Middlesbrough Remembered
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Excuse me but where is Middlesbrough?
Walk from North Ormesby
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Only a Short Time in History
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Football on the Roof
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Round and About King George Street
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Highs and Lows
Vic Wood
I was born in 1943 in what we called ‘Low’ Croft Street, that is the half of Croft St which ran between Cannon Street and the railway.( ‘High’ Croft St was the bit between Cannon St and Newport Rd.) I remember one time at school everyone in the class had to recite his or her address. When it came to me I stated 63 Low Croft St.
“When did you move to Laycock St?” asked the teacher.”No”, I reiterated “ 63 Low Croft Street.” She patiently explained it wasn’t Low Croft Street it was all just Croft St. and told me to look at the street sign when I got home.
Sure enough, much to my surprise, it just read ‘Croft St ’on the sign, no high or low and it was the same with Severs St and Cooper St. the neighbouring streets to the west of us which, in common parlance, we also split into highs and lows. But, furher investigation baffled me. The neighbouring street to the east of ‘Low’ Croft St was Welford St but when you continued from Welford St over Cannon St down to Newport Rd it wasn’t Welford St anymore. It was Disraeli St and next to this pair were Derby St from Cannon Street to the railway but Salisbury Street from Cannon Street down to Newport Rd. I couldn’t wait to get to school to ask my teacher why this was so. To my total amazement she told me she didn’t know .I thought teachers were supposed to know everything! She added that the important thing to remember was that I was from just Croft Street not Low Croft Street .
Over fifty years later, studying the 1881 census for the area, I find, in fact, that the census enumerators used this ‘high and low’ distinction when the street either side of Cannon St had the same continuous name. Indeed, in the cases of Denmark St and Dean St (at the other end of Cannon St from me) the two halves of the streets are even in separate census districts ‘High Denmark’ is in the Middlesbrough census district and ‘Low Denmark’ is in the Linthorpe District. Now- if only I’d known that when I was seven and arguing with a teacher!
I explain this because using the terms High & Low
makes the geography of my terrace street world easier to describe.This is a plan of Croft St and the neighbouring streets either side, to show the grid pattern of the Cannon St area which, in fact, was the pattern throughout Victorian built Middlesbrough
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'Low ' Croft St
 | | This is 'Low' Croft St looking from the Cannon St end to the railway |
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The Back Alley
Of course your neighbours were not just the people near to you on the front street. The back alley between you and the neighbouring street didn't separate the streets so much as join them.
For my family particularly the the back alley between our side of Croft Street and Severs St was a conduit because our Aunty Amy and three cousins lived on that side of Severs Street. I don't ever remember going through their front door. My cousin Denny, I remember kept pigeons in the backyard.
The back alley looks narrow but compared with older parts of Middlesbrough it was wide, originally designed to give easy access to the rear of the houses for the clearance of the 'night soil' Croft Street and Severs St were built at least twenty years after the 1875 Act which gave local councils some control over house building. One stipulation was that back alleys had to be no less than 9 feet wide to allow a cart for the collection of the ash pan sewage. In pre 1875 streets they had to use a wheel barrow (This system operated well into the 1920s.) You can see the roofs of the outside lavatories above the yard walls.
Some washing could be dried in your own back yard but it was also dried in the back alley the clothes line being strung from wall to wall and this meant agreeing a different washing day from your neighbour on the opposite side because the lines were shared. Washing days also had to be organised around the dustbin collection day
The abiding memory I have of the back alley was of great numbers of cats. The walls were feline highways.
The entry to the back alley from Low Croft St is on the right. You can see the wall curving into it. The other entry is at the top left into Severs St so it was a sort of elongated S shape.
Normally alleyways in our area weren't 'cuts' or 'snickets' which allowed you to short cut from one street to another. However, here, you could walk straight onto Lower Severs St because , as the photo shows there was a gap in the Severs St housing on that side. The east corner of Low Severs Street/Cannon St was missing. I mention this because of the use to which this empty piece of land was sometimes put which I will describe on another page
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Cannon Street
Usually people talk about the close community of Cannon Street as if it was just one.Cannon Street was a long road crossed by more than 30 streets some of which had house numbers as high as 120. The area housed thousands of people. It would be more accurate to describe a series of close communities.
