Harland Place in Norton.
Photograph from the Heavisides collection.
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
Harland Place in Norton.
Photograph from the Heavisides collection.
Picture Stockton Archive 
Dr Armitage was the mother of John Armitage, the dentist in Norton. I played hockey with John and Dr Wilmot and Dr Hall. Happy days
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I worked at Harland House from 1963-1968 as office manager. Dr.Armitage was the senior partner. Dr. Wilmot,Moonie. Marsh, MacDonald & Hall made up the full complement of doctors. I remember well the system to take coloured tokens to see a doctor. However, we were the first practice in the UK to have an appointment system and to have their own midwife and district nurse working solely for that group. It was a very forward thinking group. Dr. Geoff Marsh was responsible for making the practice known across the country. After leaving to emigrate to Canada the practice continued to grow and kept up with innovative ideas in the future. It was a wonderful group of GP’s and this employment at a young aged encouraged me to work another 40 years in Canada running medical and surgical groups.
Susan Picton (nee Hayton)
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Interesting reading all these comments, as I currently live in what was the doctors surgery.
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Our family dentist when I was about 5 so around 1969 was Mr Armitage but I think he was the son quite progressive for his time he made me false teeth at that age which frightened the school dentist! Dr moony was our family doctor he was still around in 1982 when my dad died.
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Susan, it was Dr. Moonie not Moody. He first lived in the flat at the surgery before moving on to New Road which was on the top right of the bank which leads to Billingham Village.
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I remember the Dr’s Surgery at Blandford’s corner (Harland Place). I was a little girl in the 1950’s and remember my mother telling me it was Dr Moody who had been a Japanese prisioner of war. Dr Hall was much younger and did not come to the surgery until the mid 60’s and was a young man at that time. I can clearly remember all the other Dr’s mentioned. Our family Dr was Dr Wilmott, he used to make random house calls just to check on my Grandma who was often poorly – if he was visiting another patient in the same street/area, just to see how she was getting on. Dr’s today would not dream of doing anything as caring as that.
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Dr McDonald was indeed a Scotsman and a gentleman.
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I became an employee of Mr C.V.Armitage LDS,RCS,. FDS, in 1948 when I was twenty years old as an apprentice Dental Mechhanic. I had known the family since 1938 when I was ten years old. At that time the Armitages lived on the corner of Junction Road and Grantham Road in a large detached house. They had a cook, Nanny, housemaid and odd job boy called William. I used to play with John, Jean and Audrey Armitage, who were also children at that time and I remember attending John”s Birthday Party just before the war came along, I was given a toy aircraft gun which fired small mock shells. It was a prize possession just when Ki-Ora got its guns. Happy times were had sledging and roller skating and generally just being children. Mr Armitage was a wealthy and established Dental Surgeon he ran an SS Jaguar with 12″ chrome headlamps and his car colour was deep purple, with Ace polished wheel discs. It was a beauitiful car, washed and polished after each journey by William. After war was declared in 1939, when I returned from being an evacuee in 1942 – I presume William had been called up and left Armitage”s employment. Mrs Edith Armitage was the Commandant of the British Red Cross on Teeside. I am not sure when she qualified in medicine but she joined the practice at Harland House and was certainly there in the late 1940s. Dr E. Armitage became our Doctor and I have nothing but praise for this fine lady. She may have worn tweed sometime, but you should have seen her in her evening gown and white fur cape setting out for an evening function with C.V. Armitage in the Jaguar, today”s celebrities don”t hold a candle – Mrs Armitage was the daughter of the Simpson family the owners of Binns shops, one of the few private shops of the area still going. Anthony Armitage the youngest son went to Harrods to learn his trade before it was sold to Al Fayed. The Armitages bought Tyson Hodson”s house, further up Junction Road and it was indeed known as Corby Lodge. Later it became a Nursing Home, and my wife and I visited Dr.Edith Armitage to say thank you for helping me with my complicated medical life. It was her that discovered I had a leaking heart valve and that is how I came into dentistry. At some later date Newstead farm and part of Corby Lodge was sold and a new estate built called Marquise Avenue etc. Also “Kyle House” appears to have disappeared which was on the other side of Junction Road. I would love to see some original photographs if anybody has any please.
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Was Dr McDonald a Scotsman? Have been wracking my brains to remember his name! Thanks anon.
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Two more doctors I remember at Harland House were Dr Mooney and Dr McDonald. Dr McDonald, a very nice man, retired in the mid 1980s.
