This photograph shows loco No 6 coming down Calverts Lane (the River Tees to the left). Despite their run down appearance the warehouses on the right were still in use, I believe one was used to store bananas c1965/66
Photograph and details courtesy of Martin Birtle and John Hardy.
Picture Stockton Archive 
“Ah yes, the memories come flooding back!” My wife used to work in that neck of the woods down by Boathouse Lane. During the early part of our courtship (circa 1967-68) she used to work in Geest’s banana warehouse, which doubtless is the same place others have described. On the occasions I and my step-father had cause to buy timber at John B. Smith’s timber merchants at St Johns Crossing, I would quietly hope that I might catch a glimpse of my sweetheart as she made her way to work. Yes, romance was alive and well in the sixties!
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The banana warehouse was the first warehouse round the corner from Castle Gate I thought it was Geests. My dad had a milk business and he delivered to the warehouse he always got a bunch of bananas I don’t know whether that was in payment for the milk but one day he put them on the kitchen table and when we picked them up there was a massive spider sat amongst them it was about six inches across it was years before I ate another banana.
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It could have been a close relation of the one spotted by my cousin John Hardy !!!!
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The buildings on the left are those that make up what is now Castle Gate Quay, home to many restaurants and the Teesside Princess. So this part of the quayside is more or less where Quayside Road is today. With the photo taken looking South from almost under where the Millennium Bridge is today. Just past the truck is the opening to Castle Gate.
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Surely the loco is coming down the Quayside road with Calverts Lane up to Thistle Green a bit behind the photographer. Great series of photos, more to come hopefully.
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As a boy, I lived in the Portrack area of Stockton and we were led to believe that the ‘cat smell’ was the result of the fumes released into the atmosphere by Billingham ICI. It was certainly worse in the warm weather and did smell as if a tom cat had been marking out his territory.
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Yes, was it Fyffe’s warehouse and opposite in later years there was a Chandler’s based on the river side.
And lets be fair every river was an open sewer not that many years ago, Seaton Snooks shore line used to be littered.
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Yes brilliant photo. I also, remember walking along there in the early 50’s and seeing the bananas being loaded from the wagons into the warehouse, never managed to ‘acquire’ a sample though. Great days.
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Yes, one of those buildings on the right was a banana warehouse. And one of the tall buildings in the distance on the left was a rabbit skin warehouse. The bottom of Finkle Street is perhaps 50 to 75 yards behind the camera.
I remember talking to an old man who said that a vee shaped indentation in the river bank on the Stockton side and roughly at about the position of the camera was caused by a vessel which was launched from the opposite side of the river. The launchers lost control of it and it collided with the Stockton side.
I also remember the unpleasant ‘cat smell’. On cold mornings one could see fumes rising from the surface of the river and I always thought those fumes were the cause the smell. The river was an open sewer. I worked in Stockton from 1957 to 1959.
I also remember seeing fumes rising from the surface of filthy river. And that horrible ‘cat smell’ which, I am certain, came from the river.
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Good grief, I remember it like this. You can go down there today and wonder where it all was, photo’s like this are brilliant!
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My cousin John Hardy who took this photograph recalls that one day the driver of the flat bed truck parked outside the banana warehouse beckoned him over. There nestling amongst the bunches of bananas was a very large tarantula. No doubt surprised to find itself in Stockton on Tees.
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