This photograph shows Norton Green possibly at some time in the 1980s.
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
This photograph shows Norton Green possibly at some time in the 1980s.
Spent most of my nights sat ’round that tree from about 1979 onwards. A huge circle of friends formed there – some incredibly happy memories of the green, and some sad ones too. I was heartbroken to see that tree go! Still look across to that spot whenever I visit home and get in the top house for a pint.
The tree was certainly a noted spot and I recall the same period as Frank Mee with Miss Fosters shop and Edgars mens hair dresser and the casual knock on the nut when he had finished cutting it. My pal Keith Dixon and I were paying a nostalgic visit back to our birthplace and counting the rings on the felled tree when a voice behind us said it was over 250 years old. I turned around to see a man wearing a Norfolk jacket and deerstorker hat with his bike. To my complete suprise is was Bob Harbron who I had not seen since our schooldays at Frederick Nattrass School. We have kept in touch ever since. J.Norman Kidd
Sad indeed, my wife and I were driving up the High Street that day and when we came to the Green they had blocked the road so they could fell the tree. We saw it cut through then fall and the memories clicked in. Sitting on the iron seat while our ducks and geese paddled in the pond before the war. Dad would say come on and they waddled out of the run down the green and onto the pond while we sat and watched. Playing chasings round the tree with the girls then trying to hold hands without the others seeing and making fun of us. In those far off days that was the height of our expectations, you may get a quick lips hardly touching kiss at a party if you were lucky. Sitting on the seat shivering not daring to go home after falling through the ice in winter after mother told us to keep away. Taking my own children to play on the Green and now my Grandchildren, they dash to feed the ducks and then the sweet shop. Not Miss Forsters as in my day but still it brings a smile to the childrens faces when we head over the crossing. Lastly the day the BBC film crew had me walking up and down the Green looking deep in thought (actually quite a vacant look wondering what I was doing there) the green has so many years of memory for me and it still works its magic.
A sad sight – the site of the wonderful Jubilee tree. Dutch Elm Disease meant that many of the Norton Green trees had to be felled. I remember the seat which was circular around the trunk of the tree and here, one can see the path that was built around the tree also. On a brighter note, the new trees are becoming well established and let”s hope that they will become as big and beautiful as the Jubillee tree was.