A view of the “Victoria Buildings” – it is a crying shame such a beautiful building should be knocked down. The architect has ranged far and wide for his ideas, some of the windows have Greek style arch decorations above them others have Roman style, the facade is topped off with Dutch style gables, these appear to be purely decorative because there doesn’t seem to be any structure behind them, if this is so then presumably the windows in the gables are false as well.
The two octagonal corner towers flare out from the building in a similar fashion to the castles seen in Hungary and Bavaria, the two domes don’t seem to be the normal copper clad variety as they seem to have a slight sheen as if painted instead of the matt look of the copper types. The shop fronts are terrifically high by modern standards, they are at least twice the height of the people in front of them, this would make them at least 12 feet high and possibly higher, I remember the frontages being made with highly polished dark wooden frames and glass which on the odd occasion would be curved.
Other things I have noticed are, directly behind the main building is a hip roof with a chimney stack, to my eye this doesn’t seem to be part of the main building but another building behind it, the chimney stack doesn’t have the black decorative band around it that the main building has and also the chimney pots vary in size unlike the main building.
Slightly to the left of the building is a bay windowed building with words across it just below the eaves, are there any sharp sighted visitors that can make out what the words are?.
The house behind the church has a strange looking object that appears to be perched on the top of the chimney, I have no idea as to what it could be, if it had been 50 years later I would have thought it to be a telegraph pole. Slightly to the left and in the distance is a curved roof box van of the type often seen being towed by steam rollers, these vans carried the tools and equipment used by road repair gangs, they were still in use when I was a child in the 1950s, this one appears to be horse drawn.
Some of the lamp post have cast iron bollards around them, were they hitching posts for the many horses to be seen in that era?, I have seen similar hitching posts in Europe and America where they often have a cast iron horses head perched on top of the post.
In the foreground is a young boy with another child on his back, I remember carrying my many brothers and sisters around in that fashion.
Just in front of the canopy of the leftmost shop is a black sign with two white ovals on it, surely it’s not ‘Specsavers’ circa 1895?
Photograph and details courtesy of Bruce Coleman.
This is an interesting advert from a 1959 Railways Illustrated magazine, showing how Stockton on Tees, was part of the modernisation plan for British Railways. the Metro Vick, CO-Bo’s, with their unusual wheel arrangement, built in the Bowesfield area, some former railway colleagues related to me that they could remember them brand new waiting for dispatch in the siding at Bowesfield Junction, though the design proved to be a poor one and did not last in service due to poor reliability.
