A view of the Northern end of the High street including Stockton Market, Victoria Buildings, the Royal Oak, the Parish Church, Maxwell’s Corner, Norton Road Congregational Church, Robinsons, Sparks Café, Boots and Marks and Spencer. A busy bustling market scene with lots to see, people, prams, cars, buses and fashion c1940s/50s?
Photograph and details courtesy of Jonathan May.
I was in Stockton in the last couple of weeks on holiday, what are they doing to the place I ask. I was told from the people at the tourist info shop on the high st,that everything will be finished
in 2015. Lets hope it will encourage people to back to stockton.
Market days pubs open all day, except closed for 1 hour during 3-4pm? , but you could buy enough to see you over that hour, when beer was sold again… and we think drink is a problem today !!!
It’s the mode of transport and “spare time” which affects shopping habits. Portrack like many localities in Stockton had its vast array of small shops, but even a 20 minute bus service into town started to undermine the local shops by the 1950s.Some like Mary Nevin’s an apparently thriving independent grocer had to form an alliance of some sort with British Home Stores in the town.
Yes Bob I went through it to the Richard Hind nearly five years then to work, it was always busy, why?
Masses of town houses, nowhere else to shop, lack of personal transport for most of course it was a busy place also it was worthwhile for stall holders to come from Leeds and places just as far away, they made money.
Now we have the main population on the outskirts with plenty of personal transport and the freedom of choice as to where they shop and the free easy parking at the retail park draws them away from the town.
Answer fill in those empty area’s in the town with housing, take out some of the old unused shops warehouse and street houses then rebuild to a plan, bring people back into town so they do not need to use cars, then and only then will the shops come back to service those customers on the doorstep.
We did the shopping in the market because we were counting the pennies, it seems to me these days my grandchildren count the £50 pound notes and spend them on line.
Frank, we are looking at two ages of shopping in this photograph. One a Roman/ Medieval style (the Market), the other being the rise of the individual Georgian/Victorian shop-based specialised retailer who was also often superceded by the Department Store (in this case Robinson’s!) and other multiples such as Burtons, Marks and Spencer’s , etc. These in turn were then overtaken by Super-stores and Malls. On-line shopping is now merely an historic extension of that ‘shopping’ process and one that saves not only money, but also, petrol costs, bus-fares and shoe-leather! What is doesn’t provide, is the social interaction, excitement and sense of community that the weekly gatherings on Wednesday’s and Saturday’s brought to many generations of people in Stockton High Street. These days it’s a case of,’You makes your choice, you pays your money and keep your drawbridge firmly up’, eh?
Chris it is called progression. When the streets behind the main shops were packed with houses and people, often all the kids in one bedroom no bathroom and outside toilet, people had to spend their small allowances locally. My mother-in-law Elsy Prest was brought up in Mill Street West behind what came to be the Globe, her family had a small baking oven in the yard and they sold bread from the parlour, often on tick. The house wives took them dishes to cook in the oven ready for the men coming home from the long shifts at work. They were over taken by large bakers coming to town and small corner shops lost out to bigger stores such as Co-op, liptons Gallons and others.
From town houses with the shopping area being Silver Street and the market the town went to a large shopping area in stages from the 1840’s with another rapid change from around the 1880’s.
My Father moaned about the changes to the town from his time 1914 on then in my time the town imploded out to the suburbs with their own shopping area’s and gradually went downhill as with transport we could go to Middlesbrough Darlington then the Metro Centre.
I shopped today at the retail park as it is free and right outside the shops I used, If I go to Stockton you pay to park walk in and out then find you need to use several shops for your weekly shop, at my age a chore.
The grandchildren are constantly in touch and talking to each other on the mobiles, that is the new over the garden fence we all knew as kids and later. Their shopping habits are on line or a trip to Birmingham London and even Belfast.
We are the past, much as some of us yearn for it, it has gone and Stockton once more changes its clothes, look to the future or stagnate is the motto in this rapidly changing world, have I lived too long ?
The church shown is the Wesleyan Methodist church on the south side of Hume Street. The Congregational church, though nearer the camera, was smaller and set back behind the building line, so probably almost invisible in this view.
You are right the church is North Terrace Wesleyan Methodist on the corner of Hume Street and the Norton Road Congregational Church was between Laing Street and Tennant Street, the shop next to this church (nearest to the High Street) was the Northern Gas Showroom.
I can remember once parking my car in the high street on a Tuesday night and getting bladdered in the Castle and Anchor, leaving the car and getting the bus home… forgetting that the next day was market day! I arrived to collect it the next day to find it surrounded by market stalls and irrate stallholders ;¬)
Amazed, Craig, when I read this as my son, now 40, did exactly the same thing – with the same result although I’ve no idea which pub or pubs he had visited. This must have been around 1990 so there must have still been High street parking as late as that; not sure when it ceased.
The scene wasn’t much different in my childhood which was the 1960s. It’s heartbreaking to see what it has now become.
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS PHOTO. THAT IS PART OF MY CHILDHOOD. EVERY WED AND SAT. LOOKING AT IT I COULD FEEL THE WARMTH AND SMELL OF THE GAS LAMPS.
What attracts people into the town centre. We can see pavements loaded with people and also we see the answer. Loads of stalls, cars parked in the road even though it is market day. You have to attract people into the town and not by making it pedestrianised.