Bringing St. Hilda's back to life - more from Middlesbrough

I was born and brought up in Teesside. Redcar is my hometown and I went to secondary school in Middlesbrough. I spent many Saturday afternoons in the town centre, browsing the boxes in Alan Fearnley's record shop on Linthorpe Road, Hamilton's on Newport Road and Dean Wycherley's in the Cleveland Centre. Much time was also spent in the Wimpy Bar with my mates during my early teens before we graduated to drinking in the town centre pubs and then Mandy's and one or two other town centre clubs. It is many years since I lived in the north-east, 31 to be exact and every single one of these places is now gone. 

The River Tees - clean at last!

Despite spending lots of time wandering around the town, there was one place that we never went to - St. Hilda's. Known as "over the border" due to its being on the opposite side of the railway line from the rest of the town. It was a tough area, home to many people who worked in the ship building and steel industries or in jobs connected to the port and the river generally. There were a number of pubs and at least one club - The Bongo - that had what my friend describes as a "fearsome reputation" and people generally gave the area a wide berth. That friend and I both worked for the Council's library service and she reminded me recently that when the small local library housed in the original town hall (once painted by none other than L.S. Lowry) needed relief staffing, that male staff were usually sent because we "didn't send young girls to work there". 

The Transporter Bridge seen from the former salt works wall.

Middlesbrough has changed tremendously over the last few decades and like many northern towns has struggled to recover from the economic downturns of the 80's, 90's and recent years. It has also not been able to secure the kind of investment and regeneration that some of the larger northern cities have benefitted from. The haunts of my teen years and early twenties have disappeared but so has almost the whole of St. Hilda's - demolished in stages over a long period, in some cases to provide better housing (which was then in turn demolished) or to make way for developments that sometimes never happened. On a recent visit to Middlesbrough I decided to take  a stroll through this part of the town to see the changes and was pleasantly surprised at what I found - although there is still much to do to bring this area back to life.

In his great little book St. Hilda's, Araf Chohan sets out the history of the area and also details some of the developments that were proposed and never realised including a fantastic master plan adopted in 2004, partly the work of architect Will Alsop, which would have delivered what Araf describes as "…iconic structures, unique for this part of the world…" and which would have included offices, shops, hotels and restaurants as well as many new homes. Sadly only one set of offices and one residential block were built before the master plan stalled due to failure to secure enough investment.

The old Town Hall

The Captain Cook pub

Former port building

In 2014 another plan appeared, reinventing this part of town as "Middlehaven" and pretty much the whole area was cleared in preparation for this. Some progress has been made with Middlesbrough College and the 6th Form College now having substantial presence as well as the Riverside Stadium, home of Middlesbrough FC. This is all good but perhaps the most encouraging thing is that a number of heritage features have been retained including the once notorious (but apparently listed - hooray!) Captain Cook pub, the former Town Hall (which I am told is to be brought back into some use - although it is currently boarded up), the old Dock Clock Tower and other buildings connected with the river. I love the idea of the pub being brought back into use, which will hopefully include cultural activity as well as drinking whilst the old Town Hall would also be a great venue for music, exhibitions and other activity. Progress has already been made with the "Boho" project which has created space for business start-ups and digital business in a number of both heritage sites and new builds including the beautiful former bank close to the Albert Railway Bridge.

Former bank now used as part of the Boho project

Wall of the former salt works

The Transporter Bridge

As well as having links with steel, docking and shipbuilding, St. Hilda's was also home to a salt works that closed in 1946 and was then  demolished. Part of the wall of the works has been restored in Vulcan Street. The barred windows make for great views through to the iconic and much loved Transporter Bridge - a real symbol of the town. It would be great to see the local authority take advantage of the remaining, rich heritage of St. Hilda's to attract both visitors and serious investors to really bring this part of town back to life. And on the subject of being brought back to life, I was amazed at how clean the once filthy River Tees now is at Middlesbrough. The loss of the heavy industries meant many people lost jobs but it has also meant that industrial waste no longer goes into the river. I was surprised and delighted to see a group of three swans on the river in the red coloured reflection of a visiting ship. Beautiful - and unthinkable not so many years ago. Here's hoping new life can come to the rest of the area too.

You might also like -  Picture Post 28 - Middlesbrough Empire, Palace of Varieties and Memories of Middlesbrough and Days Long Gone - a very personal memoir!

Visiting ship and installation by Anish Kapoor

Swans on the River Tees at Middlesbrough

Redcar - how I remember it.

