EVERY community needs symbols of its own identity - its Angel, its bridges, its town clock - just to remind itself who it is, to reassure it that it is more than just an anonymous blob in an indistinguishable mass of humanity.

So there is much disgruntlement in Thornaby this week at Stockton council's decision to sell Thornaby town hall.

It's a fine town hall, smacking of late Victorian authority and Thornaby's separateness. You cross the Tees, from Stockton into Thornaby, from Durham into Yorkshire, and it greets you, angled towards you, a declaration of identity, an announcement that you've arrived. It's a mark of territory, a bricks and mortar equivalent of a dog cocking its leg.

Thornaby is an ancient riverside settlement. It has a 12th Century church to prove it and a legend of antiquity: Robert de Thormodbi was wounded during the Holy Crusades and promised the Virgin Mary he would build a shrine to her, lit by five sanctuary lights, in his parish church if she got him home. She did, and he did, and the five lamps are still part of Thornaby's psyche.

But during the 19th Century, Stockton spilled over onto Thornaby's patch - a dangerous move because, according to local lore, in centuries past when a bridge had been thrown across the Tees, the Thornabians had come to blows with the Stocktonians over the level of tolls.

In 1825, William Smith bravely set up a pottery on the south side and was soon exporting to Rotterdam and Hamburg. But this new, industrial exporting community called itself South Stockton which must have riled the traditional Thornabians.

Old Thornaby and South Stockton grew into one another until - to the outsider at least - they became indistinguishable. By 1892, they had a big enough population to become a municipal entity.

They formed Thornaby Borough Council and built Thornaby Town Hall for £7,000. It showed they'd stepped out of Stockton's shadow. Just like every town proud of its identity, they topped it off with a Potts clock (William Potts being a Darlington clockmaker) to elevate it from municipal offices into a prominent landmark.

Thornaby council lasted until 1968 before getting lost within Teesside and then Cleveland. When Cleveland broke up in 1996, it found itself once again subsumed by Stockton.

Of course, Stockton doesn't need two town halls.

So it is selling one for conversion. To Stockton eyes, this will save the Thornaby landmark from dereliction.

To Thornaby eyes, this is defeat and disappearance, the final sign that it has been relegated from a proud town in its own right into a mere suburb of someone else.

I DO my bit for the environment. I recycle as much as I can. As Richmondshire refuses to collect anything more than paper, I drive to Northallerton, my heavily laden car belching fumes.

My last two visits have ended with disagreements with the recycling staff. I believe that all plastics pumped out by supermarkets bearing the recycling symbol should be recycled. Northallerton, though, will only accept plastic bottles apparently because there's not enough room in the skip for all the plastic people want to recycle.

So now I go to Darlington, a fine tip with a place for everything. Except that on Tuesday morning it was slightly windy. As I turned to leave having deposited the plastic I'd been sorting and hoarding for the last fortnight, a gust whipped across the skip and caught hold of the flimsy plastic trays.

Up, up they soared, and away. Over the fence, and down, down into the water of the neighbouring nature reserve which is populated by coots and geese and swans.

I've really done my bit for the environment. Next week, I'm going to cut out the middle man and toss the lot out of the car window.