Craig Pancrack has nominated a few more lost buildings from Eston, some still well remembered others lost in time.  
  

Eston Picture Hall aka “Maud Allans” silent movie cinema with piano, c1910-c1930 closed when talkies came in and the owner couldn’t afford to upgrade. Used as builder’s yard until 1960s. Located between Jane OHare Florist and Congregational chapel on the Square at foot of Jubilee Road.

North View, single storey miners’ cottages, California, Eston. Situated between Prospect Terrace and Cleveland Street. Built 1850s, demol. c1970

The Watch Tower at Eston Nab built 1808 to warn of Napoleon invading. A well known landmark. Used as a miners cottage after 1850. Became abandoned after mine closed and vandalised and in 1956 demolished. The present obelisk was built form the remains about 20 foot to the North by ICI who had bought the Wilton estate form the Lowther family.

Quarry House aka “Mrs Millers Cottage” located at western end of Eston Nab. Built presumably in 1850s at time of sandstone quarrying to build the mine buildings and miners cottages. Perhaps this was the office. Lived in after that by miners. Demolished in the c1930s.Craig Pancrack

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ESTON JUNCTION aka ‘Branch End’ - a village within the works - built from 1852 at BV’s Eston Ironworks later Bessemer/Cleveland works.

Opposite Town and Country Tyres, the old Fire Station within the Corus wasteland today. This street here on pics 1 and 2 was called Furnace Row.The junction was where the Eston mines railway branched off from the Middlesbrough to Redcar line - The Branch end was really the Branch beginning.

The houses were pulled down in the c1930s.The pub is The Cleveland and that was part of the village - pic shows blastfurnacemen queuing up for beer during shift, they were apparently allowed beer so long as they didn’t sit down to drink it!Date of demolition 1950s?

Craig Pancrack

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By ladyinred
One of Middlesbrough’s many lost buildings was St Hilda’s Parish Church. I was never fortunate enough to see the building but my interest in it lies in the fact that my paternal grandparents – second generation residents of Middlesbrough – were married there on 23 January 1895. 

I left the north east in 1951 as a schoolgirl and returned in 1999 with a strong interest in local and family history. Quite soon after my return I set out to find St Hilda’s in the hope of getting a look at the parish registers for family entries. Much to my dismay I discovered that the building had been demolished after years of neglect and having suffered vandalism and arson attacks.  At that time, unaware of the almost systematic destruction of Middlesbrough’s architectural heritage when has been going on for some decades, I was astonished that the town’s parish church had been allowed to disappear. 

St Hilda’s was built using funds subscribed by amongst others the inhabitants of the newly-fledged town of Middlesbrough. The chosen location was a few yards away from the site of the Norman Benedictine priory of St John the Baptist and St Hilda. The priory’s original Norman stone font, which is now on display in the Dorman Museum, was returned to St Hilda’s in 1889 by the executors of Joseph Pease – one of the town’s founders – who had taken it to his Darlington home to use as a flower pot about 60 years previously. Six small stones from the ruins of the priory were embedded in the wall of the new church, which was consecrated by the Bishop of Durham on 25 September 1840 about 10 years after the town began. 

The church would certainly have been the most imposing building in the new town, situated on the edge of the market square and close to the Town Hall (itself now an endangered building). It was built in the Early English style with a spire rising to 120 feet.

 By the middle of the next century many of the original inhabitants of the area surrounding St Hilda’s had moved to the expanded areas of the town south of the river. Churchgoing had become less popular and the congregation diminished every year. After over a century the church building was in need of restoration and refurbishment added to this the increasing activities of vandals and it had become unsafe. Unwilling to provide funds for this essential work, the Church of England powers-that-be claimed that there was no need for such a large church to serve a decreasing local population and recommended its demolition. 

Apart from a few individuals like the local historian Norman Moorsom and members of various local history societies, the council and the majority of Middlesbrough’s population were apathetic, having more pressing concerns such as high unemployment and substandard housing to deal with. Despite the intervention of the Victorian Society in London, who described the church as a ‘listed building, a notable landmark in the town and a building of local historic interest,’ the regional church authorities would not be moved and were not prepared to provide the necessary finance to make the essential repairs to the church’s fabric in order that it could become safe.

