Q I AM doing an investigation into Teesside Park and Stockton High Street and would like to know when did Teesside Park open and when did Stockton first get a high street of any note? - Allyd Roberts, Stockton.

A STOCKTON began as an Anglo-Saxon settlement overlooking the Tees. From early times the Bishops of Durham owned a hall here which was first referred to as a castle in 1376. The castle remained standing until its demolition by Oliver Cromwell in 1652. Stockton was utilised as a port by the Prince Bishops, although they generally preferred to use Hartlepool.

The street we now know as Stockton High Street was almost certainly in existence by 1310 when a market was established there, but it was called the Market Place. When the Town Hall was built in 1735 the street was still known as the Market Place and it was still called the Market Place in 1759 when John Wesley witnessed a press gang raid while visiting the town. I am uncertain when it officially became the High Street, but it was increasingly fashionable to call prominent town streets High Streets at this time.

The name High Street at Stockton may date from the late 18th or early 19th century. Stockton grew rapidly during the 1600s and 1700s and by 1727 it had overtaken Yarm as the main port on the Tees. As it continued to grow, the renaming of the market place as the High Street reflected the town's increasing prestige.

Middlesbrough, which was little more than a farm in 1801 and had a population of only 25 people, grew rapidly with the extension of the Stockton and Darlington Railway in 1830 and eclipsed Stockton's status as the chief port on the Tees before the end of the 19th century.

When the Teesside Development Corporation began the development of the Mandale area for shopping and leisure at Teesside Park in 1989, some local councillors and businesses were concerned about the future of Stockton's town centre. The Mandale area, lying in a loop of the River Tees, had been separated from Stockton by a short canal cut across the loop in 1810. This made Mandale geographically a part of Thornaby. Stockton racecourse was situated here from 1855 until its closure in 1981 but, eight years later, it became the site of the new development where the first shops opened in 1990. A major extension to the site followed in 1993.

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