A view from the High Street of the Cleansing Depot in Norton c1970.
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
A view from the High Street of the Cleansing Depot in Norton c1970.
The last trams ran in 1931-2 the lines in Norton High Street were ripped up sometime in 1933 as my Father got a load of the wooden blocks from between the lines, they were burned on the outside pig boiler and I remember the tarry smell of them, they did last for years because it became my job to boil the pig potato’s cabbage etc, our pigs lived on the best.
The ripping up of the lines is my first clear memory, standing at the front of the bus as we waited to pass the workmen.
The curved lines into the depot were still there until the High Street was resurfaced and the iron rails put around the grassy plots that would be late 1950’s early 60’s.
It was a store for the AFS machines and in the early years a couple of Bofer guns which would be run out onto the Green or the Showfield during raids, what with them banging away and the 4.7’s at kiora it got quite noisy. The smoke screen pots were put out round the green at the beginning of the war and never moved until the end, my Father a Fire Watcher said if they ever light them we will all choke to death, we had one on the the corner to Mill Lane where I lived, I never saw them lit.
The depot became a council store after the war and I think up to it all being knocked down and the Care Home built.
If my memory serves me well was this not the old tram depot, if you look carefully at the road way into the depot you on this picture you can still see the tram lines leading into the depot
I can just rember the trams running in the earley late 50s going up Norton high street to the depot
Colin, your memory is in good order, you can see those tram lines when it was the tram depot here :
http://picturestocktonarchive.wordpress.com/2002/10/14/middlesbrough-stockton-and-thornaby-electric-tram/
Although I assume that photo was well before your time 🙂 , the gate posts and tram shed profile are clearly recognisable.
Colin’s memory is not in good order. He certainly could not possibly remember trams running in the early 50s. The trams between Norton Green and North Ormesby ceased on 31st December 1931. My father took me to Middlesbrough by tram in I think the autumn of 1931.