My North East
I was born in 1961, the fifth of six children, in Middlesbrough. When I was five, we moved three or four miles north up the Tees to Thornaby, where my Dad had a fish and chip shop. Later still, in 1968, Dad bought two huge, almost derelict, neighbouring Victorian houses in Stockton, one of which he converted into a bed and breakfast, whilst the other became the house where my brothers and sisters and I lived. These houses looked out over Oxbridge Cemetery and were very close to the Victorian Ropner Park, where my brothers and I played. Those houses, the park and the cemetery, feature in my novels.
The lake in Ropner Park - now rather less barren.
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Thorp, where my novels are set, is an amalgamation of Stockton and Thornaby – Thornaby’s (now mostly demolished) backstreet terraces combined with Stockton’s High Street, parks, cemetery and churches.
Stockton Town Hall, around the turn of the last century.
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Stockton is a market town about five miles from Middlesbrough on the banks of the River Tees. It has the widest High Street in Britain, so I’ve been told, a fine Georgian Town Hall, and a Parish Church built in 1710. The War Memorial outside the Parish Church was unveiled during a ceremony in May 1923.
The War Memorial unveiling ceremony in 1923.
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One side of the High Street was demolished around 1969 – the best side with its old pubs and hotels – and a shopping centre/car park was built, its back to the River Tees. When I was a child, Stockton had three cinemas, The Odeon being the largest and plushest. All these landmarks feature in my novels, as does Stockton’s large, busy market, where on Wednesdays and Saturdays the stalls line the long (and wide) High Street from one end to the other.
Stocton market day - a market that dates back to 1310
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Despite the town-planners, a few of the old pubs remain along some of the alley ways that lead off the High Street. These are the pubs where my characters are most likely to be found.
You can discover more photos of Stockton past and present in the Stockton library picture archive »
