MEMORIES 305 in November included a little mystery picture which The Northern Echo’s library claimed was taken in Houndgate, Darlington, sometime in the 1960s.

We really shouldn’t have doubted past Echo librarians.

“It shows No 17 Houndate where my father, Jack Mortimer, had his business as a hairdresser’s sundriesman,” says Hugh Mortimer.

“As the picture shows, the building had a large vaulted cellar with access at street level. I remember British Road Services delivering large glass carboys, packed in straw. They carefully lowered them to the cellar floor where Dad would put on a big rubber apron and gloves and start a production line bottling this noxious smelling liquid – hydrogen peroxide – into various concentrations for sale to hairdressers all over the North-East.”

Carboy is a Persian word meaning a large glass flagon; hydrogen peroxide bleached hair blonde.

“In your photo, the building appears to be boarded up prior to demolition,” says Hugh. “My Dad moved his business to Gladstone Street in the early 1970s.

“He eventually sold the business to a Leeds-based company and in semi-retirement ran a small mail order business from his home in Woodland Road selling double-sided toupee tape. He died in 2000 aged 89.”

Never have the words “double-sided toupee tape” appeared in Memories before.

The hairdresser’s sundriesman’s workshop was cleared in 1969 when the corner of Houndgate and Bull Wynd was opened up to create a little, grassy square in the shadow of Central Hall. Pease House formed one side of the square, and the centrepiece was a fountain moved from Green Park, Coniscliffe Road. The Northern Echo paid for the restoration of the mid-Victorian fountain to commemorate its 100th anniversary, on January 1, 1870.

Pease House is believed to be the birthplace in 1757 of Edward “the father of the railways” Pease who, with George Stephenson, created the Stockton & Darlington Railway in 1825.