The first picture in this set is a view of Lustrum Beck taken from the bridge looking towards Browns Bridge. The second is taken from the chip shop side. Courtesy of Colin Booth. 
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
The first picture in this set is a view of Lustrum Beck taken from the bridge looking towards Browns Bridge. The second is taken from the chip shop side. Courtesy of Colin Booth.
I remember in the sixties at friends house in Dundas Street that every time it rained hard and it flooded the gardens of the houses on the right hand side of Dundas Street until they altered the course of the beck.
We spent hours in the sixties fishing for sticklebacks and if we caught a tadpole we were the bee’s knee’s.
The common was the home of our bonfires, it was not created by the bombing. We lived at 54, Aunt Tilly at 56 next to the common. When we were at school our mum’s used to guard it for us. I was one of Mr Kay’s paper boys, delivered
to the Oxbridge area. Saw the result of the bombing at the garage on Yarm Lane and Bowesfield Lane.
This website continues to suprise me! I checked it out for the first time in months and there is my Sister Margaret Alderson responding to Jack Stevenson re: St. Cuthberts. Neither of which probably knows that they know each other. Nice to see your comments Jack! Re: Aline’s comment on Eue’s vs. Oxy’s . I carry a permanent bump on the left side of my forehead with a scar as a result of 7 stiches from a rock tossed at me during a “war” with the Ewbank St mob. They came to steal our Bondie on the Oxbridge common outside the Victoria Football Ground and we rigorously defended and fought them off. Needless to say I was a local hero because of the received “war wound” but why were we fighting over discarded settee’s and broken bed frames? Go figure.
Some time in the future I will tell you all about the famous ‘standoff’ between Trevor Rust and Keith Higgins over a “bondie raid ” by the Eue’s. Its almost as famous, (though not quite) as the big Jubilee fight between Keith Higgins and Blackie Fletcher, if anyone remembers that. But that’s for another time.
Yes indeed I do remember the Eues v Oxys. I lived in Tarring stree and went to Mill Lane school from 5 to 15. I was a Eue and the days running up to bondy night was spent fighting with the enemy THE OXYS. We had our bondy on the common in Ewbank street, can anyone remember what was on the common previously, I have always wondered. It could have been houses bombed during the war? Dad would bring us fireworks in on his way home from work at Furness Shipyard calling at Kays shop on Dovcote street – that was when a banger was a banger. Happy Days
Yes indeed there was a murder, it occured at the moor end of the tunnel. Although I was not born my parents told me the story; During the war in the middle of a black out our next door neighbour in Light Pipe Hall Rd, returning home from a night out down town, had his throat cut. Shortly after his son, a keen body builder, was returning home. On hearing moans for help went to investigate only to find his father lay dying, he had lost direction in the darkness and had crawled up the moor embankment. The crime was never solved. Does anyone remember the bonfire fights Eues V Oxys that occurred through the tunnel?
Derek, I grew up in both Swainby & Danby rd and knew Lustrum beck at our end very well, coming from the tunnel leading under railway line Eastbourne to Norton rd the water there was always deep in parts. My older mates used to make rafts and go deep into the tunnel and come out on the Easbourne side, the only problem with the water was oil coming from the railway engines, not much but nearly always seen (steam engines). When you got to the bridge carrying main rd the beck then on down to the little bridge over the beck end of Danby & Swainby rd was also deep except 20/30 either side of the bridge. We splodged there for stickle backs, looking out for the dreaded blood suckers, the beck then flowed directly on behind Swainby rd where we built dams, always one dam behind Alinsons house and one behind Rogans. Sometimes the water would build up and become deep, we would use tin baths and sail up and down the beck all day long. When I was a young lad or kid, splodging in the beck was only done in the shallow parts, the beck from the areas I have mentioned were never like slurry, in fact it was quite clean, only many years later did I see the beck with all sorts of rubbish in it. As a kid it was brilliant to see swans, ducks and water hens swimming up and down and so in my time it was clean, perhaps not perfect, but better than today.
I don’t know how the Moor got into this thread, but there seems to be some question about what the Moor was used for. During the war it was a huge scrap metal dump. Knowing what I know now it would have been converted to iron castings in a cupola furnace. Steel & coke are added along with other additives to pour into castings for the war effort.
Several folk have commented that the beck was once clear enough to support life at the Oxbridge end but like slurry near Swainby. It is sad how badly we can treat a beck whose name translates as ‘Sparkling Beck’!
Fights, had my first one actually on the railway lines,won’t tell you my opponents name, we became friends. It was over a simple shove in the school playground. We also had our first ‘tab’ behind the very tall wall, sick as the veritable parrot afterwards. Full of false bravado and what is now called testosterone.
I remember the urinal. Once, after school, some of the boys brought me a baby rabbit that they had found, cowering in the corner. Sadly, it died of fright.
I vividly remember the moor also. Occasionally, again after school, there would be a cry of ‘Fight on the Moor!’ and all the lads would dash through the tunnel to watch the scrap, till someone broke it up. I wonder if any of the boys remember this.
It was fairly close to the boys entrance to Mill Lane.
The ‘moor’ was used by the foundry but I presumed it was just wasteland.
