A view over the rooftops of the Green Dragon Yard looking towards the Riverside, Stockton.
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
A view over the rooftops of the Green Dragon Yard looking towards the Riverside, Stockton.
Progress is neither good or bad it is a juggernaut that steams over everything. The old Hotels and shop fronts people hanker after were or would have been only 165 years old today and actually less than 130 years when demolished. The Gas house area went from green fields to almost green fields in less than 100 years. Hardwick has had large bits knocked down and rebuilding taking place, less then 50 years some of it. The Empire building was put up in the 1900’s so lasted 60 years. All the old iron foundries that made parts of Stockton came and went in a very short period. Nothing is forever.
Those old buildings knocked down and rebuilt at a time of high interest rates and shortages, they were ready to be knocked down and I actually saw one fall down luckily no one was hurt, the cost of restoration could in my opinion never have been re-imbursed.
You cannot move almost the whole town population to the outskirts and expect the town shops and market to still do the same business. You cannot let the place be over run with Supermakets and still have a vibrant market. People like one stop shopping and nothing will change that. I do choose to go to the out of town shops as I can park free and near the shop I wish to visit, at my age a boon.
I cannot see it but there could be a time people got out of their cars if the Tramway was built and where would be the main stop as shown on the plans, well the out of town shopping area.
New housing is being built along the Riverside and probably back in town at some time in the future although I would think most of the shops would be long gone.
Stockton Council have to look to a different future for Stockton, the riverside will develope given time and when money is once more available, who is going to invest at the moment?
The past has gone and many of us who lived through that period will say thank goodness, modern young people have expectations that to us were dreams, they are moving into new things we would never have envisaged, the Town has to move with them or be left as some museum to the past, outside loos or tin baths anyone? I doubt it.
I would agree that progress is inevitable, yes, but I still think it can be good and bad. It depends on the overall long-term effect that progress brings and, fundamentally, whether people really want it. Nobody cares less about dilapedated factories, slum housing or quaysides, and more than they want tin baths and outside loos. But the high street is after all supposed to be the focal point of the town, and maintaining its history (130 years is still longer than pretty much any human lifetime and probably older than the old Globe theatre, over which there is so much nostalgia and is supposed to be being renovated, is now) adds character to the town, with some of those old buildings probably having more character to them than the monolithic shopping centre that stands in its place. I am sure I have heard tell of alternative proposals rejected by the council which could have been. But, I am not sure whether there was any alternative at the time.
As I hinted, only hindsight is truly 20/20, and what makes sense in one era need not make sense in another. It seems reasonable that the shopping centre, multi-stoey car parks and riverside road made sense in an era of rising car ownership.
But not all this progress has made sense. You speak of getting people to live on the edge of town, and suggesting that out-of-town shopping centres are a boon. But what of the local neighbourhood shops that were within easy walking distance? Disappeared under the weight of the Tescopoly. And if parking your car right near the shop you wanted is so important, why did they pedestrianise the high street and remove all the parking spaces in and around it? They’re only just bringing them back! As for Wellington Square, seemed like a good idea at the time but it’s probably emptier now than it was when it started, and demolished yet more old buildings including the back end of what was the Co-op and the old Baptist Tabernacle. One can only wonder what the current modifications to the town centre will bring.
You speak of young people and the opportunities they supposedly had. Well, I am a relatively young man myself (late 20s anyway) and all this “progress” still represents history and heritage- *my* history and heritage- which I never got to see. You might also want to look at the trends- we are finding it harder to get jobs and probably can’t look forward to all the benefits you are probably enjoying in your old age, when we reach ours. We are also using cars less, as it is getting just too expensive (not to mention a few of us understand the problems they bring- contributing to climate change and decreasing oil supplies). Perhaps though, it is because we are using the internet more, and don’t need to get out and about as much for shopping and socialising- so the town will be perhaps as redundant as the Teesside Parks of this world, before long.
But, if and when people do abandon their cars, I very much doubt it’ll be for a tram service round here. I presume you mean that ridiculous “Teesside metro” scheme- which seems to have been designed to use mostly just existing railway lines anyway, and looks to have been quietly shelved. Which leaves us with buses- and guess where most of them go through? The town.
