You can clearly see the now completed Billingham Bowl and notice the extra large bowling pin or is it a skittle?
Photograph and details courtesy of David Thompson.
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
You can clearly see the now completed Billingham Bowl and notice the extra large bowling pin or is it a skittle?
Photograph and details courtesy of David Thompson.
Oh my! Circa 1967 I managed to win a talent contest staged in the members’ club on the top floor of the Bowl … £25 was a fair wad in those days. It was a great little venue, well run by manager Bobby Lyons, I think his name was. Was it really the thick end of 50 years ago?
Yes David, this photo is definitely more 1964 than ’54 as I had a temporary job in the Bowling Alley in my mid-teens whilst still at school.
I don’t think the opening of the Forum was instrumental in the closure of the Bowl – more like the bubble of popularity in ten-pin bowling had burst. Bowling venues in Middlesbrough, Redcar, Sunderland and Jarrow diluted Billingham’s initial monopoly.
In answer to the question about the object on the roof – yes it was a tenpin which was securely attached to the roof. As an aside, my late Father worked in Roys so many of you may remember him 🙂
I remember the bird aviaries, one was for budgerigars and the other for canaries. I used to love watching them, that in the end, I got a canary, beautiful birds. The bowling alley, I once went in for a coffee with the school around the late 1960’s.
My friends and I spent many a lunch time in the bowling alley. We didn’t actually play, we just ate lunch there sometimes. That was in the mid 1960’s.
Work started on the Brunswick Bowl in 1962 but was short lived as it closed once the Forum opend in 1967. The downstairs portion was then taken over by Farmstores, the forunner to ASDA.
The covered area in the middle background incorporated the underground toilets and more particularly the hexagonal structures, which housed tropical birds. I recall weaver birds and zebra finches. To the northern end, between the covered area and Roy’s Furniture shop, you can see a low wall which stood to the side of a depressed area in which you could dance to the pop bands that the Council put on on a Saturday afternoon.
Can anyone remember the animals in the cage to the left of the picture? The cage in the center of the picture contained birds at one time.
Surely there is some mistake. This must be 1964 as the bowl did not open til 1963, and Roy Dawson’s furniture shop the year after.
That’s right, I went out with Roy’s daughter Julie. They lived on Station Road, and I remember Julie’s mum would sit and knit whilst listening to the police on a shortwave radio.
It’s later than 1954. When I moved from Billingham in the late 1950s there was no bowling club.
The photo caption says Billingham Town Centre C1954. However, the Brunswick Bowl did not open until the mid-1960s.
I sent this photo in as a comparison to the one of a similar view which was posted on 12 March . It is my mistake for not being clear to the Picture Stockton team that this one was taken a few years later ! The previous photo showed the view across to the then new John Whitehead Park before the bowl , now Asda , and the other shops were built at the northern end of the square .
I think that it was 1963 as I remember going to see a celebrity of the day Sabrina do the honours. We had no idea what she did to make her a celebrity, but she was one.
Sabrina was known for her large bust.