The Partial Skeleton Remaining

Cannon Street, historically, was a short lived phenomenon. It was a consequence of Middlesbrough’s expansion in the 1860s By the end of the 1960’s most of it was cleared. Some streets at the Newport end didn’t even last a hundred years, not being built until the 1890s. The name ‘Cannon St’ is still there but it is less than half of what it was, stretching west from Marsh St ,but severed by the A66 and the slip roads of the Newport roundabout . And, of course, it is not the Cannon St it was. It is just a narrow road providing access to trading estates, furniture superstores and the like. There are no houses, no pubs or shops and more importantly, there are no longer the dozens of terraced side streets which housed thousands of families. A few familiar street names remain. Marsh St is still marked . Punch St and Pearson St are still there on the map and also Cecil St. Marsh Rd which ran close to the railway parallel on the north of Cannon St from Boundary Rd to junction with Marsh St is now in two unconnected bits and severed from Marsh St by the A66, Bulmer Way pays recognition to what was Bulmer St . The section of Denmark Street north of Marsh Rd is still noted but this is a mere uninhabited remnant of a street which once ran all the way down to Newport Road and had 93 houses.

Cannon St Area c1950

1858 Expansion of Middlesbrough

In 1858 Boundary Rd more or less marked the western boundary of the town of Middlesbrough. There was very little to the west of it. There was a small hamlet at Newport which had been established in the 17c by the Hustler family. Ships crawling around the tortuous bends of the Tees on the way to Yarm could offload some of their cargo there to lighten their load for the shallower draught upstream. There was no road connection between Newport and Middlesbrough. Newport was linked by a Sailor’s Trod, which ran south east along what is now Parliament Rd across what became Albert Park and over Breckon Hill. Sailors’ Trods were used by seamen to walk from one port to another along the Tees. There was a granary at Newport, a few houses and a pub called the Ferry Boat Inn. This area to the west of Middlesbrough was in the township of Linthorpe which included the the villages of Linthorpe, Ayresome and Newport . ( The original village of Linthorpe, by the way, was situated along what is now named Burlam Rd. What most of us think of as Linthorpe now i.e the south end of Linthorpe Rd was developed as part of the same expansion of Middlesbrough which produced the Cannon St. area. Originally the development along Linthorpe Rd south of Albert Park was designated New Linthorpe) The land was owned by Thomas Hustler. Much of it was marshland which had been drained. Hustler sold the land in 1858. Iron works were established north of the railway on the south bank of the River Tees which loops from Middlesbrough to Newport. This became known as the ‘Ironmasters District.’The Cannon Street area was built to house the workers for these new iron plants. Read about the Hustler Family

New Road to Stockton

The area to the west of Boundary Rd was 'opened up' to settlement partially by the decision to build a more direct road to Stockton .This was opened in 1858 and initially was a turnpike road.
It was named Newport Road.

Cannon Street was built to run parallel to it. Cannon Street was so named because the Yorkshire Volunteers kept cannon on fields from where it started (around where St Columba's Church now is.) These were the 'Cannon Fields'.

Expansion by 1882

This map of 1882 shows that streets expanding from the Middlesbrough end had almost met the few streets that had also developed around Newport Parliament Rd is still not built. The Sailors' Trod' along which it was constructed is still marked. This used to connect the Newport landing to other stopping points along the Tees.