This photograph shows King George V, accompanied by Queen Mary, leaving the Ropner Shipyard after his visit in June 1917. This Royal visit was part of a morale boosting campaign to encourage the shipyard workers. At this time during the Great War the country was suffering heavy losses of merchant ships due to the action of German U-boats and there was a desperate need for new ships to replace them. The buildings in the background were used as lodging houses for the shipyard workers. Courtesy of Bob Harbron.
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
The royal party in Thistle Green turning into the Square on their way to visit the Ropner shipyard and their offices, Hunters Lane, on 14 June 1917. Rear Admiral Alfred Ernest Albert Grant is to the left of Queen Mary, and seems ‘glued’ to the royal visitors, mainly the King, in surviving photos of this North East regional visit to mainly shipyards and marine engine works. A number of these photos were taken at the Ropner Shipyard in Stockton, eg greeting munition girls, but the most interesting is perhaps Queen Mary being greeted by the Lord Lieutenant of Co. Durham as she stepped off the tug at Stockton Corporation Quay (as written on the welcoming mat) with Mayor Harrison (the printer) next in line to welcome the royal visitors. In the background can be seen the huge warehouse that once stood at the end of Silver Street.
My mother was presented to King George at the Ropner shipyard her photo is in the book I have
The recriminations over King George and Queen Mary’s visit to Stockton on 14 June 1917 started within a week of the royal couples departure. The royal visit had been rapidly organised and its hurried execution drew criticism from newspapers like the Teesside Herald. The North East tour (14-18 June) was put together at short notice and arrangements were not complete when vaguely released to the press on 13 June and barely complete on 14 June. The itinerary, formulated in a climate of wartime security without published timings, dictated a private industrial tour with few civic duties designed to educate the King about local achievements in wartime shipbuilding and the manufacture of munitions. The King was to thank the companies and workers involved for their wartime output. The King was no maritime novice having served in the Royal Navy on warships such as Thunderer, Thrush and Melampus (as claimed in royal biographies), with spells (according to local newspapers) on Inflexible and Powerful. The 14 June programme was the most strenuous day of the tour with the royal couple visiting nine Teesside works, but only two at Stockton. The Mayor and Town Clerk of Stockton were not even consulted about arrangements for the royal visit, and in the short time between the visit announcement and royal arrival had to depend on information supplied from neighbouring towns about the tour. The Mayor and council would receive the royal party, but no time was available for the council to discuss the visit. The only mention of the visit in Stockton Council records was a footnote (c.14 June 1917), hastily added to the minutes of the council meeting of 1 June 1917, inviting (almost pleading) councillors to attend the royal arrival at Stockton Corporation Quay, at 12-30 pm, and support the Mayor. The blame for insensitive organisation was placed on royal (and military) bureaucrats who quickly made the arrangements and presumed to do little more than they were entitled to (claimed the Herald). However they had much experience of organising speedy tours, distributing the royal couple widely to institutions engaged on war work. At Stockton their majesties were to visit the Ropner Shipyard and the South Durham Companies Malleable Rolling Mills, both on the north bank of the Tees. The Mayor of Thornaby (A.F. Whitwell) and his councillors felt great disappointment (actually annoyance) that their majesties were not visiting any of the big engineering works on the south bank of the Tees that had similarly contributed to the war effort. They argued, out of fairness, that the royal visitors should have visited a works on each side of the river. The only consolation to the south bank was when the royal party viewed the newly built SS David Lloyd George at the Craig Taylor Shipyard as they waited to berth at Stockton Corporation Quay on the royal tug. Maybe the royal and military bureaucrats were keen to impress Vice Admiral Sir Eric Geddes with their fast planning and prove their worth. Geddes, an expert on transportation and organisation, was the most powerful figure that accompanied the King on the North East tour. Geddes was appointed to sort ‘the shipbuilders and the navy out’ and get construction moving faster with less bureaucracy. This tour was a fact-finding opportunity for him. Another reason for sidelining local councils in an effort to push through a fast royal tour was that enlistment and conscription into the armed services had left Stockton Council and many local businesses short of key workers and administrators by mid 1917. The Town Clerks department was known to be short staffed at this time. A Stockton solicitor (Reuben Cohen) described his staff (and thus his office) in November 1916 as completely disorganised through war services. The Mayor of Middlesbrough had informed the King on 14 June 1917 that from his young town ’25K had been recruited into the army and 2K into the navy’. ‘A splendid record’ replied the King.
