I drove along the Riverside Road on Friday evening and was quite surprised to see a car stuck on a mud-bank after going through the temporary fencing surrounding the proposed Lidl supermarket. What I didn’t notice until I was driving back along the riverside in the opposite direction was that the demolition work had started on the old ADS Martins car showroom and worse, the old doctors surgery had gone completely!
I went down on Sunday while Storm Ciara was at a low ebb and took a few photos, the blown down fencing being a distinct advantage allowing for easy photography although blocking the footpaths. Clearly the ’24 Hour CCTV In Operation’ operator does not work on weekends!
Photographs and details courtesy of David Thompson
Picture Stockton Archive 
Glad that you managed to take some photo’s of it just before lockdown. Crazy world now or what?
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I remember going to Dr Bird s doctors surgery in the 60s with my aunty and uncle
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Teesside Archaeology Unit is meant to be monitoring this site when they start digging trenches, as the area overlaps where the alleged Stockton “Castle” used to stand.
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More changes. Usually for the worse. Time will tell. I remember when the black house on the end used to be the Chinese laundry. So long ago.
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It’s the people that make Stockton what it is, not the buildings
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My Mam and Dad had a house about 50 yds behind the green skip in one of the pictures I was born in Robsons Maternity Home in 1957. My youngest brother Cliff (RIP) was born in the house No 4 Wharf Street in 1962
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Thank you David for recording this demolition. Like I have grown old and grey, familiar buildings in Stockton will be demolished to make way for the new. To say I cycled along Bridge Road every day as a teenager going to work at Head Wrightsons is nothing more than an interesting comment to my peers. I brought my wife (a Londoner) to Stockton last November for a week. She was hugely impressed with what she saw especially after dark when some buildings were floodlit. I was too, but I couldn’t help seeing the Stockton I knew in 1947 when I settled here from Scotland. When I removed my jaundiced glasses and replaced them with clear ones I saw today’s Stockton. And, do you know what? It’s not a bad old place really. It says something that my wife asked, “Can we go to Stockton again?” And I said, “Oh yes please.”
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