I miss visiting Josef, browsing the shelves and buying books…
Near by the Navigation Inn and Whitehouse Signal Box, aside the railway line is this delightful looking but dilapidated property. This was a toll bar, which was built around 1854.
The idea of paying a toll to use a road in a town is mostly obsolete these days, however some notable examples of toll roads still exist including the Tyne Tunnel.
However in Middlesbrough up until 1916 charging a toll for anything other than pedestrians to use a road proved quite lucrative. This toll bar was owned and overseen by Middlesbrough Estates, however others belonged to local magnates such as Mr J W Pennyman or Lord Furness. Cargo Fleet Road is now pedestrianised at the western most end, however in the 1800’s it was a well used route in and out of the town.
Middlesbrough Corporation was keen to do away with tolls for road usage, it was proving quite a encumbrance when it came to moving goods around the town and indeed further afield.
On 31st July 1916 toll roads in Middlesbrough were abolished.
Following this the toll bar here apparently saw use as accommodation for railway workers at the near by Cargo Fleet railway station.
In film photography a double exposure or multi exposure is where intentionally or unintentionally multiple images are captured on the same piece of film. This usually works best with a lower light sensitive film thus allowing more exposures.
Anyhow this is a little different, this is an overlapping exposure, where the film was only advanced part way, to create an overlapping image effect. Here the original image was taken to ensure there would be some darkness to the lower left, then a guessed advance of the film made (with the winder disengaged for some of it), then I lined up an image that would hopefully expose again in the darker area of the first image.
At the start of November 2020 I met with Gary Philipson, presenter on BBC Tees. I had been contacted by his producer, Lindsay, who had become interested in this site, the local history I celebrate and am passionate about, my posts, photographs and the concept of home and being in your rightful place – really psychogeography in itself – how your surroundings effect you as a person and your emotions.
So I met Gary, who we later found went to the same school as my mam, outside South Bank railway station. Then myself, him and a 2 meter pole with a mic on the end of it went for a socially distanced walk along the black path, pausing at points to natter away.
Henry Pease apparently sitting on a hillside saw a prophetic vision of a town rising in front of him on the clifftop.
I found his likeness atop the cliffs, looking at the Pease brick buildings which his prophetic vision foretold
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I KNOW I AM HOME 