Laurel and Hardy keep watch from the Regent Cinema

Redcar is my home town. I was born there and spent the first 20 years of my life living, studying and working there. I have happy childhood memories of the town including visits to the paddling pool on the "stray"(the grassy area that runs adjacent to the coast), being taken to the boating lake with its rowing boats and ice cream vendors, and speaking of ice cream, there was also our annual visit to Pacitto's ice cream parlour - to which we will return and to which I have returned.

As I grew a little older I would play tennis with the other kids from my street in Locke Park or Zetland Park, frequent Tony's Records, a small shop adjacent to the bus station, packed with the latest dance music, and secretly continue to buy coconut ice and chocolate cherry cocktail sweets from Maynards sweet shop on the High Street. The High Street was very different then and boasted bakeries, a couple of wet fish shops, old fashioned butchers, a couple of "boutiques" - I can remember Apache opposite the old Swan Hotel but not the name of the other trendy little shop opposite the bus station - and of course Marks and Spencer, Woolworth and several other dependables.

I finally moved away from Teesside in 1984 and until 18 months ago rarely visited. Some family matters have meant that I have spent a lot more time there recently and of course, there have been many changes. Tony's, Maynards, Marks and Spencer, Woolworth, Apache and the other boutique, the Swan Hotel and several other shops have gone as have a number of pubs to be replaced for the most part by charity shops, pound shops, catalogue shops and at least one pawnbrokers. In recent weeks the old general post office has also closed with a counter service being squeezed into WH Smith to compensate.

During my childhood, Redcar was to some extent dependant on what we then called holiday makers and day trippers and what would now be referred to as tourism. Its a seaside town and people used to come from Bradford, Leeds, Sheffield and other northern cities and towns to spend a cheap and cheerful week by the seaside in a caravan. And when they'd had enough of the beach there were a couple of cinemas, a few places offering live music (the famed Redcar Jazz Club in the Coatham Hotel, also long gone- although I was too young ever to have been there), some rough and ready night spots (including the legendary Top Deck which I wasn't young enough to attend!), the aforementioned parks, an indoor swimming baths, a library, a Lifeboat Museum and inevitably a seafront filled with trashy seaside amusements. Much of this is also long gone.

I am certain that I remember things as being better than they really were but Redcar does seem only a shadow of what it once was. Of course, recession always hits the north-east very hard and many of the former major employers including British Steel and ICI no longer provide jobs for the thousands that once worked there. But when times are hard, its wise to make the most of what you have and Redcar still has a cinema (which many towns of this size no longer have), it has a great new leisure centre (albeit replacing a swimming baths closed and demolished in the late 1990's, leaving the site derelict, good parks, its Lifeboat Museum, and for goodness sake - the beach! You can get a good coffee in the library cafe (although I have to admit the new library seems very pedestrian and uninspiring - and it closes on Saturday afternoons) and Pacitto's is still there too.

The Regent Cinema

The new leisure centre

I said we would return to Pacitto's. Our annual visit was one of the highlights of the year. My mam would have a cup of coffee - very sophisticated then -  and I would have an ice cream gloriously named a cherry temptation, clean white vanilla ice cream with maraschino cherries on top and the tiniest bit of syrup. The ice cream was served in a silver coloured goblet style dish and we sat on whicker chairs at glass and chrome tables. Very Italian and a very big treat. I returned in 2013 for the first time in at least 30 years with my own daughter and grandchildren. You can still get a cherry temptation but today its served as a huge glass of synthetic tasting stuff full of gooey stuff. A bit disappointing. It wouldn't be hard to bring the old quality back in Pacitto's and it wouldn't be that hard to emphasise what the town still has to attract people. The Council might want to consider what nearby Saltburn has done to revitalise itself with quality eating places and encouraging small scale cultural activity to bring life back to the town. Anyone from the Council reading this?

Pacitto's - never mind the lemon top, bring back the cherry temptation!

You might also like Saltburn- a Victorian town rejuvenated and Picture Post 41- Middlesbrough's Iconic Transporter Bridge

Picture post 41 - Middlesbrough's Iconic Transporter Bridge

Middlesbrough's transporter bridge is one of just three of its kind remaining in the UK and is both a much loved iconic image of the town and a reminder of the area's industrial past.  

The idea for a bridge was first mooted in 1872 by one Charles Smith, manager of the Hartlepool Iron Works, who suggested a scheme to Middlesbrough Corporation. His idea was rejected and it was not until 1911 that the bridge was built as a result of an Act of Parliament passed in 1907. It cost 68,026 pounds, six shillings and eight pence to build which translates to about 6,300,000 pounds today. Construction was completed by Sir William Arrol and Co. of Glasgow using steel made by local company Dorman Long (forerunners of British Steel) and replaced ferry services across the river. Local labour employed at Dorman Long also produced the steel used to construct the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The foundation stones were laid by Mayor of Middlesbrough Thomas Gibson-Poole and Alderman Joseph McLauchlan, whilst the towns citizens turned out in huge numbers to welcome Prince Albert of Connaught on 17th October 1911 when he came to open the bridge.

