9 photos of Middlesbrough from The Northern Echo archives

While there are some images of dereliction and squalor, there are also pictures showing a busy river full of ships, and streets teeming with people and lined by some of the Tees Valley's finest late Victorian architecture. Let's have a look...

• For more pictures from The Northern Echo archives, click here

GOTHIC PILE: Grey Towers at Nunthorpe has now been converted into 12 apartments and a village – Grey Towers Village – has been built on its grounds. It really was a stupendous mansion, built by Darlington architect John Ross, in 1865 for ironmaster William Randolph Innes Hopkins – it was his firm, Hopkins, Gilkes and Company, which was blamed for the collapse of the Tay Bridge in 1879. In 1931, when this picture was taken, Grey Towers’ resident, Arthur Dorman, died, and the estate was bought by Sir Thomas Gibson Poole, who presented it to Middlesbrough council as a TB sanatorium

DANGEROUS LINE: Another Echo safety campaign in the mid-1960s concerned the railway line that was protected only by piles of rubble. The caption on the back of this picture says: “Mrs Harrington, of Wood Street Houses, calls in her children as a train approaches the unguarded stretch of line.”

EARLY ADOPTER: Middlesbrough appears to have been the first town in the area to employ roundabouts – the large sign on the right of this picture, taken on December 6, 1965, informing drivers how to use them.

The picture illustrated an article which bemoaned that, outside Boro, drivers didn’t have a clue how to use a roundabout smoothly.

The article said: “The most frustrating is the chap who stops halfway onto the roundabout road and does nothing. Just looks. You can’t tell whether he is letting you go first or not. You start forward slowly – so does he. You stop – sop does he! It’s quite hilarious to watch, though not to take part.”

STATION MASTERED: Middlesbrough’s railway station was largely destroyed by a German bomb in 1940. This picture, taken in January 1955, shows its restoration completed, with famous North-East newsagents ED Walker and Wilson’s kiosk in the booking hall

SLOW DOWN: In 1965, The Northern Echo joined residents to campaign for speed to be controlled on the “mad murder mile” on Middlesbrough’s Longlands Road. Here, on July 7, after the presentation of a 1,500-name petition, the first speed limit is introduced. In the previous fortnight, a car passenger and an eight-year-old boy had been killed in separate incidents on the stretch

IMPOSING ARCHITECTURE: The Royal Exchange in Middlesbrough in September 1938. The gaggle of men on the Wilson Street corner – are they waiting for work? – are all dressed in suits, including waistcoats, with cloth caps on. If Exchange Square had survived having the A66 flyover blasted through it in the late 1960s, it would be one of the finest collections of Victorian architecture anyway in the North-East

TRANSPORTED BACK IN TIME: A magnificent view of the Transporter Bridge on January 16, 1953, with the cross-Tees ferry at its landing stage on the right. There are two unusual vehicles on the gondolier. On the left seems to be a horsedrawn caterpillar tracked cart with a person in a floppy yokel hat sitting in the back. On the right seems to be an open-topped motor car with several hatted people in. On the left of the picture is a boat with “WRECK” written on it in large letters – a warning to other shipping?

CRANES AT WORK: Middlesbrough Docks in August 1947. The photo is just good enough to make out the name of the ship second from the left – KINA – but its registered port is not legible

For more pictures from The Northern Echo archives, click here