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Streetgate - Farming
East Farm is in the process of being developed by John Moody as an Executive Housing Estate.
Streetgate Farm. The farm covered 110 acres but 7 acres were lost to industry when Watergate Colliery was built. It seems that prior to the First World War there was a clause in the farm tenancy agreement that a certain amount of corn had to be grown to provide pheasants from the estate woodlands with food and shelter.
Errington Swan (1893-1967) regularly took battens of straw by horse and cart to the Teams Glassworks in the 1920s, the straw being used for packing. During hay making time, he set off about 6 in the morning to take refreshment to his father James Errington Swan, (he was the farmer at Ouselaw in the 1890s), working in an outlying field cutting hay (with a scythe) since early dawn. Errington then returned to the farmhouse for his own breakfast before making his way to school. The farm produced 8-10 ricks of oats and wheat and in the 1940s Thompson of Lanchester and Parky Bates of Iveston, came with their machines to thresh the corn. About 9 people were needed for the operation and local farmers helped each other out. In the late 1940s the farm had 15 dairy cows and Bobby Swan was one of the last of the local farmers to go around with a horse drawn milk float.
The float, which carried the drum, had a step up at the rear. Customers came out with a jug and Bobby filled it by pouring from a measure. The farmhouse was renovated in 1991 and the byres, stables and poultry houses removed to make way for residential development (Streetgate Park).
Taking home the hay
at Swan's farm.
Streetgate Nursery. The nursery at Cheviot View was started by Alf Douglas, in 1940, who formerly had worked at Marley Hill Colliery but was brought up at the Lingyfine Garden. Ivy Cottages stood where the glasshouses are now. There were 4 cottages in the short row in 1858 but by the late 1930's only 2 were left. In the 1920's the Chambers family lived here and kept a few goats. Mr Chambers was almost blind and carried a basket round the neighbourhood selling tea, biscuits and yeast in connection with the Braille Association. His brother was a piano tuner. Mrs Evelyn Hall has run Cheviot Nurseries since.
Comments
Bob Swan(Senior) was my uncle married to my father's sister Nellie. They were engaged to be married for over 10 years and when her engagement ring snapped Aunt Nellie asked my mother what it signified, her reply was"Time you were married" but I understand the lengthy engagement was due to the farm income not being sufficient to support an addition to the family. I recollect that Bob's brother and two sisters (all unmarried) lived off the farm.
I used to go to the farm regularly to play with my cousin Bobby and remember in about 1941, at the height of the German bombing raids on Tyneside, I was taken to the farm for a holiday away from the bombs and the first night I was there a stick of bombs dropped across Sunniside and I fell down the stairs with the shock of the noise of the exploding bombs. My father arrived the next morning to take me back home but I refused to go saying "They'll not come back again". I remember helping to deliver milk that morning with the milk float and seeing the devastation caused by one of the bombs that blew off the first floor of a house on the council estate at Sunniside and believe a man was killed.
My uncle and aunt lived in 1 Shepton Cottages next to the Rose public house called the Rose, Shamrock and Thistle in those days or the Shamrock by the locals.
Posted by: Stan McRae at November 22, 2007 11:13 AM
Thanks for the comments about Bob Swan and Sunniside and Streetgate.
Posted by: Whickham Web Wanderes at November 23, 2007 11:09 AM