A view of the Darlington Building Society on Stockton High Street. The premises were adjacent to those of Ralph Appleton and Hall, Estate Agents and Valuers.
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
A view of the Darlington Building Society on Stockton High Street. The premises were adjacent to those of Ralph Appleton and Hall, Estate Agents and Valuers.
Doesn’t look like the High Street to me. Can’t remember ever seeing the road with those bricks. I think Chris Bailey is right as to where it is.
It’s still the Darlington Building Society and It’s technically on Knowles Street, but faces directly onto the High Street between The Royal Oak and Manners and Harrison.
Is this the High Street, or technically Knowles Street, adjacent to the Sun Inn?
Who’d of thought the current frontage (being bright red and white) was an improvement on what was there before, but it is! Got to give them their dues, at least they’ve bothered to put back a traditional style frontage in place of this dour effort.
Jonathan: As with most new ‘shopfronts’, this effort will have, amazingly enough, had to seek Planning approval. It is often amazing, as to how many architectural designers are unable to raise their necks and consider their proposal as being part of the upper, original facade as to balance and proportion. I’m not saying it has to be a ‘pastiche’ of an historic shopfront, but the centreline of the r/h property is obviously thru’ the 1st. flr bay-window, yet the grd. flr. shopwindow appears offset. Presumably, a doorway to access the upper floors, once existed in the area of blank brickwork that separates the two shop-windows?
Yes it seems there was a lack of a “plan” to balance the whole frontage back then. Hopefully the planning approval process is a bit more thorough with these things these days? The current frontage is a bit more balanced. The blank brickwork is replaced with a mock door.
You can see the right hand sides’s earlier ground floor arrangement in these pictures:
http://picturestocktonarchive.wordpress.com/2002/03/02/stockton-high-street-1957/
http://picturestocktonarchive.wordpress.com/2002/08/12/stockton-high-street-12/
A ground floor bay window, but no sign of a door so maybe it has been part of the left hand building for quite a while?