I had a walk down Sun Street and was very disappointed with myself for not taking this walk ten years ago or possibly even less when the old pottery factory still stood and the chapel would have been in a much better condition that it is now.
The name Stafford Place still survives on a sign on the back wall of the chapel as does ‘Gearboxes’ on the roof which until the new houses went up alongside the pub was easily seen from Thornaby Road. Mention of which I noticed a ‘Stafford Terrace’ nameplate on the last house in Thornaby Road and it would appear that the terrace is now part of Thornaby Road and seems to have disappeared as an address in it’s own right . Without doubt, a sign of the times! Taken Sunday 5 July 2015.
Photograph and details courtesy of David Thompson.
Picture Stockton Archive 
I always associate Sun Street, Thornaby, with the Thornaby on Tees Council yard situated there. It was famous in a macabre way because you could take dogs and cats there “to be destroyed by having them gassed for 5/- ? “. As a child I once viewed from the outside the small building they used for this activity.
In September 1939, when WW2 war was declared the Government considered the mass euthanasia of all ‘non-essential animals’ essential to the war effort a necessity. The Home Office issued a pamphlet which stated that pets would not be allowed in public air-raid shelters, and a BBC broadcast confirmed it was official policy that pets would not be given shelter. The result was panic, pet-owners became terrified that Nazi air warfare would along with the bombing of British cities include poison-gas attacks, which might cause their pets to run out into streets contaminated by mustard gas, or whenever the air raid sirens sounded they could become uncontrollable at the sound of the explosions, because of this Council yards were besieged by people bringing their animals in for destruction,’ An even larger number simply cast their pets out to roam the blacked-out streets. But the worst was yet to come. When major Nazi bombing began in the autumn of 1940, there was a much greater rush to destroy, or to abandon pets by the hundreds of thousands. There were so many abandoned animals that mass culling was the only option, for this reason Council yards were fitted with gas chambers to kill the animals brought there for modest cost, and the yard in Sun Street served the Thornaby area.
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I posted a series of pictures “Thornaby in the 80s” which included a couple of the chapel and Stafford Place.
Is David Thompson “the” David Thompson of Britannia Street?
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Anthony
Here’s your photos of Stafford Place ;
https://picturestocktonarchive.wordpress.com/2015/02/04/stafford-place-thornaby-c1980s/
Although now an adopted son of Stockton I am not originally of the Parish although my father , also David Thompson , was and who also spoke with great affection of both Bickersteth Street and Richard Hind Boys School .
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Did I go to school with this David Thompson in the late 1940s?, the National School, George Street, Thornaby, or is he Pat Thompson’s brother whose father owned the famous fishing tackle shop situated opposite this school. Mr Thompson senior was listed in the “Top Ten All Time British Anglers Placings”, and for those who passed his shop windows then, I will remind them that they contained jars of minnows for sale to use as bait, for some reason I always stopped to look at the minnows, they fascinated me, and got me day-dreaming about buying some to go fishing with. Bob Wilson.
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The chapel gets a mention in a previous Picture Stockton thread; https://picturestocktonarchive.wordpress.com/2015/03/19/albert-cockerils-garage-thornaby/#comments and was obviously held in much affection as was indeed it seems , the garage owner Albert Cockril. On one of the foundation stones the name of Charles Arthur Head, Mayor, May 25 1911 can still be made out but I wonder whose name was on the other, now illegible stone?
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I tracked down the other name, its Walker who was one time owner of the nearby pottery.
http://www.hidden-teesside.co.uk/2019/01/20/stafford-place-methodist-chapel-sun-street-thornaby/
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