Slipping into tranquility

Slipping into tranquility

Then in 1963 - Mrs Laura Pearson leaned over her small garden gate and watched the giant excavators toiling on the nearby Ladgate Lane by-pass. “It won’t be long now” she sighed thankfully. “Then perhaps we will get a bit of peace.”

When she and her husband named this small roadside farm Slip Inn they didn’t bargain on people taking the title quite literally. But slip in they did, in every conceivable manner.
“There have been hundreds of accidents on this bend” said Mrs Pearson. “We have had folk in the beck, over the bridge, in the front garden. The corner of the house has been knocked down and we have lost count of the times our railings have been levelled.

In fact at times the Pearson’s dwelling house has looked more like a cottage hospital. During our stay here I’ve had to set legs, bathe wounds and generally administer comfort. There has been one fatal accident on the bend when a sack of potatoes fell off a wagon and killed a pedestrian”

The sitting of the farm cottage has caused concern amongst road users for many years. It is at the foot of a steep winding hill and almost projects into the road making a blind tight bend.

“It has always been a busy road “ said Mrs Pearson. “ But in recent years the roar of the traffic has become almost unbearable”

Now with the Ladgate Lane improvements getting under way, the ancient farmstead is to be by-passed.

About 100 years ago Slip Inn was a country pub. Legend has it that an Irishman was kicked to death in a brawl on the bridge, and after this the pub’s licence was withdrawn.

Now in 1999 - Slip Inn farm was demolished in 1963. The site today (almost opposite the municipal golf club in Ladgate Lane) is a picnic site. The by-pass now forms an integral part of Teesside’s infrastructure and has become an important feeder road for the housing estates of Tollesby and Easterside.

This article appeared in the January 1999 edition of Now & Then Magazine
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