Can anyone remember the men’s urinal just past the boys school (Mill Lane) and before the tunnel. I used to climb up onto the top of the tunnel and train spot. After going through the tunnel was what we called the moor, a great open space to play. Can anyone tell me who it belonged to and why it was so dirty, no grass. We were always filthy after playing on the moor .The fair used to set up a few times a year and we kids loved it, that is if we could get a few pennies off mam or dad, those were the good old days. It all seems a world away but how happy we were. I’m so pleased I grew up in late 40s and 50s
Just to clear the air, this photo was taken from Durham Rd bridge
Indeed that is the tunnel at the bottom of Dovecot Street,just past the entrance as it once was to Mill-Lane Boy’s school.
I presume that the tunnel John Duncan is referring to is the one under the main line, from Stockton Station and southwards, and it connects Dovecot Street and Oxbridge at the moor end.
The tunnel I referred to is the one under what was often known as the Cuckoo line.
We Ewbank St urchins turned left under the bridge (dark and dank) then walked to the beck just after the cemetery. Down the bank with our jam jars. It was the remains of one of these that caused the accident.
I remember the army learner drivers using the “moor” as part of their training ground. Also looking for the scraps from the foundry so we could sell them to the dealer.
Am I correct in saying that the tunnel was the scene of crime for a murder ??
Me too Ronnie, as we lived not far from each other. Actually there was a feeder stream to Lustrum Beck between our homes. Down the field/hillside from Oulston Road across the stream’s bridge parallel to the railway (mineral line) embankment and either bear half left to Crayke and Kilburn Roads, or through the tunnel below the railway line and through the allotments path to Hartburn where other young contemporaries abode – or lived!
At age 83 I still have vivid memories of this stream – especially the stretch beginning at the road bridge (Oxbridge Lane?) and on towards and beside Ropner Park. I lived off Harburn Avenue, making the beck a natural play area from age seven through the early teens. The sticklebacks and other tiddlers, newts, and frogs were a never ending source of sport and enjoyment. The old jam jar with string handle proved to be a great starter aquarium – but one can only shudder at the thought of our cruel abandonment or the early death of these specimens. The beck’s reaches were always better enjoyed when in the company of one or two of one’s childhood friends – inventive games and derring-do to egg each other on.
How evocative this thread is. Many, many years ago my brother (Bill) and I went catching “tiddlers” in the Beck(the Oxbridge end). In doing so he suffered a horrendous cut to his right wrist artery. Running to the hospital, someone in Oxbridge, near the football ground, applied a tornique to his arm. He was hospitalised for quite a while. We never did find out who the person was who applied the life-saving tornique. Years later he did his NS in the RAF even with his badly injured wrist.
Needless to say, as the eldest brother, I received the right amount of punishment for not looking after “our-kid”.
The water was definitely cleaner in the 40`s Colin. I can remember that you could clearly see the small fish (tiddlers) and the much feared bloodsuckers in the water. The beck also seemed to be very much wider in those days or did it only appear so because we were so much smaller as kids. The reed beds provided us with reeds to make a type of flute capable of one very piercing note. We spent hours down by the beck during summertime and our parents had no fears for our safety. The only times that I can remember the beck being out of bounds to us kids was when it was in flood. Despite the obvious dangers the beck in flood was like a magnet to all the local kids and it took the tragic drowning of an Eastbourne kid to dampen the attraction. So many kids played alongside the beck that none of the high plantlife shown in the photos was evident in our days. The banks of the beck were covered by grass or were just dry earth, as all plantlife had been worn away by the hordes of kids feet.
There were plenty of bloodsuckers under Browns Bridge !
Lustrum beck ran past Swainby & Danby Rd, we also pulled old bike wheels & frames knocked bikes to play on all day long, no tyres, often no seats but boy did we enjoy them, fishing for stickle backs but you had to be very careful of the blood suckers, if you were lucky you might have a pair of wellies, building dams to float tin baths all day long, collecting the rec grass cuttings to put under the bridge so we could jump of bridge, again all day long, and it didn’t cost a penny. Lustrum beck was a great playground when I was a kid, not the same today but then again kids have other ways to enjoy themselves. Can’t help but wonder if they are missing out on the fun though.
I REMEMBER MY MOTHER TELLING ME THAT HER BROTHER (MY UNCLE) PLAYED THE DRUMS IN THE NEWTOWN CLUB. I DID GO AND SEE HIM PLAY ON A COUPLE OF TIMES. I DID HAVE A PHOTOGRAPH OF HIM PLAYING, I WILL TRY AND FIND IT TO POST ON PICTURE STOCKTON.
Dad wouldn’t buy me a new bike until I first learned to ride, so I fished the frame and one of the wheels to build my first bike from Lustrum Beck. I also got the pram wheels for my Bogie at the same time. The beck looks a lot tidier now than it did back then. Julian Bailes eh? Now there’s a shed load of memories – “Bailes’s Loft” at the back of their house on Norton Road.
When I was a pupil at St Bedes school in the 60’s before it moved to Bishopton road I caught the bus home to Roseworth from here. The top picture shows the fence around Newtown school or “The Wall of Death” as we knew it a kids. I well remember Julian Bailes inching along this wall for a dare with the inevitable result of him falling into the beck. If being soaked and covered in black oozing mud wasn’t bad enough he fell backside first onto a piece of wood with a nail sticking out of it. I think I laughed for a week.
Brian Reed, who had the barbers shop next to the bridge, was also the pianist in the Newtown club for many years alongside my father George who was the drummer. According to my father Brian was one of the best sight readers of music in the business.
Nothing has changed except maybe it was cleaner in the 1940s when we would splodge in the beck & get a hiding from Mum if caught!