Work on Church Row during 1934. The new road looks up towards Stockton High Street with Robinsons Tower (Debenhams) in the distance.
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
Work on Church Row during 1934. The new road looks up towards Stockton High Street with Robinsons Tower (Debenhams) in the distance.
I think the picture was taken from the rail track of the North Shore Branch Line, looking west toward the town. I got the impression that there may have been an (unofficial footpath) from Church Row across the rail way leading towards the Malleable roughly taking the same line as the new Church Road. The North Shore Branch was lined at this point with some very substantial stone walls. Before the light engineering works were built on the land to east of the line and north of Church Road, my Grandad used to take me to watch the trains being shunted.
Bill Mann, would you have known my uncle by any chance? His name was Sid Walker and he worked at the Malleable for years, a lifelong bachelor, he lived on Oxbridge Lane with my grandmother, Emma Walker.
Sorry Linda, the name doesn’t ring a bell, the only Walkers I knew were Pat Walker and his dad and Ian Walker, there were hundreds of employees back in the 1960s in five different plants, plus the office staff.
Yes, I know it was a big place with many a worker, but you never know!
Derek, I think you’re spot on, I walked under the bridge hundreds of times on my way to and from the Malleable from 1964-1983. The gable end visible left of centre would be the block with Moore’s betting shop and the paper shop.
The work at the near end of the picture is too substantial for just a road widening. I think that what is being constructed is the underpass, over which the North Shore Railway bridged and be replaced. The bridge with a railway existed over Church Road from my childhood (1950 on ward). To give weight to this, I think that the high wall, near right, must have been part of the Union Workhouse.
The houses on the right are where the ‘workers’ two-up,two down, street housing of Clarence Row, Rupert St and Caroline St once stood. The land to the left, almost on the Tees riverbank, became occupied by Minories Garages, the Alan Kennedy Steel Flooring factory and a coal yard.
This ‘new’ main road effectively by-passed the commencement of the original ‘narrow’ Portrack Lane which ran via The Cricketers pub and St Anne’s Church a few hundred yards to the west. The row of of once ‘affluent’ large houses and church, in the middle distance (on the right), were known as Paradise Row. This terrace of fine original late 18th/early 19thC. ‘wealthy’ Stockton merchants housing still exist today, one of which was, until quite recently, occupied by Stockton Planning Dept.
The houses Chris Bailey mentions is Beech Street.