Monthly Archives: December 2014

Arundel Road, Billingham – June 1953

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t13985This photograph shows me at the age of 2 1/2 in Arundel Road, June 1953. My parents became the first tenants of No .15 that same month. The council estate was built from Melrose Road back towards Wolviston Road. My parents always said when they moved in it was open fields and you could clearly see the Swan Hotel on Wolviston Road. The photograph is looking down Arundel Road towards Billingham Town Centre.

People who know the road will see that the bungalows on the other side are not even built yet. Also there is no sign of St Aidan’s church which was built a few years later. Arundel Road like its neighbours Skipton, Corfe, Ludlow and Peveril were all named after castles.

Photograph and details courtesy of Martin Birtle.

Portrack Methodist Sunday School Outing, 1957

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t13943This was a summertime outing organised by the Portrack Methodist Chapel taken around 1957. The Chapel stood on the corner of Portrack Lane and Barrett Street, Stockton. It was not a rich organisation and we could not go very far. I believe this photograph was taken at West Hartlepool, about a half hour on a Corporation Bus.

Some of the people can be recognised… The very tall man and his wife at the back was Mr Helplestone, who lived in Hill Street East. The boy standing below him was David Dunn. The middle aged lady third from the left was the mainstay of the church, unfortunately I don’t remember her name. The girl in the row below the lady is Valerie Smith. Her sister Linda, with spectacles, is seated on the other side of the young boy. Peter McGlade is the little boy on the extreme left of the bottom row.

Many of these people and children disappeared from Portrack to housing estates in the west of Stockton, when the streets on the north side of Portrack Lane were demolished. A few hung on and moved to the council estate on the old chicken farm.

Photograph and details courtesy of Fred Starr.

Fireman Fox c1920s/30s

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t13963I don’t know where the photograph was taken, but I think it was taken around the 1920s/30s. The gentleman stood on the engines footsteps is Fireman Fox, my Great granddad. I don’t know who the other two gentlemen are however I would assume the man on the footplate is the driver and the man in front of the loco is the shunter.

Photograph and details courtesy of David Rees.

Inscribed stone tablet, Durham Road

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t13961This inscribed stone plaque is set between the bedroom windows of numbers 100 and 102 Durham Road which stands approximately opposite Stavordale Road, Stockton.

Erected by The British Steel Smelters Mill Iron & Tinplate Workers Association. This tablet unveiled 2nd June 1906 by John Hodge Esq. MP t13962Secretary.

Details courtesy of John Lenham.

Billingham Town Centre c1960s

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t13941This postcard shows Billingham Town Centre sometime in the 1960s, there is the number BLM67 which could be the actual year… the roof of the Forum is just visible and this opened in about 1967.

Interestingly the first three shops to the left of the image are Woolworths, Freeman Hardy and Willis and Dewhursts all of which were part of the first phase of the town centre in the early 1950s, all of these chains have since disappeared from the high street, other shops that were originally there have also gone forever, the likes of Timothy White’s, Mac Fisheries, Home And Colonial, Meadow Dairies, Radio Rentals and Chain Libraries as well as many independent shops whose names I can’t remember.

Image and details courtesy of Bruce Coleman.

Mary Peacock Manager of the Regal Fish and Chip Shop

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t13942It is possible that Frank P Mee and others, who were regulars at Modern and Avenue Cinemas in Norton, will recognise this lady, Mrs Mary Peacock, who managed the Regal Fish and Chip shop across the road from the Modern. Mrs Peacock was my aunt and she lived in over the shop, as it were. Her husband, Charlie Peacock, was a lab technician at the ICI. In some ways a prestige job, in those days when, for most men, work involved hard manual labour.

The sitting room was behind the fish shop. Behind that was the kitchen. To get to the staircase for the bedrooms one had to go into the shop. So the house must have been converted at some stage.

The fish preparation and production of the chips was done in a small shed at the end of the yard. The actual owner of the shop was Mary Davidson who lived in the big house on the corner of Newlands Avenue and Norton Road, and was Mary Peacock’s aunt.

Photograph and details courtesy of Fred Starr.

Private Benjamin Brown, DLI

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t13937This is a photograph of my father Benjamin Brown who enlisted in the DLI at the start of WW1 by claiming he was older than the required 18 years for the Army, I am sure many other men did the same – switch their ages to go off to war in what they thought would be a great adventure. Once they had sampled the trench warfare at battles such as Mons, Ypres, Passchendaele, and many others they would have realised war was not an adventure but a terrible experience for all involved.

My father would not talk about the war, like so many others but sometimes when he had had a few pints we learned snippets of some of his experiences which were very interesting, sometimes funny and sometimes tragic, as was the story about the time when they were watching this German as they thought in a forward position spying on them, they all lined him up and shot him. When they advanced later that day they looked for the Germans body only to find it was a British Officer who obviously had been spying on the German lines. The only consolation for Dad and his mates was that six or seven of the DLI had shot at about the same time so they did know who had fired the fatal shot. The DLI were famous as the fastest marching Regiment in the British Army, many of the Regiment were from Stockton and District.

Photograph and details courtesy of Ben Brown.