My Childhood

A Memory of Hartlepool.

I was born in the town,and spent my first ten years in what would now be regarded as the slums of Stranton, Bower Street, going to school at Oxford Street juniors. In the late 1960s and early 1970s Bower Street and neighouring streets were demolished, and its inhabitants moved to the new council estate at Owton Manor, to the west of Catcote Road. I walked to school daily along Catcote Road. I remember the "Catcote" pub at the top of Oxford Road, and another called (I think) the Pink Admiral, and the building of Brierton Secondary School.