This one of those posts that was lost when we moved to the new site.
The opening of Ropner Park, Stockton on Wednesday 4th October 1893 by the Duke and Duchess of York. Does anyone recognise the building behind the Royal Party?
We have tried to recreate as many of the original comments as possible…
Picture Stockton Archive 
I believe the building behind the royal party is most likely to be the Ropner family home
which was Clockwood House at Yarm. My mother was in service there.
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The bottom photograph is taken inside Ropner Park in front of the old pavilion. The row of houses to the left are the west side of Hampton Road, the east side not completed at this time, and the house on the right of the picture is on the end of Windsor Road ,it is one storey higher than the other houses on Windsor Road and has a distinctive end gable window that still looks over the park today much the same as it did in 1893. Dave Harrison
The Royal party did spend the night before the opening at Wynyard Hall before processing via Norton, Stockton High Street and Yarm Road into Hartburn Lane to the main gates of the park for the opening. It is quite likely that the photograph as you suggest was taken outside Wynyard on the morning of the opening. Dorothy Dinsdale
The photo of the royal party may have been taken at Wynyard Hall as the windows (with their 5 x 3 panes) are identical to those at the Hall featured elsewhere on this site. Maybe the royal party stayed at the Hall whilst visiting the area to open the Park? Cliff Thornton
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Cliff, I agree these are the 3no. tall windows of the ground floor reception rooms that sit either side of the huge portico to Wynyard Hall. It being late October, a topcoat belonging to one of the party, can be seen in the background laid over a stone balustrade, which at some later date has seemingly been removed.
The Duke of York (who became King George V in 1911) can be seen in the centre of the group, standing behind his wife Mary. This must have been one of their earliest official ‘royal visits’, as they had been married in the July of the same year. The gentleman on the extreme left, looks suspiciously like George’s father King Edward VII (who may have been on a private visit) and the man just 3rd from the left, certainly looks like another ‘royal’ of the time, though it cannot be Prince Albert Victor (George’s elder brother) as he had died during the great UK influenza ‘pandemic’ 1889-1892, of pneumonia.
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