This photograph shows the demolition of the quayside, Stockton c1950.
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
This photograph shows the demolition of the quayside, Stockton c1950.
The upper right portion of the picture show the mini-mountains of blast furnace slag from the time that Thornaby was the blast furnace centre on Teesside. These were all gradually removed over the next ten years and used for road making material
Worth noticing the steam crane on the nearer of the Malleable’s two quays. This was probably loading steel into the ship that was berthed alongside or grabbing up iron ore from it.
As far as I know the Malleable was operating open hearth furnaces, for steel making, until the early fifties. These were shut down with the site being turned over to the manufacture of steel pipelines from the middle fifties onwards.
Wasn’t the Remploy part of the 1945 social revolution of the post war Attlee Government?
The Rembrant Fashions building (the far one) I believe the upper floors were originally the ‘pattern-makers lofts’ for the adjacent shipyard (was it the North Shore yard?), The vast open expanses of floor were used to scribe-out the hull detailing and other large scale sections in timber from the Engineers drawings, prior to steel-fabrication in the workshops and forge below.
Jimmy Kelley’s ferry was between the 2 buildings of Remploy and Rembrandt. When getting off the ferry on the Stockton side you walked between these 2 buildings to get to the road..
This picture is important since it shows what may be the vestige of the North Shore Branch coal staithes, dating from the 1830s. These are just visible, and are about half way between the edge of the Remploy Building and the ship which is next to the nearest of the two quays which served the Malleable. As far as I can make out, the steam crane appears to be on the far off quay.
These coal staithes are also shown in one of the photographs in “Britain From the Air”, which was taken around 1934, which ties in with larger scale Ordnance Survey maps. The staithes were of a triangular form, and in 1934 they looked in reasonable shape, and would have survived until the early 1950s, when the website picture was taken. The object in the picture cannot be a normal quay because it stands well into the river.
There are reasons for thinking that after the Malleable was built in the 1860s, the line down to staithes was changed, with an embankment being built which ran parallel to the river. The line down to the staithes must have been covered over as the top of the embankment was about 30-40 feet above the river. There would have been no way that the tiny chauldron type trucks of the 1830s would have been used on a very high coal staithes
The short lived extension yard for the new quayside development of the early 1950’s. Its completion delayed by a shortage of materials and skilled tracklayers. Part of an expensive council/government scheme to modernise Stockton as a port and attract new business, but it commercially it largely failed. The extension yard soon fell into disuse. Studied this scheme some years back, just need to write it up properly on Picture Stockton perhaps.
Those buildings are still there I think. They’re near Joe Rigatonis. The railway lines went over the main road, Bridge Rd.
The picture shows the Remploy (old Ropner) buildings and Hunters Lane they were close to where the Princess Diana bridge is today.
On the top left corner of the main building,am I right in what I see… the name,REMPLOY? in faded white paint? Also there seems to be rail tracks in the mid-foreground,I guess these were part of a far larger complex. I find all these photos so interesting,tis a shame it has all gone now. Keep up the good work!
Yes Remploy were there and next to them was the Rembrant Factory.
I’m afraid Rembrant means nothing to me Bob, I’m from Gloucester but my Dad was
born in Thornaby in 1922, long gone now, sadly… I’m the last of the line. Thanks for the info though!