A view of the pond on Norton Green on a postcard that was posted on 26th June 1908. Courtesy of Glenn Hutchinson.
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
A view of the pond on Norton Green on a postcard that was posted on 26th June 1908. Courtesy of Glenn Hutchinson.
No Richard, I am not related to George Hutchinson, my family were from the Hutton Magna area in Teesdale at the turn of the century.
My Richard White family lived near the Green. I have a Mary White married George Hutchinson and had 5 children. Are you related? I have more information, if it would be of interest.
This is even before my Fathers time, they arrived in Norton from Prudhoe, living in Beaconsfield Street as it then was around 1914. The pump is there and we have to remember the pond and then pumps were the only source of freshwater before the water mains went in, there were water pumps in some of the yards off the High Street and in our yard at Mill Lane and still working well into the second world war. My Father always said the pump water was better than the piped water, he could well have been right as we had lead pipes back then, copper came in much later. What is not there is the public phone box that stood there all my young years and was a source of mystery to me as a lad when very few had phones in the home, how could a box talk to some one else, well we solved that one with two tin cans and a piece of taught string in Chemistry lessons at school. I remember three phone boxes in the village and at times a queue to use them, we lads would run in and press button B to see if there was money in. The pond is still the mud lined one we kids would play in watching out for broken glass, yes we had vandals back then as well, we would often see carters water their horses when they passed by, there were a lot of carters many of them coal or milk men, the forge was a very busy place. We had a truck by then although still using the forge to repair broken springs, I would take them across the green on a sack barrow and watch amazed as the leaves were fire welded and hardened, helping my Father to refit the spring and it was heavy work but business depended on the truck being fit to work. It is a picture of Norton as I knew it a working village and to us kids a wonderful playground now it is a car park and goodness knows what will happen when Redhouse moves and more houses are built on what was once the sand pots and showfield? The Green a supermarket perhaps?