It was once the jewel in Stockton-on-Tees’ crown – an aspirational address where the well-heeled middle classes built their lives in proud red-brick Victorian homes.
But today, Hartington Street stands as a haunting shadow of its former self and a sobering symbol of Britain’s urban decline.
Crippled by crime, ravaged by drug abuse, and hollowed out by absentee landlords, the street is now a grim patchwork of HMOs, halfway houses and temporary accommodation.
Nowhere is that downfall more visible than at No. 15.
Once a grand, three-storey family home, it sold for £300,000 in 2014. Just eight years later, it was snapped up for just £90,000 – a 70% drop in value.
The property’s windows and front door are now boarded up with metal sheets, paint peels from the crumbling sills, and vegetation grows through an upstairs window.
The only tenants left are the pigeons roosting inside.
This pattern repeats across the street. Of around 80 homes, the vast majority have been carved up into HMOs and let out by out-of-town landlords, often with little concern for upkeep or who moves in.
House values have plummeted with properties that once commanded six-figure sums changing hands for as little as £55,000.
Isma Choudhary, 58, whose 85-year-old mother Sagira has lived on Hartington Street for five decades, said the decline has been devastating for long-standing residents.
She said: ‘It’s a shame. It used to be a beautiful road.
‘My mum has lived here for 54 years, since she came from Kenya. It was the first house she ever bought.
‘They’re big houses and they’d get a good price if they were anywhere else. If this was London, it’d probably go for a million.
‘But I can’t imagine they’re going for very much now and when the house does come to be sold, there’s going to be a big loss.
‘We keep trying to encourage my mum to move out of the area, into a better place, but she says no.
‘She knows she’ll never get a house this size anywhere else if she sells. She won’t be able to afford it.
‘Really, she should have sold up years ago.’
Pointing to former family homes turned into HMOs, Ms Choudhary added: ‘There’s been a lot of change. There are only about four families down here now.
‘A lot of people don’t want to stay here anymore. Some of them have young kids and there are people outside using drugs.
‘Next door was an Asian family who sold up about six months ago. That’s empty at the moment.
‘At No. 57, God knows how many people they’ve put in there. There must be 20-odd people in there.
‘On an evening, there’s ten cars and two vans parked up. I came home at half-eight last night and couldn’t park anywhere near the house.
‘Before, I could always park outside.’
According to official sales data, boarded-up No. 15 had sold for £300,000 in 2014.
But in 2021, it was listed for auction with a guide price of just £65,000 with sales blurb detailing its partial conversion ‘with a view to providing 9 self-contained studios’.
Its owners, based in Ayr, Scotland, secured the house for £90,000.
A 1975 covenant on the house prohibiting actions that might ‘lessen or depreciate’ neighbouring property values appears to read with bitter irony.
Dani Keith, 37, who lives on the street with her husband Tim, 38, and four children, knows a woman who grew up in the former family home.
Ms Keith said: ‘We actually went to church with a lady that lived here as a kid.
‘She’s in her 70s or 80s now. She’s visited us and she’ll walk up and down the street.
‘She gets sad because the house means something to her.
‘It’s been like that for five years now.’
Rightmove data, based on official government house sales logs, paints a bleak picture for Hartington Road.
No. 28, a seven-bed house, was sold for £137,000 in 2007 – but plunged in price by 45% when it sold in October last year for £76,000.
Eight-bed No. 16, sold for £125,000 in 2006. When it was purchased in 2023, its value had fallen 40% to £75,000.
And a flat which sold for £51,000 in 2007 fell 22% to £39,000 when it was bought in 2022.
Nadia Mahsood, 42, has lived on the street for 18 years with her husband, and admitted she was worried by falling property prices.
She said: ‘I want to move but I can’t afford to.’
‘Everybody’s moved. My neighbour, who’s my best friend, moved last year because it’s a very rough, druggie area.
‘There’s lots of drug dealing in public.
‘The property prices have gone down because it’s a rough area. There are many flats here now.
‘Many families have moved out. People don’t like raising their families here but I have no choice.’
Hartington Road has become a hotspot for crime and antisocial behaviour. According to police figures, 2,226 crimes were recorded in Stockton’s town centre, in which the street lies, in six months to April.
Web forums refer to it as ‘vagabond street,’ where ‘residents are usually off their faces on drugs or booze, and that’s at breakfast time’.
‘Honestly, if they moved everyone out, the town centre would improve massively’, one wrote. ‘The amount of times I’ve been asked for booze money at 8am is ridiculous.’
One resident, who gave his name only as Stephen, told Mail Online that he paid £475 a month to live in a ground-floor room, with a tiny kitchenette and WC.
He said: ‘The houses round here used to be worth a fortune but because of the street, no-one wants to live here. It’s one of the worst places to live.
‘There’s a lot of druggies and smack heads. It’s better than watching TV sometimes. There’s always something going on.
‘There’s a Christian family from America living on here, with four kids.
‘I asked them, ‘why the hell are you living down here? It’s a horrible place’.
‘And they said ‘God made us do it’.
‘If God asked me to live down here, I would tell him where to go.
‘I was living in a tent before I lived here. Then I ended up in this s***hole.
‘But if I’d known what it was like I would have stayed in the tent.
‘The police are up and down here like yo-yos.’
Nearby, the family referenced by Stephen told how their missionary work had taken them from North Colorado to Teesside, where they live in a six-bed house bought for just £82,000.
Tim Keith, a team leader with Global Mission Europe, said: ‘The investment we’ve made here in buying the house is less about finance and more in a belief for better things for this community.
‘It’s a different community but it is a community with its own rhythm and rules.
‘Doorbells don’t get used. There’s a lot of shouting, which takes some getting used to.
‘I’ve worked around this estate and from this location for three years, so my sense of what ‘bad’ is a little different.
‘You reach a point where you can see the beauty of the place and don’t see the rubbish that has blended in.’
Mr Keith added: ‘We lived in a community called Denver, North Carolina.
‘Of the top 30 earners of NASCAR, 20 of them had houses within 10 miles of ours. Donald Trump had a home on the lake nearby.
‘It was a very different community. But I actually feel more comfortable here in this community.’
The rise in HMOs has led to concerns from Cleveland Police.
The force recently objected to retrospective planning application for a nine bedsit property, describing it as a ‘modern day doss-house’.
Crime prevention officer Gerry McBride said of the plan for no. 25: ‘It appears to be an attempt by the developer to squeeze as many people into a building as possible.
‘The lack of en-suite facilities for the occupants will result in this operating as a modern day doss-house. There is already a high incidence of HMOs in the nearby area, with which, comes a transient community, bringing with it a host of local additional demands for police and partners.’
Leanne Dixon, 37, moved from the east Yorkshire coast to Hartington Road last year when a house came up for rent suitable for her seven children.
After securing the property sight unseen, she discovered the remnants of a cannabis farm in her attic which had been connected across four neighbouring homes.
Leanne said: ‘People told us not to move here – they said it was full of druggies and alcoholics.
‘But honestly, we’ve had no problems. We don’t mind it at all.
‘It’s not easy finding somewhere big enough and affordable. You can’t rent these kinds of houses anymore unless you’ve got a million quid. They just don’t exist.’
Ms Dixon pays £1,500 per month to rent the property, which initially had been advertised for let as a HMO by a Hong Kong-based landlord.
She said: ‘There aren’t many families on the street. It’s a shame because the houses are big and more suitable for families.
‘When we first moved in last August, every five seconds you could hear sirens going, but now it’s just become background noise.
‘You just get used to it.’