Local councils were struggling with an accumulation of wartime problems and the government was keen not to add the civic burden of an official royal tour to their workload. Local public holidays to celebrate the visit were discouraged as their majesties needed to learn from workers and businesses creating wartime output. This was to be a private royal tour. Of course, in practise, this did not happen, as enough information was allowed to leak to ensure large crowds, good newspaper copy, and the virtual closure of Stockton’s shops and businesses for the duration of the visit (similarly elsewhere). Double bluff perhaps, but under a cloud of wartime secrecy the Germans could only read about the events after they occurred. The King’s activities continued to be public enterprises, even when they were organised to have a more private character. Afterwards, Lt. Col. Clive Wigram, the assistant private secretary to the King, wrote to local authorities thanking them for the success of the royal tour, most were eventually published, but I could not find one for Stockton.
To Alan B,
In the 1899 Second Edition of County Durham Sheet 50.16, The street linking Bishop and Silver Street is marked as Cross Street, where as the slightly longer Calvert’s Lane links the Riverside and Silver Street.
Hope this helps.
This is the view my long gone Groskop family got of their street (but not the royal visit) from outside their house and clothes shop at 5 Thistle Green from about 1885 to 1909. 5 Thistle Green was just off the right edge of the photo behind King George V and the Three Tuns (now closed Riverside) pub. Their house would have been very similar to the smaller houses seen above. My grandmother said that her side of the Groskop family witnessed the royal visit from outside their pub, the Shakespeare Arms in Smithfield. Other parts of the Groskop family would have seen this event from outside their houses in Brewery Square by Hunters Lane (Manny) and Garbutt Street (Fred), both on the royal route. However many of the Groskop family heads were marine boilermakers and probably inside the local shipyards during the royal visit. In the above photo the houses on the left are nearest 15 down to 23 then 23a Thistle Green. Burton House at 23a Thistle Green, housing the organisation that maintained the river and a pub, looms large but faintly at the end of the street. A view from the opposite end of the street, from 29 to 23a up to 15 Thistle Green can be seen in the photo titled, Burton House, Stockton, c1925 on this site. Stockton Police Station now occupies this area.
Most local and national newspapers accurately described the landing of King George V and Queen Mary at Stockton Corporation Quay before they moved up Calverts(or Calvert) Lane on 14 June 1917. However the Daily Telegraph incorrectly described the Quayside and Calverts Lane as Riverside Street. Thus the Telegraph journalist had the last laugh by correctly anticipating the construction of the new Riverside Road by 53 years. Horse drawn and mechanical carriages were available to move the royal party, but given the warm weather, the King and Queen decided to walk to the Ropner shipyard through the poor Thistle Green district of Stockton. This delighted the local population, but not the local and national organisers of the royal tour, who were concerned about timekeeping, policing the huge crowds, and wartime security. Newspapers acknowledged this royal walkabout was the highlight of the whole day spent on Teesside. Surely the new Calverts Lane between Silver Street and Bishop Street follows the same course, or has been constructed on top of what I knew as Cross Street. The original Calverts Lane was nearer to the river and ceased to exist when the Riverside Road by-pass was built. Why did the council not retain the old name Cross Street rather than re-label it Calverts Lane? Surely the name change would have cost the council additional legal fees. I accept that Cross Street was devoid of residential houses(since 1935) and mainly the blank walls of business premises by the 1960’s, although the Grand pub still curved around from Bishop Street. Indeed, which is it, Calverts Lane or Calvert Lane? My collection of Stockton maps shows both titles have been used over time.
