In about 1958 our extended family enjoyed a motoring holiday, of the camping kind, down to and around the south of England. My memory tells me that the midland town of Leicester was the tidiest town I had ever seen. I am not sure whether it is currently living up to that. I also recall the warm Kentish camping fields and balmy evenings.
A murmur had gone around the crowd outside Buckingham Palace; cars were being positioned by the palace door, one of them dressed with the royal standard. There was a gentle ripple of animated excitement. The Queen and Prince Philip were then driven out the gate barely ten feet from where we stood. What a surprise.
A day later Dickie Hope the Ushaw Moor overman, my grandfather, was walking along Downing Street at a time when such a thing was possible; out popped a man from number ten called Harold Macmillan - prime minister no less - Dickie waved and Harold waved back; it was two Tories in brief communication. I am 95% sure that Dickie was a Tory so let us go with that. Harry was!
Harry and Dick led two very different lives; both experienced privilege and power but only one walked the international stage; the other observed, arbitrated, and instructed dirty dust covered men hundreds of feet below Durham's earth.
Harry had eight years start on Dick but it was not a real race because one was destined for Eton and Oxford, just as the other was destined for an an elementary school in Sleetburn. As Ridley pointed out in 1999,
'Mother Nature has plainly not entrusted the determination of our intellectual capacities to the blind fate of a gene or genes; she gave us parents, learning, language, culture and education to program ourselves with'.
That being the case Dick was not even in the stalls at Epsom but he was a lovely and honourable person, just like his parents and siblings.
WB
Sunday, 13 February 2011
Friday, 11 February 2011
Mary Knox in Ushaw Moor 1924-1926
Here is another little gem from the internet. It relates to an extract from the memoirs of Mary Knox nee Hoban and you can access the full memoir by putting - Mary Knox nee Hoban Ushaw Moor - into google [UK version]. It's currently second on the google page.
Check OUT Mary's memoirs <<<HERE>>>
1924 - 26 was a time of depression, in fact the miners strike was the summer I came home to a time of great want. It was a wonderful summer & the young miners who had spent most of their lives in the bowels of the earth, took tents & crowded to the beaches. They lived on chips & corned beef pies - then finally returned to conditions worse than when the strike began. When I finished at college I was lucky to get a job at Ushaw Moor, many didn't get work. I worked that last week in August & got £3, the first money in the house for mother, other than that father had earned helping farmers. My brother dug for coal in the old heaps beside the pit & sold it to help. The live stock we had and the gardens helped to feed the bairns & grandma was always there with a helping hand. Aunt Lizzie was teaching, they were in the money. People had much more respect for teachers in those days.
WB
Check OUT Mary's memoirs <<<HERE>>>
1924 - 26 was a time of depression, in fact the miners strike was the summer I came home to a time of great want. It was a wonderful summer & the young miners who had spent most of their lives in the bowels of the earth, took tents & crowded to the beaches. They lived on chips & corned beef pies - then finally returned to conditions worse than when the strike began. When I finished at college I was lucky to get a job at Ushaw Moor, many didn't get work. I worked that last week in August & got £3, the first money in the house for mother, other than that father had earned helping farmers. My brother dug for coal in the old heaps beside the pit & sold it to help. The live stock we had and the gardens helped to feed the bairns & grandma was always there with a helping hand. Aunt Lizzie was teaching, they were in the money. People had much more respect for teachers in those days.
WB
Happy Days For Most Of Us
I have seen several postings on the site that finish with the phrase 'happy days'. Well they were happy times and especially so for young people with few worries. With justification we can trot out blackberry pies, the beck, little silvery fish, and custard tarts. Not forgetting ginger beer and its sister,wine. Note the emphasis on food and drink. We can move on to tinsel, pit socks and then ease into Christmas Day. I know that Margaret, Paul's mother, has always liked Christmas and has taken that feeling right into the 21st century.
Happy days can be dangerous though: I recall climbing the local quarry and very nearly falling down it at the age of ten. I can also recall my back pass - under pressure - to our keeper David Gerrard in the school cup final of April 1959; it could easily have gone past him for an own goal, but it didn't! It might have let Waterhouses Modern back into the game although I think we would still have won.