 In late 1969 the vandalism took a new turn in the form of an arson attack which caused further extensive damage and effectively brought to a close any lingering hopes of saving St Hilda’s. The church was finally demolished in November 1969.

 

This engaving is the property of the Dorman Museum, copyright Middlesbrough Council

You might well recognise the name but only we of a certain vintage will recall that it was a name formerly attached to another Middlesbrough building before heading off across town to the bright lights of studentville Southfield Road.

Yet another victim of the A66 – the Star and Garter hotel was a lovely twin towered affair choc full of rich detail. It was actually built around the shell of a Welsh Congregational chapel in 1893 by William Duncan. In my study I reported that, “it contains a rich diffusion of styles from classical symmetry to Romanesque to Byzantium columns.” In fact a closer look at the columns revealed influences ranging from the baroque as well as classical and Romanesque.

I made reference to the large bowed windows on the lower floor around which there was some rich terracotta work and was quite excited about the garland festoon.

When I was carrying out this art study under the direction of the late John Carter I would nip off on the bus down town from Normanby South Park College. Once upon a time I took it upon my head to enjoy a brief snifter in the Cleveland at Normanby Top to help me on my way.

I arrived in the town centre, hi-tailed it over to Marton Road clutching my old second hand Czechoslovakian camera with dodgy light reader and a far more reliable cheaper standard colour model. I’m not sure if I saw a door open at the Star and Garter or whether it was just the pint of stones giving me Dutch courage and made me try the handle. But I remember entering and climbing the staircase that wrapped around the inside of one of the towers. The carpet had seen better days the ornate wallpaper faded, it was dusty and very foisty inside as if it hadn’t received any proper daylight or a good airing in years. Just as I reached the top balcony a door opened on the left to reveal a big Chinese guy with a cigar in his mouth.

I didn’t stick around. I’d seen far too many horror films. I mean, just look at the picture if that does not look like a Hammer Horror house I don’t know what does? I flew down those stairs and out of the door not looking back once to see if there was an axe wielding nutter on my trail.

There were few people mourning the demolition of Zetland House. Built at the end of the cash strapped post wars years in 1959 the former BR office block was an ugly carbuncle on Middlesbrough Railway Station forecourt.

In a sixth form art architecture project I once argued that Zetland House was Middlesbrough’s own nod and wink to the “stilt buildings” of celebrated modernist architect Le Corbusier. I don’t think I even fully convinced myself let alone the examiner but I at least attempted to back up my argument claiming that Zetland House followed the five principles of Le Corbusier, being on pilotis (stilts), with ribbon windows, a flat-roof, built with limited finance and architectural standard – so no open plan or free façade. Whatever that all meant.

Umm maybe I’m starting to think about Boro’s own Le Corbusier stilt building in a slightly different light now. Though there wasn’t a lot of light about the broad concrete frame was faced in brick and pebble dash. One problem was how dark and heavy these materials were and how they plunged the station car park into darkness. Zetland House towered over the gothic revival railway station and cast its not inconsiderable shadow putting some fine buildings in Zetland Road totally in the shade. 

It is gone now and more or less forgotten. The railway station booking hall façade can now be enjoyed and appreciated more fully. Zetland Road is born again.

One of the saddest loses to Teesside’s building heritage was the Royal Exchange. Demolished by order of Cleveland County Council for the new A66 link to route south of the River Tees. A road that carved a swathe through the former commercial quarter of Middlesbrough and divided the town in two creating a second “border.”

Victorian Middlesbrough was Ironopolis, one of the enginerooms and workshops of the Empire and the World. Trade was being conducted on a global scale. The town’s business community was in desperate need of a building where they could meet, greet and feed the world with iron and steel.

An Exchange Company was formed and an architect selected for a monumental building to be constructed in the commercial hub of the Infant Hercules. The design of local Stockton architect Charles J. Adams was selected. The building of The Royal Exchange started in 1866 and was ready for opening two years later.

