A view of The Black Lion Hotel established c1740 on the south end of Stockton High Street. The Empire Theatre, a fine example of Edwardian architecture can just be seen to the right of the photograph.
Note the ‘Mixed Lounge’ sign outside William the Fourth Hotel and bus platform numbers 4,3 and 0.
I was born in the William 1V in 1948. My mam and da were the Publicans, John and Mary Conroy. My mam later ran it on her own. It was the last “men only” pub til my mam added the Mixed Lounge.
Would I be right in saying that, as a child, we would have got off the coach from Victoria (london) in this area? My only memory is of a very wide road-could have been a market place I guess. Any one help me?
The United Automoble Bus Services from London used to pick up and drop off directly over the road from the Black Lion hotel, Stockton, shown in the photograph.
United buses (known locally as the ‘Red Buses’) commenced in Lowestoft in 1912, to serve the Lowestoft and East Anglia region, they then gradually moved north to eventually serve the East Coast of England. This company was owned by Mr W E Hutchinson, the founder, whose son E B Hutchinson (a famous figure in British bus service history) moved it’s headquarters to York, and then to Darlingon. The regional business plan was to collect passengers in rural areas and deliver them to towns served by prominent railway stations and service. or to take them closer to their homes after they had alighted from a LNER train, London to Edinburgh train, working in conjuction with local bus operators such as ‘Favourite Coaches’ and ‘Wilkinsons Buses’. In the 1960 British Leyland and National Coaches formed National Express by purchasing the United Bus Services Company, and others.
Still find it hard to believe that they pulled all that history down!
Me too…Why oh why, did we allow it?
Near to the Empire would be the firm of Solicitors, Archer,Parkin and Townsend which is where I used to work from 1961 to 1865. They moved to Yarm Lane before I left.