Yes the railway bridge as it used to be at Carlin How, do you remember driving under it? I do and if you met a bus coming the other way there was not a lot of room. This image provoked other memories including Andrew Pryce: “I remember being at the junior school in my final year when the bridge was demolished. We had taken over what used to be Danby’s shop on the corner of Coronation Street.”, David Price recalls: “I can remember the bridge well, as a schoolboy in the late 1940′s I travelled from Middlesbrough to Carlin How to visit my auntie and uncle, Mr and Mrs Stephen Husband in Rawlinson Street. In those days, Loftus Bank was very steep and narrow, the old pre-second World War buses almost came to a standstill to get down into a crawler gear. I found this frightening as a child. My father, Frank Price, 8th in a family of 11 children, was brought up in Mount Pleasant and Queen Street, Carlin How. In 1922 at 14 years old, he went to work at the corner shop owned by Nixon Brothers who had a chain of shops, grocery stores, drapers and butchers in Skinningrove, Carlin How, Skelton, Brotton and Margrove Park. I wonder if it is the same shop that your family ran years later? Dad never said whether the shop was on the corner of Queen Street or Coronation Street. Nixon Brothers were also property developers and builders. My grandad, George Price, was a builder and bricklayer and worked for the building side of Nixon Brothers. Grandad was on a price system and was paid £30 per house for doing all the brickwork. Good old days ! Dad could remember as a child the WWI Zeppelin airships bombing Skinningrove Ironworks and the surrounding area in 1914/1915.” and Rita Beckham with : “I was brought up in Lax Street from 1940 to I think it was 1949 when we moved to Front Street as we were a large family requiring more room. I remember this bridge well it was built at a sharp angle, from the bottom of the way up to Skinningrove Railway Station, built of sandstone and supporting by timber. What I remember most about this bridge was the very large crack from top to bottom on the left hand side before going through the bridge towards Loftus. We as children used to rush through as we thought if a train went over the bridge at the same time as we went under it, it would collapse onto us. Scary!”.
Thanks to Andrew Pryce, David Price and Rita Beckham for their memories.
There certainly was a shop at the top of Queen Street opposite number 52 where I was born in 1936. I have no recollection of who the proprietor was. At the outbreak of WWII a brick air raid shelter was built outside the shop and another one at the bottom of the street.
Interestingly, my parents first home was also in Mount Pleasant, number 10. The 52 Queen Street house belonged to St Hilda’s as was intended as a home for the curate. It would appear that either there wasn’t a curate in 1936 or he didn’t want to live there and my parents rented the property.
At the outbreak of WWII my father was responsible for issuing the National Registration Numbers. He gave himself JGQN226/1, his wife Florence, 226/2 and me 226/3. The owner of the garage (Mr Stonehouse?) on Brotton Road said to my father that as he was issuing these numbers he must be an official of the government and, therefore, qualified to go on the waiting list for a new car. It was not until 1948 that he was top of the list an allowed to buy a new Austin Eight..