This photograph taken by Jack Marriott c1950s shows a view of Stockton Quayside, with ‘Annie G’ in the foreground.
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
This photograph taken by Jack Marriott c1950s shows a view of Stockton Quayside, with ‘Annie G’ in the foreground.
I once recall as a 12-yr old, my grandfather to coming to visit our family from his home in the Isle of Man, to where he had retired from Liverpool (I only ever met this big man two or three times in my life)! Upon glancing through my end of year school-magazine, he came upon a black and white photograph, very similar to the one above that advertised Stockton Quay and it’s proud (sic) ‘500 yards of riverside facilities’, upon which he burst into a bout of derisive laughter, adding ” 500 yards?…you should come to Liverpool! We’ve over 9-miles of all this! It goes on forever!”
A remark, that left me feeling somewhat embarrassed about my little corner of the world. I was in my 50’s when I took my own Dad back to Liverpool, on a ‘sentimental journey’ for his 80th birthday. As we wandered around the famous ‘Albert Dock’, now filled with restaurants, souvenir-shops and an important art-gallery, I couldn’t help thinking about my grandfather’s ‘quip’ and how all that activity, commerce and employment connected with shipping, had long disappeared and by then, his ‘9-miles’, like Stockton’s ‘500 yards’, was no more.
When you think Yarm was also an unloading point for boats which stopped when the river had the bend taken out of it and Stockton with its flour mills was the more important place.
Then Steel making reached up the river from Middlesbrough and although ships not only came up river but were also launched from Stocktons ship yard. In the war years as school boys we would wander down to the river and see the Mulberry Harbour sections being built on the Thornaby side, those things will never float we said, they must be going to dam the river. Float they did and all the way to Normandy.
My last memories of ships at the quay would be the scrap boats taking the loads of scrap that would be piled up ready to load just before the river side of the High Street vanished for the new, the more modern people craved for then.
The barrage cut the river for ever and we now have a clean water lake instead of a tidal river, is it better? of course it is, we have river sports galas, outings up to Yarm once more and a first class canoe slalom. When and if the river front ever gets its make over with shops Café’s and entertainment the river will be an asset for the future generations who never knew it as we did.
As for the huge dock complexes in Liverpool London and Glasgow, they had served their time. I sailed out of Liverpool on troop ships and marvelled and then it was Harwich a brand new dock and marvelled even more as we moved across the North sea and back.
Progress is always painful to those there when it happens and like the docks some of us have had their time now it is up to our grandchildren to shape the future Stockton, I like the new cleaner river.