This is one of those posts that went missing when we moved to the new site.
It shows the Victoria Bridge and the Cleveland Flour Mill in the distance.
We have tried to recreate as many original comments as possible…
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
I attended the National School, in George Street, which was situated 300 yards away from the flour mills, and each day after school ‘whilst it was on fire’, in the late 1940s, I ran across to the Victoria river bridge to watch the firemen fighting the blaze. After 2 days or so, they then commenced damping down the embers. The big building shown stored large tonnages of corn grain, and this corn was on fire. Stopping the smouldering blaze took 3 weeks effort. Each night the 9.00pm BBC radio news give an update on the fires progress, with live reports from the scene. I understand 84 fire appliances attended this incident which at that time was ‘the largest number of fire engines ever sent to a fire in the UK. The reason for this huge number of appliances was at the back of the flour mills there were huge petrol storage tanks (there might have been a Regent Oil Depot there?) and it was feared these might blow up with the heat from the blaze. About 25 years prior to this fire my fathers brother, my uncle Robert (Bob) Wilson, namesake, was the manager of these mills.
Hi Bob, I belive that I know you. I was born in Henrietta Street at number 5 which I belive is about two hundred yards from where you lived. We lived next door to the Dawsons, you may remember one of them (Geoffrey) was involved in a shooting near the river. I went to Saint Patricks School and left in 1956. Now living in Australia from 1971.
Ronnie Ainsley also lived in Henrietta Street, the late Ronnie started work at Head Wrightsons, Thornaby and ended up head of Ainsley and Noble.
My grandfather built two cabin cruisers from old ships lifeboats and they were moored down there next to the Victoria Bridge. The first was called “The Gladioli” which he sold a couple of years after it was finished and built a larger boat called the “The Dandylion” (mis-spelt on purpose). She’d be sailed down to Whitby in the summer and we’d all have a week’s holiday there. Then it would be moved to Scarborough for a repeat before she’d be sailed back to the Tees in the autumn. The Cleveland Flour Mill must have burned down more than once, as I distinctly remember it burning down in the fifties. In fact since grandads first boat Gladioli is in the photo, that must be the re-incarnated flour mill in the background. Frank Bowron
I saw the flour mill burn-down one evening mid 1940’s. The blaze in the sky could be seen from Hill St. West, so we went and viewed the spectacle.
Ray Parker