Dunston Engineering Works. Steam vehicles made by this company, including one or more made for the Newcastle Breweries.

HIL Electrics Possibly located at the top of Whickham Bank, founded in the 1950s and preparing to supply Epsilon Electric Mini Buses for the Sydney Olympics in 2000.

Any information, please telephone Mr Pelton at 01748 818703.

Thank you.

2. Does anyone have any information about actress Victoria Hopper who once lived in Dunston? We understand her parents emigrated to Canada where she was born and then returned. Can anyone confirm this or give us any information?

3. We are busy making a DVD about Swalwell and are seeking people with memories of life in Swalwell in the twentieth century and who are willing to be interviewed. Please contact
info@webwanderers.org

Click to enlarge images.

Photo No. 1. Alison Woodcock is the little gilrl with Marion Kenny (or Kelly), possibly in 1930s, house in outskirts of Whickham, near river/stream.
Photo No. 2. On front lawn of same house as previous picture, with Ethel McPherson with daughter Mary and Marion Kenny (or Kelly) at right.

Any other photographs of Whickham, or of Dunston, Byermoor, Streetgate, Sunniside or Swalwell, 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

The correspondent who originally asked us to try and identify these pictures has now emailed to say that he has done this himself.
His email reads:
Hi,
I sent you two photos of a Whickham house and you kindly posted them in the hope of someone being able to identify them, no joy, but for your website records I have managed to find out where it was on my own. The house belonged to Henry and Mary Ann (not Marion as my grandma remembered) Kelly, and was on Burnthouse Lane - I'm presuming it is now demolished. I've since noticed that there are a few reminiscences on your website of the Kelly's of Burnthouse Lane. Mary Ann was my great grandmother's cousin and my grandma and her cousins regularly used to go stay there.

Thanks again for trying,

Dan

info@webwanderers.org

A 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.

'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"

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

"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 in column to right (Podcasts - Memories of Clayton and Davie).

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

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