The Bombing of Middlesbrough Railway Station
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- Опубліковано 9 лип 2006
- During the Second World War Middlesbrough Railway station was heavily bombed. This short documentary covers the events and includes an interview with an eyewitness.
Production Team:
Andrew Davies
James Harrison
Tom Robinson
Narrator:
Stephen Hall
Now you know why Middlesbrough has hardly any old buildings left. In WW2, it lost around 350 buildings. The German's thought the Railway Station was steel works. They use to look for the Dock Clock near the football stadium as Middlesbrough was hard to spot at night. Great video by the way.
It's a pity the roof has gone, it's still an impressive building. I like Middlesbrough.
This is a great video. Thanks for making it. It was great seeing my old school friend Ian Stubbs again!
Arthur Frank, a plumber I worked with at ICI in the 1970's was injured in the bombing raid, he was an apprentice at the time working from a ladder replacing a broken station window and the blast hurled him and his ladders twenty feet away from where he was working.
The raid left him with a limp for the rest of his life, a really nice bloke.
Andrew - nice job! I like your comment "we will have to wait and see if" referring to Transpennine. The fact that the place was not invested in by Teesside Development Corp in the 90s is baffling. Nicely organised story, Ian Stubbs was very convincing. The eye witness was a scoop, wouldve liked to have seen him close-up as it is the key personal contribution, instead of the impersonal wide shot with the lamp as prominent as him. Great variety locations and stills.
I walk down that street at 2:23 almost everyday during lunch on my journey from college to town. Its just a run-down area with cheap independent shops, you wouldn't think there was so much history behind the area.
Thanks for uploading :)
Look at all the dirty pavements,always spitting
There's a lot of work being done to the station these days, some of which has already been completed. You can see quite a few differences already from the film, including the fact that Zetland House is no longer there.
the station is still undergoing renovation in 2017 and remains an eyesore
After the war, a woman from Middlesbrough who was married to a British soldier ended up living with her husband in an army camp in West Germany. One day shopping in a place called Kassel, she ended up in a shoe shop. The owner was a man who spoke good English.. while talking to her, he asked what town she was from.. she said Middlesbrough. He went very quiet... and after a short while said.."I know Middlesbrough.. I bombed your railway station in 1942 when I failed to locate your I.C.I . plant".
My great grandad Ronald Park survived the bombing by hiding under the wheels of the steam train (he was a fireman) it was a story he would retell to us everytime we mentioned going to boro
Mrs H .. Middlesbrough in WW2 lost lives & most of its Victorian buildings... I'd heard the story of scamp the dog...
good story. my dad was there at that time.
THE NORTH OF ENGLAND - BILLINGHAM, DARLINGTON, MIDDLESBROUGH, NEWCASTLE, STOCKTON, YORK & YARM - NEIGHBOURS AND LOCAL HISTORY
Most people living in the North of England think they know their neighbours and local history but how would you know your neighbour worked for MI6? Most who knew the Fairclough family didn’t have a clue that from the seventies Bill Fairclough was a secret agent (MI6 codename JJ) working for various intelligence agencies. What’s more they had no idea he was following in his parents’ footsteps.
Bill's parents met during the Second World War when his father, ostensibly working for Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI), worked secretly on creating bombs to wipe out the Nazi's industrial hinterland. They married in Yarm in 1941. After the war in Europe ended in May 1945, Dr Richard Alan Fairclough continued to work for British Intelligence (MI1).
Not long after retiring from ICI in the seventies, Richard Fairclough opened and ran an antiquarian book shop business in Yarm until his death in 1987. The book shop was a bit of an enigma as it was also a haunt for spooks.
When not gated at St Peter’s School, York Bill Fairclough spent most of his childhood and early teens in the North East of England. As a child in the fifties he was educated at Red House School in Norton. He lived in Billingham and then in a vast white house (once the home of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley) in Norton Green overlooking the duck pond. In Bill’s teens, the Faircloughs lived in Middleton St George and later in Yarm. He also lived in flats he rented near nightclubs he helped run during the late sixties and early seventies in Portrack, Stockton-on-Tees and Jesmond in Newcastle upon Tyne. Conveniently for him they were near the offices of the firm of Chartered Accountants he worked for in Middlesbrough and Newcastle upon Tyne.
So if you lived, worked or visited any of these places you may well have unwittingly encountered this “spooky” family, been their neighbours or inhabited the houses they lived in. A quick web-search will even disclose some of the addresses where they lived. Mind you, if you live in any of them now, best sweep them for bugs!
Details of where the Faircloughs lived and worked are given in most of Bill Fairclough’s bios on the web such as can be found at everipedia.org/wiki/lang_en/bill-fairclough. If you were as fascinated as we were, you can also read the raw fact based thriller Beyond Enkription, the first stand-alone novel to be released in The Burlington Files series (theburlingtonfiles.org/#/reviews). It’s a memorable and distinctively different noir espionage thriller based on his and his family’s experiences in 1974.
Was quite a grand train station in its day, but it never recovered. It's still an eyesore. But I still say it's too small and needs to be relocated. Same situation with Middlesbrough Bus Station.
The Jerry's might well have been after destroying the synagogue next door to the station. ..they did and a wall from the synagogue still stands at the station with its star of David window. ..fortunately there was no one in synagogue at the time
it is about to get further money spent on it as there is now a daily direct train to London the street to the north is getting glass frontage but we will never get the roof back
its a pitty it couldnt be like in 1940 it really looks good.paul
anyone know what the disused rail, then road bridge in middlesbrough, between a66 and river, next to riverside ind. estate?
I saw an old map with a spiral railway grade down from bridge, but its a walkway now with old tarmac and curbs like it was a road bridge later in life?
Its disgraceful really that we're a premierhsip team and we have a station in such poor fodder
its looks awful
In what way? I really like the place.