Adults were not always so carefree and words that come to mind are: tiredness, hire purchase, injury, death and a potential pit disaster. There are other words that jump out e.g. depression, mental health and hopelessness. The mining village was supportive of its own - in terms of kind words, supplying material goods and even money, but often there was little understanding of severe depression and other mental problems. If one was acutely depressed, and somewhat withdrawn, very likely you would find yourself as a day patient or inmate of Winterton Hospital. Some people associated mental afflictions with the word Sedgefield.
'You ought to be in Sedgefield'
You will put me in Sedgefield if you do not shut up' or some variant.
The hospital in question was Winterton. It does not exist now but I recall it because my mum - she was severely depressed for a time but not in anyway mental- was a patient there for two spells.
If my memory serves me right the hospital had several problems: depressed patients mixed with mental patients and there was little chance for the depressed to attend social events; the upshot for some of them was that they got more depressed. Pills and electric shock treatment were only short term fixes. Electric shock treatment invariably led to memory loss and that took a lot of time to sort out; along the way it brought more stress and unhappiness - for friends and family as well as the patient.
For goodness sake let's end on a happy note. Yes indeed, I will happily proclaim that in the early 50s I got two train sets on the same Christmas day owing to a parental mix up. Oh you say, I have mentioned that before. Sorry. Well what about my love for, and delight in, steamed spotted dick. Surely I have not mentioned that in the past???. Tongue. Cheek.
WB
Happy days can be dangerous though: I recall climbing the local quarry and very nearly falling down it at the age of ten. I can also recall my back pass - under pressure - to our keeper David Gerrard in the school cup final of April 1959; it could easily have gone past him for an own goal, but it didn't! It might have let Waterhouses Modern back into the game although I think we would still have won.
Adults were not always so carefree and words that come to mind are: tiredness, hire purchase, injury, death and a potential pit disaster. There are other words that jump out e.g. depression, mental health and hopelessness. The mining village was supportive of its own - in terms of kind words, supplying material goods and even money, but often there was little understanding of severe depression and other mental problems. If one was acutely depressed, and somewhat withdrawn, very likely you would find yourself as a day patient or inmate of Winterton Hospital. Some people associated mental afflictions with the word Sedgefield.
'You ought to be in Sedgefield'
You will put me in Sedgefield if you do not shut up' or some variant.
The hospital in question was Winterton. It does not exist now but I recall it because my mum - she was severely depressed for a time but not in anyway mental- was a patient there for two spells.
If my memory serves me right the hospital had several problems: depressed patients mixed with mental patients and there was little chance for the depressed to attend social events; the upshot for some of them was that they got more depressed. Pills and electric shock treatment were only short term fixes. Electric shock treatment invariably led to memory loss and that took a lot of time to sort out; along the way it brought more stress and unhappiness - for friends and family as well as the patient.
For goodness sake let's end on a happy note. Yes indeed, I will happily proclaim that in the early 50s I got two train sets on the same Christmas day owing to a parental mix up. Oh you say, I have mentioned that before. Sorry. Well what about my love for, and delight in, steamed spotted dick. Surely I have not mentioned that in the past???. Tongue. Cheek.
WB
One For Alfie - It All Started With A Fall Down The Pit Shaft
I was having a look on the internet to see whether or not I could find some inquest details relating to my great aunt Ada's first husband, Harold Swift; he was killed owing to his 300 feet fall down New Brancepth pit shaft in 1940; during the search process, and not to make light of Harold's demise, I stumbled myself. Right into family photographs relating to the Rothwell's, McGovern's, Clark's, Richards' and more! It may be that Alfie has already see them - they may even be on site for all I know - but hopefully we will hear!
If you google - New Brancepeth 1940 - up come Dave and Lizzie Richards. Alternatively it can be got to by Flickr vegaways photostream - once in put Rothwell into the search box.
Absolutely sensational for Alfie - maybe. Interesting for all of us anyway.
Check out Dave and Lizzie Richards on FLICKR <<<HERE>>>
WB
If you google - New Brancepeth 1940 - up come Dave and Lizzie Richards. Alternatively it can be got to by Flickr vegaways photostream - once in put Rothwell into the search box.
Absolutely sensational for Alfie - maybe. Interesting for all of us anyway.
Check out Dave and Lizzie Richards on FLICKR <<<HERE>>>
WB
Thursday, 10 February 2011
Allotment History, A Brief History of Allotments in the UK
In the UK, allotments are small parcels of land rented to individuals usually for the purpose of growing food crops. There is no set standard size but the most common plot is 10 rods, an ancient measurement equivalent to 302 square yards or 253 square metres.
