These views show the Dovecot Street area during summer 1993.
Photographs and details courtesy of Martin Spires.
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
These views show the Dovecot Street area during summer 1993.
Photographs and details courtesy of Martin Spires.
JEAN SHERATON (nee HATTON) WENT OUT WITH BARRY LEE WHO RAN THE NORTON C.C.T.FOOTBALL TEAM FOR MANY YEARS BEFORE GOING OUT WITH KEN.
Eliza’s name was Doolitle!
Never been away Sarah, if I cannot add anything to a story I keep off. I certainly did know Jean could dance, I danced with her. We are talking about the days when you could dance nearly every night in some Church hall or even school halls as at William Newton. Most girls picked up dancing quickly and usually danced with each other. It was what was called old fashioned dancing, set moves repeated through the dance. Having started dancing at a very tender age in the Co-op Hall, Leven road watching my parents dance for prizes I was hooked, elderly ladies got me up in the dancing between competion and I was a quick learner. We Norton mob often all assembled on the Green and walked to where ever the dance was held with our holding hands sweethearts of the moment and we danced with all the girls in the group as some of the lads had two left hands for feet and could not even waltz turn, mind most of the lads rushed on the floor for the change partners dancing or the Lambeth Walk just about everyone could do that. My own daughters did deportment, my wife Joan being the teacher much to the amusment of my sons and I, we would be rushed out of the house with a brush and told to stay out. It was a lovely time without the stresses of today’s relationships, gentle easy courtship and usually among our own group. Ken and Jean stayed together from the first day as did one or two of the others, the rest of us changed around so you held different hands for a while because that was all there was to it back then. Dancing was my passion and not because you got to hold the girls close, I managed to dance on four Continents and several troopships finding dancing a way to cross all barriers including not speaking the language. I came back from abroad on leave and the first person I met was Ken in the top house Norton, we had quite a night.
I don’t think that Dr. Doolitle appeared in My Fair Lady, Mr. Clement is getting his Rex Harrison movies mixed up. The character in question was Professor Henry Higgins. Sarah, I remember your parents well, we were all ‘regulars’ at the Station Tavern in Norton. Your dad brought along all of the paperwork to the pub one evening and signed me up to a savings account at the Abbey National Building Society. I agreed to put away the sum of £2 per month, how times have changed. I still visit the Station Tavern (or the Norton Tavern as it is now known), but not as often as I used to.
Good to see you here again Mr Mee. You may be surprised to learn that deportment was part of the curriculum at Stockton/Billingham Technical College (Causeway, Billingham) as late as 1978 as part of the Secretarial Studies courses (along with Shorthand, Typewriting, Background to Business etc.) as part of ‘Poise and Grooming’ classes, when I attended. Apart from the wearing of books on the head whilst walking, we were given instruction on how to sit properly (putting legs together & to the side, as Joan Collins does), advice to buy cheap glycerine from the chemist and mix it with granulated sugar for a great hand exfoliator (made my hands very soft indeed at a fraction of the price of ‘named’ cosmetics) and we even had a visit from a make-up lady from the BBC no less, who taught each of us individually the best way to make up our faces for the best effect. You knew my father well, but perhaps you did not know that my mother loved to dance and my father.. well… he just *didn’t* dance. I remember him trying to self-teach formal dances at home once to try to appease my mother but I don’t think he ever tried hard enough and she ever got the dancing partner she wanted! Oh, and thank you too Mr. Clement. Can anyone else confirm or deny that the ‘amateur company’ my mother was with performed here?
Sarah, you are correct in thinking that My Fair Lady and Pygmalion are the same. Pygmalion was the original play written by GB Shaw and My Fair Lady, starring Rex Harrison as Dr Doolittle, was the film musical based on the play.
I knew Jean Hatton very well, being a friend of Ken. I remember them meeting and last saw them a few years ago in Tesco. We chatted and my thoughts were Jean still had the beauty I remembered as a lad. Jean lived not very far from my future wife whom I did not meet until much later. What you have to remember was Girls took deportment lessons at school and in clubs. They did all the dancing from tap through ballet and we all did social dancing in youth clubs, Scouts Cadets and Church halls. All of the girls at senior schools walked correctly and could dance. We also had play acting at school, I must say for the boys very reluctantly, and would come together having been segregated most of the year to take part. When my arm was twisted I said I was good at scenery, Sandy Dobing my art master may have thought differently but with a big brush and a bucket of wash it was not art as we know it. I heard Jean was with an amateur company as were many of those girls, I was abroad at that time so cannot confirm the place. My wife was more into dancing and appeared on the Globe and Hippodrome with a dancing troup, she was still teaching my grandchildren tap at 65. It may have been a laugh to us lads as the girls walked around the school hall saying ‘The rain in Spain falls mainly on the tourists’ and wearing a couple of books for a hat but they did walk beautifully – pity it is not taught today.
My mother, Jean Sheraton (nee Hatton), was in ‘Rep’ in Stockton in the 1940s/50s(?) and was in a production of Pygmalion (I think it’s the same as ‘My Fair Lady’). I still have the newspaper cuttings of the very positive review of my mother’s performance from the local paper and we have the scripts too. Would she have been in Rep here? Does anyone reading this remember her?
I certainly remember Harry Hansons Court Players, also the pantomimes and the variety shows, especially Moecambe & Wise in their earlier days. The Court players as I remember some of the names were Frank Middlemass, Dorrie Tomlinson, Marigold Sharman, Ian Cunningham. Wonderful plays and shows. Happy memories.
This was the Hippodrome in my days in Stockton, we used to get all the Dramatic Society stage plays on there, does anybody remember them? It was the same cast and they used to learn next weeks production whilst being on stage every night doing the current one, they were called Harry Hansons Court Players. We also had the Pantomimes there at Christmas, they were not just at the Globe. pleased to hear the Globe is being resurected, it looked a bit forlorn when I visited Stockton last year.
I remember queuing at the Cannon – all the way round the corner to where the man in the tie is walking – to see Jaws. We got to the counter and they said, “Sorry, full up!”.
Remember going there to see all my favorite films when I was a kid. Indiana Jones and Back To The Future to mention a few. The last film I saw there was The Bodyguard (my girlfriend at the time didn”t notice I nodded off twice). Remember seeing ET here and everyone crying at the end.