This photograph was taken from the top of the Odeon or Barclays bank showing the south end of the High Street. Judging by the cars I guess it must’ve been taken mid 60s before the demolition of the riverside buildings. How did we let that happen? Unfortunately I can’t put names to all the shops but I do remember a woodworkers DIY, Rossi Ice cream parlour, Maynards and of course The Vane Arms, Black Lion, Unicorn and William ?. The green “Favourite bus” can be seen on one side and the United bus station is bottom left. I remember my first holiday abroad my pal Joe Evis and I had to travel from this bus station, overnight to London to fly off to Majorca in 1965.
Photograph and details courtesy of Sue Rudge (nee Black).
The “green” bus would be Durham District Services Ltd (DDS) which provided two services, D1 and D2, between Sunderland and Middlesbrough via Billingham and Stockton. DDS was managed though not owned by United.
The bus on the bottom left hand side, may be a Crow’s bus that operated direct services to Osmotherley. Nowadays, you have 2 changes via Middlesborough and Stokesley or get the train to Northallerton and get the local bus to Osmotherley from there.
While the picture of Stockton High Street is good, I think the “green favourite bus” would have been a Durham Motor Service bus namely the 55 route. The bottom left looks like the Crowe’s Brothers bus that ran from Stockton to Northallerton. Otherwise an excellent picture of what Stockton High Street should look like now!
Among the shops demolished was Woodruffes the jewellers where we bought my wedding ring 53 years ago!
I think the William? referred to in the previous post, might be Strike’s; Stockton’s forerunner to our present day garden centres. Even as a child, I loved going into the shop, it had a certain atmosphere I find difficult to describe, I just know I loved it. In fact, I always thought that end of the high street was the best and mourn its loss, it would have been so much better to renovate the old buildings to keep their wonderful character.