Unfortunately while the Exchange company financed the building to the sum of £28 000 they could not afford the extra money needed for the crowning glory, a proposed tower which consequently was never built. In architectural terms the Royal Exchange was built in the classical (Italian) style and strongly influenced by the baroque rather than gothic revival of the nearby railway station opened a decade later.This was a time when a battle for styles was raging nationally between those that looked back with reverence to the power and dignity of the classical world and those that preferred the mystique and romance of the England’s gothic cathedrals. Both styles can still be seen in what is left of Exchange Place.

The building consisted of two large exchange halls, offices and club premises, some of which later became shop units. There were four corner pavilions of three storey height crowned with pinnacles.

Overall it was a big, strong, solid building as befitting the most important business focal point of the whole town. Actually in its heyday the Royal Exchange was once one of the most important trading centres in the world. When Middlesbrough iron and steel was exported round the globe this was at the heart of the trading transactions. Therefore it had to be imposing and the Victorians certainly knew how to turn their hand to make a mighty fortress of a building.

The old corporation bus station used to be outside on the Marton Road side of the Exchange where I recall catching double deckers from old green (or blue) painted bus stands. My memories are of a dark brooding goliath of a building. It had become empty and neglected in 1970s as the shadow of the planned Northern Route proposal hung over it. I think there were even paper proposals to sell the building for a few quid. But they were empty gestures to placate many townspeople horrified at the neglect of a landmark building.

The whole area went into seemingly terminal decline. The bus station finally closed and the demolition crews moved in in 1985. For me this remains a crime against Middlesbrough and Teesside. Such a proud part of our history sacrificed for a road that surely could have been more sensitively redirected. I was really lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time when a party was invited to have a last look inside before demolition. Although neglected and dilapidated I was still struck by the scale and the Victorian grandeur of the trading halls. Most of my photos show the exchange halls, note the still ornate ceilings and the details on the walls. Get a feel of the scale. It was still possible to imagine the buzz of commerce as steel was bought and sold around the Empire.What a crying shame possibly Middlesbrough and Teesside’s most important Victorian building was torn down for a road that divided the town in two.

I’d be really interested to know your views and memories of this lost industrial jewel.

Middlesbrough’s Ear, Nose, Eye and Throat hospital stood for nearly 150 years at the corner of Hartington Road and Newport Road. One of Middlesbrough iconic buildings and one of its most historic; a real people building. If ever there was a gateway to the town then it had to be the Infirmary. First opened in 1864 on the new Stockton turnpike Road close to the Ironmasters District where it could help tend to the industrial injuries in the engineroom of the Infant Hercules. Henry Bolckow was the major mover and shaker in the opening of the hospital describing it as serving “such as might need surgical aid through incidents at the different ironworks and mines.” (W. Lillie).

Much changed over the years to keep apace with medical advances and the bequests of generous benefactors yet the building still had the look of a Victorian institution right up to its closure in 2003. The fact that the fabric was changed so often counted against its listing on the historic buildings register. But when the South Tees Health Trust sold off the site to Aldi for a supermarket there was a massive outcry. The save Our Infirmary campaign was launched. It made the front page of the Gazette, a 7000 name petition was amassed and public meetings were held in the Town Hall.

In the end while arguments raged and planning consents were rejected and re-submitted the derelict building started to rot away, attracting rats and vandals alike it became a scourge for the local community. Eventually it was completely demolished and so almost 150 years of Middlesbrough’s social history were replaced by a temporary fence and a large hole in the town.

The Infirmary arouses mixed emotions in as much as being a hospital it is the harbinger of both and good memories for so many. For me, I recall sitting for what seemed like hours in dingy corridors as a small boy waiting for appointments to see the eye specialist. Seemed like hours because it no doubt was hours. But the reward was when you finally left your ancient chair in the ancient corridor the kind specialist let you watch Flintstones cartoons as part of the eye test. A real treat in the 1960s when cartoons as all children’s programmes were strictly limited on two channel tv.

My bad memories are leaving the hospital with a giant patch over one eye. Going to school as a 5 year old, the only 4-eyes in Captain Cook’s Infants was bad enough but wearing a giant patch was disastrous. Good job I had my “two thumbs” scar to stop the bullies in their tracks.

This is Lost Teesside…