The bridge is 851 feet long - the longest remaining transporter bridge in the world. The cantilever construction has three main bridge parts and a gondola which runs on a wheel and rail system 160 feet above the Tees. The transporter has seen some drama over the years. It was hit by a bomb in the Second World War, whilst in 1953, the gondola became stuck half way across and was lashed by gale force winds that brought the river to within inches of the platform. It has also featured in films and TV series including Billy Elliot and the Boys from the Backstuff, whilst scenes of its apparent dismantling and transportation to Arizona during Auf Wiedersehen Pet resulted in calls from worried citizens  to the Council, protesting the seeming loss. The TV company had to include a clarification at the end of the series that the scenes were purely fictional! A real drama occurred in 1974 when actor Terry Scott thought he was crossing a toll bridge and drove off the edge, landing in the safety netting below - and I just about remember this from the local newspaper - the Evening Gazette. 

The bridge straddles the river Tees between the former St. Hilda's area of Middlesbrough and Port Clarence on the Stockton-on-Tees side of the river. St. Hilda's was home to a range of industries connected to the docks as well as to a residential community. Almost all of both are now gone, cleared by the demolition ball over a number of years with only a few exceptions -  two pubs (one derelict), the old dock clock and the former town hall, the latter of which was famously painted by L.S. Lowry in 1959. Referred to as "over the border" due to being on the riverside of the railway line, St. Hilda's had a reputation for being a bit scary during my younger days as well as being a bit risqué due to the (possibly assumed) activities that took place in some of the pubs! 

The area has been renamed "Middlehaven" and is now home to part of the town's university campus, it's college and Middlesbrough FC's stadium. There are also plans to redevelop the area with housing, shops and cafes, re-connecting the town to the river and bringing new life to this historic area. I like the idea of bringing it back to life - but its a shame that so much of what was there before has gone. The transporter bridge was given grade II* listed status in 1983, protecting it from a similar fate, but its real protection comes from its continued use and more importantly from the attachment that locals continue to feel for this example of engineering ingenuity.

The transporter bridge seen through the remaining wall of the former salt works.

You might also like Picture Post 28 - Middlesbrough Empire Palace of Varieties and Memories of Middlesbrough and days long gone

Memories of Middlesbrough and days long gone

I was born and brought up in Redcar, a small seaside town in the north east of England. With ambitions to travel, I spent large amounts of my late teenage years in the nearest "big town" - Middlesbrough where I went to school, socialised and eventually lived and worked for a short time before leaving the area completely. After many years, I have recently been spending a little more time back in the north east including passing through a now very different Middlesbrough, but of which I still have many fond memories. 

The former Masham Hotel - it's drinking days gone

A lot - possibly most - of my old favourite places have now gone. Fearnley's record shop on Linthorpe Road disappeared a few years ago after serving local soul music fans for many years. It was there that I made a weekly Saturday morning pilgrimage to browse through rack after rack of 12"singles, including US imports that sold for the princely price of three pounds fifty in the late 1970's and early 1980's but which gave me hours of delight listening to them on my mono record player. I can still remember the excitement of getting US copies of Sylvester's "Dance", the Bombers "Let's Dance" and the Force's "Rock Your Baby" as well as amassing a few hundred other 12" single  dance classics from this shrine to black music. Mr Fearnley himself would be behind the counter most days, stroking his goatee beard and obligingly handing over a box of 7" imports to browse through, recommending items I might like because he knew my taste so well. Jackie Moore "This Time Baby", Rahni Harris "Six Million Steps" and Bonnie Pointer's "Free Me From My Freedom" (red vinyl if you please) all came into my hands through this tiny but packed shop. 

Music was very important to me as a teenager and Middlesbrough was where I went to find it, not only at Fearnley's but also at the old Hamilton's music store next to the bus station and Dean Wycherley's little shop in the Cleveland Centre but also at Mandy's, a basement dance club. Mandy's, which is also long gone, was down a couple of flights of stairs in the Cleveland Centre opposite the Town Hall. It was here I would come on a Friday or Saturday night to meet mates, down drinks and dance to classics such as Trussel's "Love Injection", Patrice Rushen's "Haven't You Heard" and the spectacular George Duke track "I Want You For Myself". Ah, those were the days, quality dance music with real instruments and real singing. And they still sound good.

