This is a photograph of London Butchers on Norton High Street taken in 1988. 
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
This is a photograph of London Butchers on Norton High Street taken in 1988.
I absolutely agree with Jo Clarke about Londons’ pork pies being the best!
I grew up in Norton High Street directly opposite the Butchers shop you refer to. Mrs Curry used to take me to Sunday School, this was a long time ago in 1939. The Post office has moved twice in my lifetime – during the war years it was where cafe LILLI is now. Ican’t remember when it was moved next to the Butcher’s shop, taking over two cottages. Can anyone remember?
I travelled fron Norton to school in Darlington and our school bus picked us up outside of this shop. We were always fascinated by the tray of heart’s among all the usual cuts of meat.
I went to school with Judith London in the ’70s and we always said her dad made the best pork pies in the world!
Bob Boiston lived next door to me with his Mother. It was one of two small cottages up the yard, an elderly couple lived in the top cottage next door to Bob and his mother until they moved to the Alms houses and then Mr and Mrs Boston moved in there. The back windows of the cottages look out on our garden but there was no access from the back everything was done in what we called the Pages yard. Miss Page lived on the Green, her garden was alongside ours at 5 Mill Lane and her back door to that garden was in the yard. A Miss Lonsdale had access to the yard as did a lady I only knew as Eina who lived on her own. Also my Aunt Mary and Uncle Bob Thompson, they too moved to the Alms Houses whilst I was still at Norton Board school. The yard still had the water pump in it until well after the war. Mr Boston was called up in the army at the beginning of the war and Bob Boiston joined the Navy, they were both away during the early raids so Mrs Boston and Mrs Boiston would run through our house to our shelter. Mrs Boiston had trouble getting in and out so in the end stopped coming. Bob was a local hero to us lads as he came home on leave wounded. It was after the German invasion of Holland and his boat had been sent in to collect members of the Dutch royal family (I believe) they were attacked whilst tied up at the quayside and only just got away with Bob being wounded. He told my father the captain ordered all guns to fire down the quay as they pulled away. Bob was talking to dad wearing only a vest when I, from my much lower height, spotted his wound and remember him saying “how can you see that, I do not want mother to know”. Of course my bloodthirsty thought was ‘why, tell everyone’. He was the first local lad I had seen who was wounded in action. Bob served in minesweepers for the rest of the war which made him a real hero, they were always in danger of being blown up themselves, often machine gunned by passing German planes and those small boats were not places to be in a North Sea winter storm. We shopped with Bob at quite a few of the shops he worked in and even his final shop at Rimswell Parade when we moved up here to retire. Bob was a Gentleman as far as I was concerned and always a hero, we had quite a few chats before he retired for the last time.
I was involved in pig killing which wasn’t as humane as Frank details. Although I didn’t kill the pig myself I did the scraping of the skin to remove the hair and it was my job to hold the pig by the rope. No ring to hold the head steady and it was a ‘Maul’ (if thats the correct spelling) which was a long handled hammer with a hollow spike. The spike being aimed at the part of the head between the eyes with a swing from above the shoulders. In later years a gun was used that had a flat head and when struck with a mash hammer the spike went into the skull. As Frank says very callous but that was our way of life. I also remember in those days of my mother saving the waste off the veggies and other items for the man who collected the ‘Pig Meat’ each week. At Christmas he would give us a hen for our dinner at Christmas but it always had to be plucked by us.
My father was Robert Boiston who lived at 4 Mill Lane. Reading the above comments its no wonder my father ended up as a butcher. My father was manager of The Farm Stores in Dovecote Street of Stockton High Street. They made black pudding and sausages and their own pies. I believe my father worked for Blackwells at some time.
I wish you luck in finding some decent bacon Frank, I have been trying for years and each time I am disappointed with the product. The last bacon cost over £3 for a small pack and was a waste of money.
I think a number of things are responsible for the loss of taste. Many pigs are reared in sterile conditions to prevent swine fever and infections which meant wholesale slaughter of the herd. A totally different environment to the old way of keeping pigs.