After touring Middlesbrough shipyards on the morning of 14 June 1917, King George V and Queen Mary, the rest of the royal party, local civic and industrial guests departed from Middlesbrough Dock around noon for a river trip to Stockton. According to Stockton Council records they were due to arrive at Stockton Corporation Quay, Calverts Lane at 12.30pm to be greeted by more civic elite of the town and county, and as many local councillors as possible. Soon after leaving Middlesbrough Dock in the TCC tug William Fallows the King and Queen passed ships flagged in their honour with hooters blowing and sirens screaming. This included three Swedish ships flagged and dressed for the occasion with their majesties receiving salutes from the ships officers and crews. Lady Bertha Dawkins began introducing the guests to the King and Queen, and a small luncheon for the guests ensured on the tug. Almost immediately after departing the Swedes, The Guardian and Daily Mail noted that the royal visitors saw a large party of industrious German prisoners of war working on slag heaps that disfigured the countryside by the river. The Mail reported that the royal party were flattered on being cheered by the foe. The Times more cautiously claimed that the King had passed an internment camp for German prisoners and its inmates from behind the wire had gazed curiously at the tug. Several of them had stood to attention and one actually waved a greeting. The Northern Echo similarly noted that amongst a crowd of thousands that watched the royal river trip up the Tees were some German prisoners who watched with a strict respectful silence, but a few caught the general contagion of the royal visit and cheered. The Daily Telegraph agreed several prisoners waved, being part of a big well-behaved party of German prisoners improving the landscape by evacuating material for road making. They were caught up by the spirit of the occasion and the huge enthusiastic crowds lining the banks of the Tees. George had been born in Britain, but given the royal couples German heritage the sight of German prisoners greeting the royal party must have been mildly embarrassing to the King, especially when widely reported in the wartime national press. No surprise that George, soon after, on 17 July 1917, appeased the feelings of British nationalists by changing the name of the British Royal Household from the German sounding House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to the House of Windsor. Thus George abandoned his German titles for an anglicised future. One wonders if this River Tees incident had influenced him. At Stockton on 14 June 1917 the royal party walked to the Hunters Lane entrance of the Ropner shipyard for what was labelled as a private visit to the yard. The King wanted to be more educated about the war effort, especially maritime construction, and to thank the Ropner and South Durham Companies and their workers for superb wartime effort. In all but name this was an official visit, but this would have allowed a holiday for the works involved in the visit, possibly other local works, and the closure of shops on Stockton High Street. Not what was needed for the war effort, as there were doubts that Britain could win the submarine war at this time and whether food supplies and imports would hold up, due to shipping losses outpacing construction. Also the King needed to see workers involved with their trades to help educate him. In practise many shops and businesses closed until after the royal visit to allow their workers and customers to see their majesties. The royal party left the Ropner shipyard by car from the Maritime Street entrance near Commercial Street for the South Durham Companies Malleable Works. They left this works late for Stockton Station and the royal train to the Hartlepools. Although the royal party were only in Stockton for about two hours, the crowds were some of the biggest ever seen in the town. For many working people this was the first time in their lives they had seen royalty, as such tours amongst the local population and even factories were a new event generated by the First World War.
This photo shows the King, Queen, Royal Party and civic elite in Thistle Green about to enter the Square. The Thistle Green street sign appears on the top left of the photo and is clearly readable on the original photo. This photo was also published in the Daily Mirror soon after the Stockton visit. The photo was taken just after 12-30pm on 14th June 1917. The Royal Party had just arrived at Stockton Corporation Quay from Middlesbrough by river tug. They walked up Calverts Lane into Thistle Green, turned into the Square, then into Smithfield and Hunters Lane to the entrance of the Ropner shipyard for an official visit. They are walking to the shipyard not leaving it. They left Ropners by car from the Commercial Street entrance for Portrack Lane and a visit to the Malleable Works. The dark horse drawn Royal Carriage followed behind the above procession. For a detailed account of the Stockton visit and some council owned photos of this event search under ‘Royal Visit to Tees-side 1917’ on this site. If one leaves the main entrance to Stockton Library and looks left towards the river, then the above photo is the view back in 1917. Burton House can be seen at the bottom of the street (Thistle Green) on the left, the Three Tuns pub is just off camera to the right. Some of the houses above were indeed lodging houses for shipyard workers. Admiral A.E.A. Grant is to the left of the Queen, with the King on the right edge of the photo.