A photograph of the High Street Stockton. Shown is the The Royal Oak Hotel and Victoria Buildings.
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
A photograph of the High Street Stockton. Shown is the The Royal Oak Hotel and Victoria Buildings.
In early maps of central Stockton this public-house appears to be a pair of houses, of which the r/h side house was first converted to a licensed-premises. It seems that the property was orig. Georgian, and has been ‘gentrified’ by the later Victorians, when the ‘corbelled’ double-pubfront has been extended outward, resulting in two bay windows being added at 1st flr. level.
However, the distance between the head of the 2nd flr windows and the eaves (gutter-line) is strangely high, implying that the roof-space areas may have been used for storage or warehousing, like many of the properties nearer the river were.. Only problem is, that behind these properties the only access was from the church-yard.
Stockton High Street is the widest in England & I think this is the place where they officially measure it.