Some breeders now do allow pigs to rought in fields again, but their feed is totally different to the waste which was collected from people like Sparkes and most other food outlets and small home breeders who fed mostly waste to the pigs.
The method of smoking bacon has also altered from the traditional method of smoking to sprayed on or injected flavour to save time and money. Absolute rubbish with poor flavour. Goodness knows what we are being fed with today.
I knew this shop as Curry and Hutchinson. Tommy Hutchinson killed our pigs for us at 5 Mill Lane. On the day two boilers were lit, one in the back kitchen and one up in the pig run filled with water brought to the boil. Tom arrived with his humane killer, the pig would be roped through the nose ring and the head pulled down through a ring in a concrete block then shot. It was all done quickly with me watching even as a lad in short pants. The pig would be bled into a dish and my job then was to stir the blood now and then so it did not congeal. The carcass was lifted on to a bogey and taken into the garage then lowered into a big tin bath filled with boiling water. The hair was scraped off by Dad and Tom then the carcass hauled up on chain blocks and butchered. Everything that came out was eaten by us over the next few days, Tom went off with the blood and the head as part of his payment and we often got some black pudding or brawn back from him. Over the next week or so I would help Dad as he rubbed salt into the sides and the hams, we would hand rub the salt well into the sides on a huge well scrubbed table and when this had been done a few times the sides where hung in the passage way to my bedroom, it was quite high and in those days quite cold, it was left to mature whilst we finished the last side from six months before. The hams got special treatment, Dad shoved a steel down the bone and filled the holes with Saltpetre and rum while I rubbed the outside with salt, this would happen on a daily basis for quite a while then they too were hung in the passage.
Meanwhile Mother would be making pies or cooking heart, liver, kidney and other things that came out of the carcass. I had bacon every day after porridge for breakfast before school and later before heading out to work.
During the war we were only allowed to kill two pigs a year and two went to the Government for slaughter. I saw the whole cycle of piglets being born, then having a wonderful life until the time came for them to go. They lived on the best food including Sparks waste cakes and Pumphrey’s waste lemon curd and jam. We got a ration of corn and meal during the war for the pigs and supplemented that from the farm. We never fed them the fish-meal or the government compound meals that were recovered from canteen or kitchen waste. It may sound callous to those not brought up on small holdings and farms as I was but that was what we did to live and with plenty of home grown vegetables from the garden is probably the reason I am still around writing about it. When London’s took over the shop we went there for pies, the best in the area and the skill in making those pies has passed to Blackwells. I am still looking for bacon as good as our own all those years ago.
It would be 1953-54 when your father took over the business. I was the errand boy and was asked to keep the job on with the Londons. It was my uncle Jim Walker and his partner Wilf Simpson who had the business beforehand. The name above the shop was Curry’s because there was no room above to put the name Walker and Simpson. It was originally owned by a Curry who lived across the High Street in the Manor. He died and left the business to his brother Chris who had the farm called Meadowfield on Durham Road opposite Howden Hall. He could not run it so he advertised for a partner. My uncle became that partner and Chris Curry was the sleeping partner. Chris Curry later sold his share to Wilf Simpson. When they were in business it was my uncle who lived above the shop.
The picture of the butchers is FH & JC London, number 75 High Street, the shop was purchased by two brothers, Francis, also known as Bill (my uncle), and John (my father) from the Curry family in 1954. I became a partner in the business in 1976. I lived above the shop until I was about 6 years old and then moved to number 79 High street which was later part of Norton Post Office, the post office was number 77. My uncle and aunt ran the post office at number 77 until it was sold in 1972 to a chap called Ernest Carrick. The original Norton Post Office was where Norton Library is now situated. The butchers was a thriving business but we closed in January 1990 and sold the property in May 1990. It was then opened as Norton Funeral Services and known as London House, cannot think why! It is now a photographers studio, Gary Walsh Photography. Incidently, the room used by the photographer and used by the undertaker was our bakery. Previously it was a slaughterhouse, the ring for holding the cattle head to the floor, as far as I know, is still embedded in the wall or was in 1995. There are no chimney pots on the chimney as the fire brigade had to remove them after some particularly high winds, cannot remember the year.