mail or phone, he delivered the goods in his own car, the same applied in his delivery to many village shops
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Cliff Thornton – Cliff I must admit that I can”t remember the chemicals in Brown”s but Finlayson”s – yep! If memory serves they eventually moved to one of the new units on the Portrack Estate. When I worked at ICI we still used to buy stuff from them until they folded.
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And if you were chemically inclined then upstairs in Leslie Browns was one of the few places in Stockton where you could buy glass tubes containing various chemicals. The other place for chemicals was Finlaysons, a chemical wholesaler in Nelson Terrace. They normally dealt in chemicals by the jar or the carbuoy, but in the early 1960s they would sell you 4 oz of ammonium dichromate (for making fireworks) as easily as you could get 4 oz of sweets at the local corner shop.
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Bob Harbron – Bob like you I also remember Brown”s as an amazing toy shop – models the Mammod steam engines, Stanly Steamers, a power generating electicity station. What a memory prod, the Guy Fawkes and fireworks full front window! Ged & Alan yeah! – the trial booths on the ground floor my father used to buy “rat pack” music, Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Dean Martin. My first solo purchase was Apache by The Shadows – to quote my dad – “b—-y guitars & drums”.
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The memories of the old Dansette record player reminds me of just how popular these machines were. Most of my pals had one and, as I remember, most of them were the standard pale grey and red. For some reason I opted for a Philips portable which was much smaller and was perhaps more suited to the confined space of my bedroom where there was just about room to swing a cat around. Like the previous comments I took my player to many partys although I soon learned to leave my more prized records at home as they had a tendency to go missing or, worse still, get broken. I still have a large amount of the old 78`s and I am told that some of the rarer jazz records would be much sought after these days. That said, I wouldn`t part with any of them.
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Many will also recall Les Brown the premier toy-shop. It”s two floors were a wonderland of childhood to boys. The railway lay-out on the first floor, with 4 or 5 locos running when a coin was put in the control box was a magnet, the shelves lined with rail accessories both English and Europeean, from wagons to background sheets. Later a “Scalectric” circuit was up and running on the ground floor, but never as popular as the rail lay-out. The November 5th firework red lit window display always featured a full size Guy Fawkes sitting on a barrel, surrounded by dozens of colourful boxes of fireworks.
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Like you Ged I spent a small fortune in this shop. I remember thinking what a great idea the individual booths were that allowed potential buyers to hear the record before buying. What a change from today. My wife has recently bought a C.D. on the recommendation of a friend (never a wise thing to do!) and on hearing at home for the first time decided she does”nt like it.( Perhaps a Christmas gift for some unsuspecting relative maybe.) That would never have happened in the fabulous fifties! Talking about record players,I bought a Dansette from Uptons in Bishopton Lane in 1955, wonderful looking in pale grey and red, and on posting to B.A.O.R. in August 1958 took the player along with my kitbag on the troop ship to Holland,the disembarkation port for Germany. The looks on the faces of the M.P”S on the deck was great. They hadn”t reckoned on the cheek of a Stockton lad determined not to be separated from his records! Each time there was a demob party (every two weeks) I was always invited,along with the Dansette. The civilian mess rang out with Sinatra, Fitzgerald,Ted Heath etc etc.
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Apart from the pubs, Leslie Brown`s relieved me of more money than any other establishment in Stockton. Saturday mornings were spent listening to all the latest hits and, if funds allowed, buying a record. My pals and myself would select our favourites and listen to them until it became obvious to the staff that we weren`t going to buy anything and they stopped our pop concert. Records did not come cheap and until I started work in 1954 I could never afford to buy them. Even then it was 1956 before I could afford to buy my first record player. The first purchase in Leslie Brown`s was Gene Vincent`s “Be Bop A Lula” which set me back 1/7d or 8p in today`s money. For this you got two tracks, one either side of the old 78 rpm records, so music did not come cheap in my youth. My take-home pay in 1956 was £3.55 a week. I would leave Leslie Brown`s with my head full of the latest hits dreaming of joining the Rock & Roll stars one day. A pint or two in the Red Lion would bring me down to earth.
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