Once home to the Co-op store in Billingham. This Co-op is no longer, but the building still remains on the corner of Station Road and Belasis Avenue.
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
Once home to the Co-op store in Billingham. This Co-op is no longer, but the building still remains on the corner of Station Road and Belasis Avenue.
I lived in Billingham from 1935 to 1953, when I left for Canada. I remember shopping with my mother often at the Co-op and was intrigued with the way that bills and money flew through the vacuum tubes up to the accounting area and how change flew back. I worked at the main office in Stockton for a while. The major outlet was the main shopping venue in Billingham, with groceries meat and chemist, possibly with other services as well. Too bad the Co-op doesn’t exist anymore
John
Does anyone know if there was a police station opposite the Co-op in the ’60’s?
In 64/65 I remember getting on the bus from Billingham Tech, which was not without difficulty – it involved a mad scramble and an effort to stay on your feet and not be trampled underfoot.
As the bus proceeded through Billingham, on its way to Stockton the students became increasingly loud and unruly and despite requests from the driver, would not calm down. The driver eventually stopped the bus opposite the Co-op, at which point the police boarded and dragged off the culprits.
The Police office was approx 100 yards further along the road in the direction of Cowpen and on the same side of the road as the Co-op.
There was a police station just further up the road opposite the ICI cricket ground, the building is still there.
The police station backed on to the Billingham South Modern School grounds and there was a large telegraph pole with an air raid siren perched on the top in it’s yard, a hangover from the war I suspect. The building is still in use as a residential home.
Does anyone remember seeing Steeleye Span in the early seventies at the hall?
It was a big event for the hall at the time as they were a band that were in the
charts at that time.
I remember being in an ‘Old Time Music Hall’ with The Billingham Players in ‘The Theatre Upstairs’ above this building. It must have been 1975’ish when we had just moved into the place and renovated it for the production?
Some of the others involved were Don Partington, who I believe was a senior manager at ICI; Andrea Menhennet whose parents had the hardware shop in the town centre; she had a lovely voice. Any others out there????
I went to Billingham North school (Pentland Ave.., is it still there?) with Andrea Menhennet. I remember her clearly: a beautiful girl (although I was more interested in Dinky Toys at the time) dark, wavy hair, always with a ribbon, and always beautifully dressed, which wasn’t the case with all of our classmates. Oddly enough, when the Town Centre was built in 1953 and there was a planned shop for a paint and hardware store, my father, who was a maintenance supt. for ICI, gave thought to opening a business there with my uncle. It didn’t happen, and the shop opened as Menhennet’s, no doubt very successfully.
It should also be said those Co-op Halls were also used for meetings and other events apart from dancing, some Unions held meetings in the halls the Jubilee being used by the Engineers well into 1970’s. I remember a meeting being held there so you would suppose the halls could be hired. The Co-op Hall in Darlington had a sprung floor all well and good until two hundred Army Cadets tried to sleep on it, I was sea sick going over the Victoria Bridge on a bus, it was also the night the Germans had their last go as two planes swooped over clear moonlit streets machine gunning them as we Cadets ran for shelter about where the car park is now.
The Co-op was a movement that improved the lives of people and the shops a big change from the general grocer of the time with a block of cheese and butter one end of a counter and the parafin the other plus sawdust on the floor H&S would have had a fit.
I lived in Billingham from 1966 to 1989 and remember the co-op very well and the changes it went through. Nice looking building.
Dancing took off in a big way after. the first world war and even before the dance scene in America had crossed the Atlantic and it was the new form of public entertainment and affordable too.
The Co-op expanding rapidly built large multi outlets often including a dance hall and as they were built in area’s expanding with new housing such as Billingham and Norton they had more or less a captive audience to participate. My mother and Father met as so many couples did at the Norton Co-op and I as a very young lad was taken to watch the competitions they participated in to me it was heaven on earth as it would be to the grown ups dancing there.
Lives bands, wonderful lighting, glitter balls, flowing dresses and men in nice suits, they swirled around the room free from the worries of everyday life for a couple of brief hours, remember life was not easy for many during the late twenties and thirties, we had Cinema’s and Dance halls and most people were not mobile relying on the bus or walking so near by entertainment was the way.
I learned to dance at the Norton Co-op Leven Road and of course the many Church Hall youth dances, Cochranes Stockton so was well prepared when I finally made it to the Palais Stockton at sixteen. My future wife and I met in the Maison then went to the Jubilee Hall another Co-op hall that was after dancing in many places including the large halls in London.
The Co-op were very forward thinking both with their shopping outlets and bringing customers in to stay with the divi scheme, they put all the differing types of store on one block you could say the first supermarket and attracted the people with the dance halls, I miss the old Co-op, number 14958 you never forget it all went to pot in the 1960’s when the kids decided dancing together was old hat and invented dancing round the handbag, “oh well it takes all kinds” as they say.
This building as I recall, besides having individual Co-op shop units (Grocery, Chemist, Butcher etc) arranged around the corner site, also had a large public space / performance area to the 1st floor, the ventilation stacks for which can be seen along the ridge of the roof. I wonder how Stockton, or was it Billingham Cooperative Society (?) decided to incorporate such a facility into one of their branches? Perhaps it was a gesture of community spirit as the original village of Billingham began to bourgeon into a new township during the early 1920’s, owing to the expansion on of ICI and it’s ever increasing workforce?
In the late 60’s my friend and I used to regularly walk down to the Co-op and buy hot pies from the butcher at the back of the shop during our lunch hour when we worked at ICI Billingham. Best pies ever!!