The east end of Cannon St was as far away from me as was the Albert Park part of Linthorpe. In fact the latter was more familiar to me as I visited the park regularly. I had little knowledge ofthe other end of Cannon St. People at that end would know little of our end either.
(There was a strong catholic community and perhaps they were more likely know each other because there was one catholic church, St Patricks,central to the whole of Cannon St on Marsh St)
This is looking east along Cannon Street from the corner of 'Low' Cooper Street..(You can just make out a cyclist. I recall it being a bumpy ride as Cannon Street was cobbled. At least it was our end. Was this the case all the way east to Boundary Rd.? I cannot remember ) |  |
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Pitch & Toss
 | A few years ago a booklet Lest We Forget was published of reminiscences of life at the east end of Cannon Street.
The game of Pitch and Toss was described. Men would gather on open spaces and play this. It was strictly illegal and the police often mounted raids and the players would scatter in all directions. The booklet describes fugitives running up the nearest back alley. They could then run through an available back yard straight through the house out the front door , across the street through the front door on the other side into that back alley and so on. The pursuing policeman found it hard to follow. The writer even tells of the fugitive picking up a Yorkshire pudding on his way through,as the family were sitting down to Sunday dinner.
I vaguely remember such an incident when I was quite young. I've pieced it together from what I was told years afterwards. Apparently it was Sunday morning and I was in a swing hung in the backyard door opening. There was a game of pitch & toss on the open bit of land on the east corner of Low Severs & Cannon St. The police arrived and the players scattered. One running up our back alley saw our yard door open and ran in knocking me flying.(This is the bit I remember) He hid in the lavatory. My grandmother (Nana) came out to hear what the fuss was about. A policeman arrived and wanted to come into the yard but Nana was adamant insisting he got a search warrant or something. Meanwhile our dog, Jack, was barking furiously at the lavatory door! The frustrated Bobby gave up and went away and the man came out thanking Nana profusely. Nana batted him round the ears and threw him out saying,”That’s for knocking the bairn out of his swing”
Nana was a very upright person with a resolute sense of right and wrong who didn’t approve of gambling. If she’d have caught any of her own playing pitch & toss or ‘standing cavy’ for them like some kids did,she’d have separated them from their breath but , nonetheless, she wouldn’t have handed a ‘daft young lad’ over to the police.
I think the game might have been dying out by the late forties /early fifties. I remember seeing it only once in the open space at the railway end of Pearson and Stanley Streets up by the Gas Tank compound walls.
Thinking about it now, it perhaps shows a change of attitude to law and order.The police apparently devoted great manpower to prosecute this a 'victimless' crime. I've been told tales of dozens of 'Bobbies' trying to surround the players.
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High Flyers
My Mam told me the tale of another consequence of the gap at the east end of low Severs St. The ‘O’ Bus, which was Newport’s life line to almost everywhere else in Teesside, stopped on Newport Rd at the end of high Severs St. So our family’s route to and from the bus stop was out the back door down the back alley and down high Severs St.
Finding space to dry washing was a premium. My Dad was from Glasgow and he brought with him an idea from the tenements which was a pulley out of an upstairs window. So he had fixed a long wooden spar to the backyard wall extending several feet above it. To this ran a rope around a pulley wheel from the back bedroom window so clothes could be reeled in and out. This line could be seen from Cannon St the moment you turned the high Severs St corner.
Coming up one very windy day accompanied by Edwin, her brother, my mother was horrified to see, high above the backyard walls, Nana’s old fashioned ‘bloomers’ billowing out,legs inflated by the wind.
My Mam was scandalised but her brother was greatly amused commenting that if we’d thought of that a few years earlier between 1939 and 1945 we could have saved the government a fortune in barrage balloons. Thereafter, however, my mother determined no more underwear was to be displayed on the ‘high’ clothes line
Special thanks to cousin Eric Bardell, also born in 63 Croft St., for the photographs on this page
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