Thought I’d send a recent picture of the old doctor’s surgery on Bridge Road, before it’s gone! It’s always surprised me how this building has survived while those around it have come and gone. It even survived having the rest of the adjoining terrace demolished.
https://picturestocktonarchive.com/2002/07/17/bridge-road-stockton-c1865/
https://picturestocktonarchive.com/2002/11/23/bridge-road-stockton-c1920s/
https://picturestocktonarchive.com/2004/05/01/streets-of-stockton-34/
https://picturestocktonarchive.com/2006/10/09/private-doctors-surgery/
https://picturestocktonarchive.com/2002/03/07/stockton-high-street-from-yarm-road-c1984/
Sadly, its time is up, and being considered of little importance, this and the surrounding buildings are now fenced off awaiting demolition.
Shame the developers couldn’t be stretched to a bit of “facadism” (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-50396337)
Also going is… the SoTBC training centre next door (previously the site of Thirlwell photographers, Martins garage, Archon 2000)… https://picturestocktonarchive.com/2013/12/17/martins-showroom-bridge-road-c1985/
No.27 (formerly Bridge Street Motors, Chaplin’s bar, L’Allegria restaurant.) https://picturestocktonarchive.com/2002/07/17/bridge-road-stockton-c1865/
No.33 (Riverside House) won’t be missed 😊
Photograph and details courtesy of Jonathan May.
Our family Dr was Hannigan & then a young Dr Aubrey Collin joined the practice.
Hands on Doctors.
I well remember the Bridge Road operation of Dr’s Hannigan and surgeon Willens (spelling)
I last met the then retired Dr H at a residential hotel in, I think, the Crathorne area in the 60’s or 70’s
Denis Perry Ct USA.
That takes me back more than 70 years! Dr Hannigan, the kind of family doctor you can only dream about in the present day. A wonderful caring man.
Isn’t it listed?
Don’t think it’s listed, it was in a conservation area, but only because it added to the aesthetics of the view along Bridge Road, the Lidl planning application’s heritage statement (by Durham Uni) stated there was no intrinsic value in the building. As the surrounding buildings are free to be demolished, I guess there then wasn’t going to be the same view to enhance.
I worked there for nine happy years at Drs Colling, Davies & Redman. I read somewhere that John Walker had links to that house, maybe lived there at one time, and I am surprised it isn’t a listed building. There had been a doctor’s surgery there for at least 200 years so I believe. When I worked there we had oil paintings displayed of all the earlier doctors.
As a patient of Doctor Davies and Doctor Colling I remember those paintings well, there was a painting of Doctor Trotter outside Doctor Collings room hanging on the wall for many years. In 1968 Dr John Rowlands wrote a short history of the practice, “Annals of a Private Practice” he gave me his permission to redesign the book he compiled and add new photographs. I completed this last December and gave Stockton Reference Library copies of the book I had redesigned and printed for their historical reference records and library. I am still working on my original project I started sbout the Bridge Road Practice then and now. Both Dr Colling and Dr Rowlands gave me their permission to add to the history of the practice the new Doctors Practice who moved into 25 Bridge Road to carry the Practice forward as an N.H.S. Practice of Dr Ramaswamy which was renamed not long after the “Riverside Practice” to make it the longest serving Doctors Practice in Stockton. Dr Rowlands gave me all his historical research documents and letters to ensure they would stay in the safe hands of the continuing practice.
I’d love to get one last look inside before it’s knocked down, but think it’ll be there one day and gone the next so probably no chance of that happening…