The Black Path leading onto Tilery from Portrack Lane during snowfall, Friday 29th December 2017.
Photograph and details courtesy of Paul Simpson.
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
The Black Path leading onto Tilery from Portrack Lane during snowfall, Friday 29th December 2017.
Photograph and details courtesy of Paul Simpson.
Picture Stockton Archive 
I remember as a kid scratting around this land for coal amongst the slag, Tilery school huts for boys & girls would be at edge, just remember the allotments & at the end of the blackpath the railway crossing, seems so long ago now.
All the best.
Derek
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I would guess that the black path was constructed in the middle 1800s to serve Portrack Ironworks, which would be to the right of the picture. In my day the surface was made up of what was probably black slag from the furnaces, and not really used by normal road traffic. Not even nice to cycle on.
But the Ironworks, which seems to have been built around a blast furnace had long disappeared and the only vestige was the foundry on Portrack Lane, opposite the Cricketers Pub.
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That would be Browns Iron Foundry, my uncle, Stan Green, worked most of his working life in there. They had belt driven machinery.
I also remember going to see my grandad, John George Green, at Gladstones on a Saturday morning when it was part of the working week.
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Brilliant photograph! I don’t get back much these days and despite the photograph bearing no resemblance to the Black path I walked in the the 1960s – it still invokes happy memories – thank you. I look forward to walking it again one day.
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A far cry from the days of an engineering company on one side and allotments on the other, with a gas holder at the portrack end and one of Tilery Road schools joinery rooms at the other.
An un-made pot holed surface and a short cut to Stockton baths.
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The Black Path so well described here is the one I remember from my childhood days living in the area..
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