We didn't get much in the way of live music for fans of soul and jazz-funk back then but I did see Sister Sledge perform at the Town Hall. It was a slightly odd performance which included them doing their then recent string of hits produced by the Chic organisation and some very odd vocal impressions of Cher, Dolly Parton and others!

The Town Hall

Before joining the queue for entry to Mandy's I would join friends in any one of a number of pubs in the town centre. I have very fond memories of the Masham, the Lord Raglan and the Shakespeare, all "proper" pubs and unfortunately, astonishingly, all gone now. I assume this is due to the recession which has hit Middlesbrough as hard as anywhere else - witness the abundance of pay day loan and pound shops - but am told that a few years ago there was a major clamp down on licensing violations, especially under age drinking. I must admit I drank in each of these pubs before reaching the age of 18. Sometimes rough, always friendly we would be served pints of "scotch" which was not a lethal dose of whisky, but the term used for bitter beer in the north-east. 

One of my favourite stories of those days is from the Lord Raglan where to my horror I found a piece of broken glass in my beer one night. Returning to the bar and telling the barmaid "Er love, there's a bit of broken glass in me drink" I receive the reply "there is not", showed it to her, she apologised…and dipped her hand in to take the offending article out before handing me the beer back. I must have looked surprised because she apologised again, took the drink back and poured the beer into another glass with an "ee, what am I thinking of" before handing it back again with a big smile and a "there you go love". I decided discretion was the better part of valour, retreated and left the drink on a table.

There were also slightly more sophisticated venues. Billy Paul, named after the American singer, was a more stylish basement bar on Newport Road and had a sister venue Mrs. Jones (get it - Billy Paul had a hit with the song Me and Mrs Jones?) - a restaurant which described itself as a buttery. Both bar and buttery are also gone now. Those of us who had spent all of our money on records and beer couldn't afford Mrs. Jones so we would go to the Wimpy or if in totally dire straits, buy something from one of the burger carts that sold in the street. Now I need to note, I never gave in to the temptation to do this, but as they say, I have a friend who did. One particularly cold and wet Saturday afternoon he purchased a burger from a cart operated by a woman in a once white woodwork apron, fingerless gloves and with an advanced head cold complete with a sniff and runny nose. It was a good thing she had those gloves to wipe her nose on. She shovelled blackened onions and a grey looking burger into a bun before seeming to remember something and asking "er, do you want cheese in that then, a cheeseburger like?" Amazingly he said he did so she opened the wide pocket in her once white woodwork apron and pulled out - with the fingerless gloved nose wiping hand - one of a number of loose craft cheese slices that were safely stored in there. He paid, took the burger, walked around the corner and threw it in the bin. 

The Central Library where I briefly worked

I also took part in healthier pursuits. I was a member of Middlesbrough and Cleveland Harriers, an athletics club based at the former Clairville Stadium near Albert Park. The stadium has now been demolished (bit of a theme emerging here)  and a new facility is to be provided in its place. I spent several Tuesday and Thursday nights there training for sprints and hurdles as well as competing in the local North Yorkshire South Durham (NYSD) athletics league with teams from Stockton, Billingham and Hartlepool. Clairville was also the location of an annual international pentathlon and decathlon match between the UK, Netherlands, Denmark and Spain. I felt very sophisticated going to these as a teenager, the highlight of which was the year former Olympic champion Mary Peters attended and signed her autograph for me. I also recall a very exotic seeming match between the Harriers and a club from Iceland!

Our other stadium was Ayresome Park, home to Middlesbrough Football Club, also now demolished and replaced with a modern stadium close to the River Tees. As well as hosting some World Cup matches in 1966, it was the site of a jazz festival in 1978 at which Ella Fitzgerald, Oscar Peterson, Art Blakey and Dizzy Gillespie performed. Imagine, Ella Fitzgerald in Middlesbrough. I was too young to appreciate the world's best ever jazz vocalist and didn't go. Good thing I saw her several years later - in Wolverhampton which is probably even less likely than Middlesbrough.

Many things have changed about the town since I lived, worked and went to school there. Many of my old favourites have gone, but there is a wonderful new gallery of modern art - MIMA, and the former Uptons department store has been reinvented as Psyche, a high end fashion store in a beautifully refurbished building. I will be spending more time in the north east over the coming months and am looking forward to rediscovering the town I still have a very soft spot for.

Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (MIMA)

The former Uptons department store - now Psyche

You might also like Middlesbrough Empire, Palace of Varieties