An unus
ual view of the Esso Garage on Billingham Road, Norton.
Photograph courtesy of Tom Collins.
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
An unusual view of the Esso Garage on Billingham Road, Norton.
Photograph courtesy of Tom Collins.
Picture Stockton Archive 
Who were the tin shield gang Frank?.. My older brother,John Unthank,lived at no.1 Beaconsfield, or “Beaky” as it was known to locals, from the late thirties until about 1950. My mother helped out in her fathers shop at no.1. I think people would know him as John Carrol. Perhaps John and his friends were the tin shield gang. He’s in his eighties now
LikeLike
David, a long time ago we all went to school at Norton Board, played together football cricket what ever was in season, some came from Pine Street area or Station Road, we were a mix though every so often tempers would rise and end in a battle, they would be encumbered with bin lids we would wait for the charge then split run round them and let go with our catapults to their rear end and keep on running, bin lids were difficult to manage, in the end people got upset when they found the bin lids missing so it stopped.
I did know of the Unthanks and also shopped at Carrol’s on occasion, my Parents knew the Carrols, there was also another shop half way up Beaconsfield Street though the bottom shop was the bigger one.
Names I remember are Winchester, Fletcher, Orpen, Kirk, Bell, Wilberforce, there was much movement in those days which is how Dad made his living pre-war moving them with his truck, often moonlight flits.
We were really all good friends playing down the Billingham Beck swimming in the horse shoe bend birthday parties and all the usual meeting of the kids back then, free and easy times even when the war came.
LikeLike
I worked for a while in the garage in the mid 60s when it belonged to Billy Wade who lived opposite where he also had his other garage. One regular was Les Barker,who was quite a character. They were the days when you checked the customers oil and water, plus serving the petrol too, another job that went with changing times.
LikeLike
Is that Beaconsfield Road terraced houses rising?
LikeLike
It is indeed Beaconsfield Street as we knew it Sarah, us Green Lads including your Dad had many a battle with the Tin Shield Gang from down there, they had dustbin lids we had catapults no contest as bin lids were awkward to handle.
Billy wade before the war lived in one of the Cottages on the Green same side as the ICI Norton Hall and I believe lived there until well after the war. He and his wife ran the garage on the Billingham Road at the bottom of Tanners Bank and also both ran a Taxi business, Billy and his wife were good friends of my Mother and Father.
My late wife and I going on holiday rang for a Taxi to Darlington Station and Billy turned up, he must have been in his 80’s, we had a good chat on the way about the old days.
I used Guests garage on Durham road and then Dennis at the bottom of Beaconsfield Street, Dennis being a drinking Pal at one time.
It was all part of Historic Norton as an entity now sadly just a suburb of Stockton.
LikeLike
Dennis Guest mother and father had the Pine Street fish and chip shop. Before that they lived in Cameron Street. Dennis’s sister Dorothy and her husband opened the small hotel just before the Golf Club at Eaglescliffe. Also Frank I do remember Billy Wade having his taxi always parked outside his cottage next to Norton Hall on the Green.
LikeLike
Thanks. I don’t remember the Esso garage being there even though I must have passed it – or indeed my father may have used it – as his parents lived in Cottersloe Road, off Beaky at the top. Would this photo have been taken pre-1970? I didn’t move here from Carlisle until Sept 1969.
LikeLike
I vaguely remember the garage, what did it become after that? Was it ever an undertakers premises
LikeLike
I believe they did have an undertakers there for a while – the Wades ran a taxi company as well as the garage and Hilda, wife of Bill Jr, told me she helped at the undertakers as well as driving taxis.
LikeLike
Dennis Guest owned this. Before that his father had the one at Newtown that Dennis ran. He lived on the Sadberge back lane in the big house opposite the Yarm back lane at that junction.
LikeLike