A view of Martins Car Showroom and the private Doctors Surgery next door. Bridge Road, Stockton c1985.
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
A view of Martins Car Showroom and the private Doctors Surgery next door. Bridge Road, Stockton c1985.
Picture Stockton Archive 
I worked at Martins as a telephonist/receptionist in 1966 when it also sold commercial vehicles as well, Eddie Norton was the main man for that and Fred Richmond for the cars. The sales manager was Neville Bradley. I later went to Boathouse Lane to be a stock control clerk in the stores and worked with Mick Jobling. The service manager was Ray Ellis who many years later was the landlord of a pub in Acklam.
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Eddie Norton set up his own truck repair workshop after Martin’s closed servicing the vehicles of local suppliers such as Doves. He had a place in Portrack and appeared to be doing well when I went in there.
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I bought a new Vauxhall Cavalier in 1982 from that showroom. I worked behind Martins in SBC Planning Dept., in a temporary building now cleared. I used to check progress of delivery on a chalk blackboard in Martins how times have in 31 years
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That picture invokes memories, I had been in looking at a Vauxhall 101 needing a reliable car to run up and down to Aldershot, it was a bit out of my range cash wise so walked away. Reading the gazette at home that night I saw an advert all cars £100 off at Martins, back down as they opened next morning and the car was mine, it never gave any problems for the next three years.
I have said I worked a short while at Quayside Engineering, they took over another section of building belonging to the grain mill in Brougham Street, part of it was walled up so we set too with hammers to knock it out and found two 1939 Vauxhall cars up on bricks. It turned out Mr Mellor the miller had bought them to use later after what most people had thought would be a short war.
The Garage at the time was Sherwoods, they came down and collected the cars and were running them up and down Tower and Brougham Streets the same day, it seemed a change of oil and giving the carburettor a clean was all that was needed. Yes pictures can tell a story.
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Designed by local architect Frank Swainston and built by Tarmac Construction around 1965.
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