A bit harsh Bob, it is called progess, the change in peoples habits. Remembering Stockton as the dare I say it “Metro Centre” of South Durham and surrounding areas when people came in bus loads to the Markets Wednesday and Saturday where most of the weekly shopping took place. Stockton races where all our Durham relatives came down and stayed overnight and a day at the races the women shopping in Stockton’s then posh shops.
Norton and Stockton almost one big Market Garden to supply the stalls with fresh vegetables and meat, most things travelling only a few miles. It started with the building of the out of town estates with their own shops. The outer villages which relied on Stockton, got new housing and shops and the slow creep to out of town shopping area’s as more people got cars, money and the freedom to travel, every town centre in the country suffers the same problems.
Give Stockton its due, the river clean up, the College, the Summer activities and refurbishment of the parks and open area’s now the changes in the Town Centre. Obviously not everyones cup of tea though I would say a step in the right direction for the change of use that all towns centres will go through.
Out of Town shops are here to stay, our shopping habits are very different from our parents, my children do most of their shopping online even their groceries, there will be even more radical changes in the future although by then, us ancient warriors will be in Valhalla.
You cannot stop change and most do not wish to, who would live in those street houses with no bathroom and an outside toilet today, not me that is for sure. The town in its history has seen many changes and who says that is such a bad thing.
Frank, I accept what you say, but even so do regret town councils including Stockton, discarding the traditional Georgian or Victorian British Architecture look that served us so well. A large share of a town’s image was portrayed then in it’s shop frontages and buildings with Stockton and Middlesborough town hall’s being good examples. Whist Stockton’s loss of building character matters; it pales into insignificance compared to the town planners damage to York, Norwich, Guildford and Princes Street, Edinburgh. Even everyone’s favourite store Marks and Spencer’s PLC, revamped their impressive green and gold lettered store frontage to appear more modern? May I add that the founder of Marks and Spencer, Mr Michael Marks landed in Stockton docks in 1882 from his village of Slonim, Lithuania, a man with only a few shillings to his name. After his arrival he moved to Leeds seeking tailoring work and ended up peddling cotton, needles and ribbons door to door before opening an haberdashers stall on Leeds market. Mr Marks met his wife Hannah Cohen as a result of her father inviting him to his home for a meal after they had met in a Stockton high street shop doorway – whilst sheltering from the rain. So Stockton shares an important part of MandS proud history, the same as Stockton with it’s claim to railway fame does world wide.
There’s good and bad progress though Frank. And whilst I suspect perhaps building the Riverside Road might have been alright (it would have been nice if the area the old quayside was had been turned into something a bit like tyneside as some sort of nice waterfront development with bars, restaurants and other public amenities but, looking at that picture and others like it, who wanted that in those days when you main view was a decaying industrial estate?) What is not good is replacing the old front-end shops, inns etc. on the High Street with the modernist building that is the Castlegate Centre, which would have been a good selling point in allowing the town centre to compete with new developments like Teesside Park. (Again though, this is with the benefit of hindsight and it probably made less sense at the time.)
I don’t think those out-of-town shops are necessarily here to stay- they depend too much on the car and as fuel prices increase, maybe relying on cars to get places will decline but, more to the point and in the much nearer term, they are suffering the same problem of pressure from the internet as town centres are facing.
And can you blame this sort of progress on the decline of Stockton? Middlesbrough seems to have been doing reasonably well. Darlington doesn’t look too bad. What happened to Stockton? What good have all these modernisations done it? I wonder.
Modernisation is really, no pun intended, nothing new. I am sure that the traditionalists in the 1700’s deplored what was done to their high street in the name of modernisation. Change is inevitable, (and in this case needed), though not always wanted or appreciated. The demolition of the old high street and replacement with the shopping centre may now be seen as a mistake, but where were the outcries when it happened?
Did the older people who remember living and working in what became rat infested slums fight against it, or did they welcome the opportunity for cleaner, more sanitary shops, houses etc? Those people with fond memories of “the way it was” look back through rose tinted glasses, perhaps forgetting that neither the technology, the funding, or the desire was there to save this part of the high street. In a generation or so it will be gone and something even more, or less, objectionable will be built in its place, but the revisionists of the time will no doubt hark back to their perceived “better days”.
Looking at this photograph it makes you think how Stockton’s grown and altered over the years… why, if Hans Christian Anderson, had written a tale about Stockton, he would have called it: “How the Queens Swan Turned Into A Duck”?