Two photos taken in the same exact spot at Eaglescliffe, around 60 years apart.

The first photo was taken just after the Second World War and shows RAF planes being dumped into a massive pit – a really emotive bit of history.

This photo was taken by me in 2025, standing in the same place.

Photographs and details courtesy of James Hull.

Anyone remember these from the sixties? I found a signed copy of a book I won in April 1963 at Fairfield Junior Mixed School, Stockton. ‘What shall we draw’ by Adrian Hill.

Photograph and details courtesy of John Alderdice.

Following the recent heavy rain we had I ventured out to take some photographs of the various swollen becks and streams in the area;

1 – Flooded tree in Grangefield Park.

2 – Level of Lustrum Beck at the Ox Bridge on Oxbridge Lane.

3 – Greens Beck in flood off Kilburn Road, Hartburn. This beck flows under Hartburn Avenue and confluences with Lustrum Beck just upstream from Ox Bridge.

Photographs and details courtesy of Michael Thompson.

My Dad George Mills was instrumental in getting the scheme going in 1961, 62(?). Al Hart and Ray Teigh, already mentioned are names I remember from then, and Keith Robertson was also involved. Early courses were run from Stubb House, Ireshopeburn, near Winston, and I came up a couple of times to visit. As a 12 year old speccy grammar school swot (Grangefield) I was very impressed by the tough lads on the courses, with their exotic (to me!) hair styles – quiffs and DA’s, and all the stuff they were doing which was very much based on Dad’s long connection with Synphonia Scouts. The photo is a presentation piece made by Apprentices, given to Dad when we moved away from Billingham, down to ICI Severnside, in 1965. Dad died at the end of last year,  would have been 100 next week!

Photograph and details courtesy of Rob Mills.

These are hallmarked silver masonic medals, they were in a display case that was presented by the members of the North Yorkshire and South Durham Cycling Club meet at Richmond in 1908 to the meet’s president Mr C. McAdams, I don’t know if these were his medals as there was/is a number of cycling club badges from that era also inside the case.

Photographs and details courtesy of MF Wilson.

I recently found this paperweight in a junk shop. Notice it refers to the area as north Stockton.

Photograph and details courtesy of Terry Westwood.

Reading about Mayor Temple made me dig deep in my memory bank. I’d left Tilery Boys School Christmas 1962… it was August 1963 when a young lad Freddy Davis ran out of the field where I lived in Swainby Road, crying saying a child had fallen into the water at the disused clay pit and couldn’t be seen. I grabbed my swimming trunks, ran to the clay pit and started looking for the child, my mates Freddy Newby, George Thomas, George Thomas, Franky Large and Jimmy Manion arrived soon afterwards. We searched until two Police Officers arrived with a very long rope. We lads took turns swimming under the brown water feeling the muddy bottom in the hope of finding the child, the two Police Officers stood on either side of the banks as one lad set off from one side to meet the lad from other side in the middle. It was awful. We searched for ages before the Frogmen arrived. When I climbed out of the water, I looked up and saw how all the people from the nearby streets, Swainby, Danby, Tilery and Portrack had gathered above us, it really was the saddest of times as the child was eventually found, but it was too late. Some years later the clay pit was filled in, looking back it was a miracle no other child drowned in the pit.

Image and details courtesy of Derek Casey.

This is mother’s payslip, from 1974, when she worked as a hospital cleaner in the old people’s home on Portrack Lane. Opposite the Anglican Church.

Her basic pay was £27.05 per week, or just over £1400 a year. Down in London, as a junior research scientist aged 32, I was on about £3500 a year, which wasn’t brilliant given the cost of London rents. What surprised me was the high level of income tax at £7.75, which was about 27.7% of her salary. In contrast, National Insurance, at 79 pence, and total pension contributions at £2.04 were piffling.

On the basis of a 42 hour week she was getting just over 65 pence an hour.  The minimum wage today is about £10.60 an hour. She was offered the job of a supervisor at a higher pay level, but decided to stay with her mates.

Images and details courtesy of Dr Fred Starr.

A photograph taken a year ago this month of a lovely Norton Green and duck pond.

Photograph and details courtesy of Alex Moody.

Mandall & Co., Ltd were manufacturing chemists who had a business at the Tower Works, Tower Street, Stockton-On-Tees. Their most popular product was a cough medicine called Licoricine. This is an advert from December 1916.

Image courtesy of Martin Dunnill.

The Salvation Army band despite the freezing weather were out in the High Street on Saturday collecting for their Christmas Appeal 2021.

Photograph and details courtesy of David Thompson.

Fire Drills at Corporation Quay, Stockton c1960s.

I took these in Stockton in about 1976, the hardware shop was run by J.T. Hodgson who is in the main photo. He was an amateur artist who painted detailed work with Valspar paint a very unusual medium! Unfortunately I recorded no other information and I’d be interested to know more. The shop was ready to be demolished as part of a redevelopment.

Photographs and details courtesy of Derek Smith.

I made my first post-restoration visit to The Globe this evening for “An Evening with photographer Ian Wright” the well known Northern Echo and Evening Dispatch photographer whose photos of up and coming popular beat combos in the early 1960’s put the then Globe Theatre on the musical map!
Hosted by, I think, Pam Royle and also featuring Ray Laidlaw the Lindisfarne drummer, and last group to play the Globe before it became a cinema and then bingo hall. The evening was an excellent trip back in time with of course some brilliant black and white photographs from the man himself .
Having been on several ‘hard hat tours’ of the Globe during its extended restoration, nearly typed expensive there, I was impressed by what I saw from the circle seats and the stunning art-deco paint schemes and attention to detail in the finish of the building and this evening was a free event too so too good to miss ! With thanks to Sophie Owens of SBC for details of the gig which did appear to be well supported especially by people who could say “I was there!”.

Photographs and details courtesy of David Thompson.