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Interesting to read about Harland House and the doctors Bowman, Wilmot(he used to drive his own car and always wore yellow string driving gloves which fascinated me as a child in the 40/50s) Wasn”t Dr Armitage a lady? Think she used to live at Corby Lodge on Junction Road which is now apartments. If I remember rightly her husband was a dentist with a surgery on the corner of Norton Road and Grange Avenue (nearly opposite the old Moderne Cinema/Fiesta) I used to go there as a child and was petrified of him. Does anyone remember the system when you arrived at the Doctor”s surgery – the rows of coloured tokens with numbers on – a different colour for each doctor – Doctor Bowman was white I think, and Wilmot yellow. You did not report to a desk, but just took the next numbered token for which doctor you wanted to see, and waited your turn. The pharmacy at the back of the surgery made the medicines up, remember all the coloured bottles and little drawers with labels on.
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You are correct, there was a female Dr. Armitage, in Norton. She was our family doctor in the early 60s. I remember her being a stereotypical “tweedy” woman, who drove a 1950″s two tone green car, possibly a Wolesley 1500.
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Dr Bowman was our family doctor in the 20s and early 30s,then Dr Armitage.I would”nt swear to it but I think there were 2 Dr Armitages, mr an mrs. The surgery must have been started by Dr Blandford as the corner was named after him.
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I was brought into the world at home by Dr Bowman in 1944.:I remember him as a lovely gentleman, very kind and caring. We usually went to the Billingham surgery in a house on Station Rd. Also remember Dr Armitage and Dr Moonie.
Think Dr Bowden lived at the top of Billingham Bank in a large house.
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How interesting – Dr Bowman was my grandfather. He lived with his wife Kathleen in a lovely house, Loriston, which backs onto St Cuthberts Church in Billingham. They had three children; Dennis, Elizabeth (my mother), and Anne. John Bowman had a surgery attached to his house. After he retired, he moved to Southampton, where we saw a lot more if our dear grandparents before he died in the early 1980s
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Bob is right, it was Kirby”s corner, I said I could not remember them all. The Lustrum beck in my time was always Danby Road, I never heard it called anything else. I do remember Dr Bowman a very nice man. Another Dr was it Hall??? had been a Japanese prisoner of war and he was often heard to say “you are not ill, you do not know what suffering is” researching the story of those men I believe him.
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The 1st Doctor I remember with Dr Armitage was Dr. Bowman and when another doctor came on the scene after the War we changed from Armitage to him. We called him Dr Sicknote because it was so easy to get one off him. You went in naming your symptons to him and his reply “I”ve been the same.” With regards to naming the “bus stops after the Avenue from Norton was Kirby”s Corner and at Lustrom Beck it was The River Jordan. Don”t know why. Denshams Corner was on the road to Oxbridge and not on th “0” “bus route. Going out of the Town it was the Odeon, Parliament Street Thornaby Station, Brewery Bank and the Erimus.
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Dr Blandfords Corner. Anyone who used the bus at that time would remember the Conductors chant. The Green, Priory, Blandfords corner, Avenue, Denshams Corner and so on into town and in my case as a child I was put on the “O” bus to North Ormesby Market Place were I walked across to Moses Street at the back of North Ormesby Hospital and to Godstone House, (still there) my Grand Parents home, so knew each stop name. Cannot remember them all now though. Mother called them the “half Crown Doctor” because that was the cost of a call before and during the war. I have a memory of being ill sleeping on the sofa in the room with the big black stove glowing, Dad in the chair watching me and feeding me his own medication of Whisky sugar hot water and Aunt Mabel”s herbs. This tall old chap whom I assumed was God, I was very young! came to visit me several times and I do remember him saying, “you are a very lucky young man” the first of many times that was said to me. I do believe Doctor Armatage who was my Mothers Doctor practiced from there many years before Doctor Wilmot came after the war, he was in the forces. It was a case of if you had the money you got a visit if not you got dragged to the surgery where a nurse would see you. The health service will never see an ill word from me, I remember some of my school friends, there one day gone the next with things that are easily cleared up these days.
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Judging by the tramlines I would put it in the late 20s or early 30s. There was a surgery there in the 30s because I used to go there as a child, we were on what was called the Panel. I think it cost my father 6d a week to be on the panel, it was an early form of health insurance.
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I remember Dr Wilmott and Dr Armitage from when I was a boy in the fifties. Dr Wilmott always drove a big Ford when he came round to your house, but doctors don”t make house calls any more. The photo was taken a long time before then, though.
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The building in the centre of picture used to be the Norton Medical Centre, before the new building was built nearby. Does anyone have a date for this photo? And would this have been a doctor”s surgery when the photo was taken?
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