Monthly Archives: January 2016

Queen Victoria High School for Girls on Yarm Road c1906

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t14700Victorian architecture is not generally considered to be attractive but I find this to be quite pleasing on the eye, it is slightly unusual in as much as having the usual Victorian red brick construction at the lower levels, but the upper levels are rendered, this rendering was very much in fashion during the 1930s, everybody will have seen bow fronted houses with rendered upper floors, they usually have half porches and curved top front doors, sometimes with stained glass, there are some in the Oxbridge/Hartburn areas, also the chimneys are huge, I presume to clear the smoke from the rooftops, these large chimneys hark back to a much earlier time, Tudor and Elizabethan chimneys were often very large and ornate but by Georgian times the chimneys were very much smaller, look at them in Yarm, altogether an interesting building. The postcard is dated 1906.

Image and details courtesy of Bruce Coleman.

10 Buxton Street

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t14688This photograph is possibly one of very few taken in Buxton Street. The boy in the image is Harry Robson one of my younger brothers riding his beloved 3 wheeler bike. Harry is approaching his 70th birthday so that gives some idea as to the age of the photograph. We were born in 10 Buxton Street and lived there until the mid 1950’s. The wall showing in the image was the one blocking the street from the railway which was always very busy in those days.

Photograph and details courtesy of John Robson.

Thornaby Ironworks c1890s

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t14680The view appears to have been from somewhere on the roof of the Cleveland Floor Mill which was erected in the 1880’s. The blocks of houses must have been those between Trafalgar Street and Railway Street on Godfrey’s 1897 ed. OS map of Stockton & Thornaby. In the distance and across the river would appear to be Stockton’s Corporation Quay area, while at about 11 O’clock across the river would be the Malleable Iron Works. The tall chimneys belong to puddling & early blast furnaces;  the smoke just went up the stack untreated. It is no wonder that a major cause of death in the area was chest diseases and infections.

Photograph and details courtesy of Derek Wade