The history of allotments can be said to go back over a thousand years to when the Saxons would clear a field from woodland which would be held in common. Following the Norman conquest, land ownership became more concentrated in the hands of the manorial lords, monasteries and church. The reformation in the 1540s confiscated much of the church lands but they were transferred via the crown to the lords.
In the late 1500s under Elizabeth I common lands used by the poor for growing food and keeping animals began to be enclosed dispossessing the poor. In compensation allotments of land were attached to tenant cottages. This is the first mention of allotments
via Allotment History, A Brief History of Allotments in the UK.
Did you or anyone you knew have an allotment in Ushaw Moor and Deerness Valley, what did you grow ? , did you have any livestock ? , did u show leeks ?
Share your memories of your allotment with us.
Sunday, 6 February 2011
9 + [11x3] = 42
Back in 1957 Harry Barlow was in the habit of testing our mental arithmetic on a Friday afternoon. He would shout out sums like the one above [obviously without the answer] and the first pupil to put up their hand and answer correctly was allowed to go home; it often meant that I got home about three quarters of an hour before school finished for the weekend - others also did well out of it!
Let us have a little stop at number 9: Robert Blenkinsopp and his wife Margaret, together with their two sons, lived at number 9 East Terrace in 1901.
Now for three 11's of that time: 11 Temperance Terrace was occupied by a young married couple - John and Isabella Marshall with their young kiddie Margaret. Meanwhile 11 Ladysmith was occupied by Bill Potter, his wife Margaret and their two children William and Robert. Finally 11 East Terrace was lived in by Bob and Isabel Kirby with their five children.
That leaves the number 42. To my surprise I could not locate anyone living at house number 42 in Ushaw Moor in 1901, although at that time some houses were unnumbered and no doubt one or two of them would have been 42 had they got around to numbering! I lived at 42 Whitehouse Court in the 50s, rather than 1901, which accounts for my ability to write this post.
Paul Burgess of the Independent newspaper reminds us that England beat West Germany 4-2 in 1966; Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland had 42 illustrations and Elvis Presley died at the age of 42.
Having composed what is probably the most boring post of 2011 I am ready for an early night - and 40 +2 winks.
WB
Let us have a little stop at number 9: Robert Blenkinsopp and his wife Margaret, together with their two sons, lived at number 9 East Terrace in 1901.
Now for three 11's of that time: 11 Temperance Terrace was occupied by a young married couple - John and Isabella Marshall with their young kiddie Margaret. Meanwhile 11 Ladysmith was occupied by Bill Potter, his wife Margaret and their two children William and Robert. Finally 11 East Terrace was lived in by Bob and Isabel Kirby with their five children.
That leaves the number 42. To my surprise I could not locate anyone living at house number 42 in Ushaw Moor in 1901, although at that time some houses were unnumbered and no doubt one or two of them would have been 42 had they got around to numbering! I lived at 42 Whitehouse Court in the 50s, rather than 1901, which accounts for my ability to write this post.
Paul Burgess of the Independent newspaper reminds us that England beat West Germany 4-2 in 1966; Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland had 42 illustrations and Elvis Presley died at the age of 42.
Having composed what is probably the most boring post of 2011 I am ready for an early night - and 40 +2 winks.
WB
Tuesday, 1 February 2011
Words That Dance Off The Laptop Into The Silent Clouds
Although I have provided a steady stream of articles since April 2006 the 'feedback' has been sparse. The comment boxes often gather dust. The silence is sometimes unnerving.
My posts vary from the informative snippet to the pompous piece but I have got something out of them; my research skills have improved as has my style, even if it is only from a bad one to the nearly good! But what do you get out of the articles - if anything?
I seldom get a criticism even though I am sometimes a bit of a know all that in reality knows very little. Come on rip into my pompous pontificating and let me know what you think.
WB
My posts vary from the informative snippet to the pompous piece but I have got something out of them; my research skills have improved as has my style, even if it is only from a bad one to the nearly good! But what do you get out of the articles - if anything?
I seldom get a criticism even though I am sometimes a bit of a know all that in reality knows very little. Come on rip into my pompous pontificating and let me know what you think.
WB
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