A Pictorial Twentieth Century History of Whickham UDC

2-disc DVD of photographs showing:
Byermoor
Dunston Marley Hill Streetgate
Sunniside Swalwell Whickham

is available with most of the images on this website from;

1. Whickham Library

2. Members of Whickham U3A Web Wanderers

3. At the U3A Coffee Mornings and Main Meetings

PRICE £3.00 only in an attractive 2-disc case.

The following has been received as a comment regarding the origins of some Dunston street names.

'Woodside, Knightside, Monkridge, Redesdale, Elsdon, Horsley, Raylees, Rochester, Woodburn, Holmside and Otterburn are all areas within Northumberland National park. They are all historic or Roman areas or town lands contained within the National Park.

If you go up the A68 to Scotland through the National Park you have Woodburn, Rochester and Redesdale, over onto the A696 you have Raylees, Monkridge, Otterburn and Elsdon which has lands called Knightside, Woodside and Horsley.

All these names above are the names of all the Gardens surrounding Knightside Gardens.

Percy and Douglas Gardens;
Percy and Douglas are the two family sides of the battle of Otterburn in 1388.

Battle of Otterburn - Date - 19th August 1388 -
Setting - Otterburn, Northumbria, England
Earl of Douglas (the Black Douglas) of Douglas, Scotland versus Sir Henry Percy of Northumbria

The two old photographs of Dunston shown below were gratefully received from someone who viewed our website.

If YOU have any photographs of Dunston, or of Byermoor, Streetgate, Sunniside, Swalwell, or Whickham from anytime in the twentieth century we'd love to have a copy to include on our website. We are particularly looking for pictures of the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, though any period would be welcome.

Just email them to:

info@webwanderers.org



Grace Street, Dunston
Workers at Taylor Pallister

My Early Life

“I was born the 21st December 1921. I lived at 16 Clavering Avenue, Dunston. It was a two bed-roomed upstairs flat and in those days, families all lived close together. My Gran lived in a flat the same as ours at the top of the street, it was number 130. Now my Aunt Jean lived at the bottom of the street at number 14. Now times in those days were very hard in the 1920s, there was very little work and people used to stand around the street corners in groups hoping they might get some little job to do for a few coppers. My father in a way was lucky now, lucky because he was a miner and in those days miners used picks and shovels to dig out the coal. They didn’t have machines like they have now. No pithead baths. They used to come home from work black dirty and wet with the coal dust. My father had been right through the 1914-18 war and very few men lasted that long. Unfortunately he had got gassed when he was in the trenches and it had left him with a very bad stomach and very poor health and in those days if you were off work sick someone would take your job off you so you had to work it doesn’t matter how bad you were so many mothers had to work. We had to help the family by taking in washing, making things, going out to work anything or anywhere to get money to exist on.

My mother was a charwoman she used to go down to the Cross Keys every morning and scrub out the bar. I remember getting a ride on her back while she scrubbed the bar floors then, when she had finished, she would come back from work, come home, get changed and then go back to the Cross Keys that was about eleven o’clock because she was a barmaid. Now my mother’s aunt was the manageress of the Cross Keys so that’s how she helped mother out so mother worked from seven o’clock in the morning until ten thirty at night. That was when all the bars closed.

Now I started school in 1926 that was the time of the General Strike and all of the men in the country came out on strike. They came out for more money, as they couldn’t live on the wages they got. It was a terrible time for everyone; people were dying because they had nothing to eat. Finally the bosses forced the men back to work because they couldn’t stand and let their family starve to death. So for the next few years things were very slow to get back to normal. By the early thirties you could see a glimmer of hope."

To read the rest of Noel Garvin's story go to Memories - see link at column to right.

A one man ferry once existed near Derwenthaugh, crossing the Tyne from the Delta works (Raines) to Paradise at Benwell in Newcastle. It was run by the Sadler family, some of whom lived at that time in South Benwell. This was the same family connected with the boat builder's yard in Dunston.

The ferry mainly carried workers back and forth across the river.On one occasion Mr Sadler was awarded the Royal Humane Societie's medal for saving a man from drowning. That part of the family also ran The Boathouse Pub on Scotswood Road in Newcastle.

http://www.windynookprimary.org/

This is a link to the website of the school we visited on January 19th 2009 as part of the That Was Then project.

That Was Then, is a Lottery funded Local History project led by Whickham Web Wanderers in partnership with Beamish Museum and Gateshead City Learning Centre.

That Was Then aims to encourage Key Stage 2 pupils to explore Twentieth Century Life and their local history from a number of different perspectives; Lifestyles, World War II, Leisure Activities, the role of women during World War II, and other topics.

Continue reading "That Was Then" »

We need photos and reminiscences of the area from the 60s and 70s. Where were you? What were you doing? What was happening? In particular, we only have a few images from the 60s. Go get that box of photos and see if you can help us out!

Use the Comments link below to contact us.