VICTORIA GARESFIELD - my village that was
My memories ….
My name is William Thompson - Billy as I have always been called - and these are my memories; the story of my life as a boy, a story of hard yet happy times growing up in the rural, colliery village of Victoria Garesfield, today remaining almost all but in name.
My memories ….
My name is William Thompson - Billy as I have always been called - and these are my memories; the story of my life as a boy, a story of hard yet happy times growing up in the rural, colliery village of Victoria Garesfield, today remaining almost all but in name.
The winter of 1942 saw me born into a family of miners on both my mother’s and father’s side. My father, John Thompson, a local man from nearby Rowlands Gill, the Gill Bottoms to be precise, was a miner, as had been his father, grand father and great grandfather. My mother was Ida Featherstone. The Feathersones, initially in the lead mines, had originated from Yorkshire, presumably moving North in search of better working and living conditions at a time when work in the coal industry was relatively easy to find. My grandfather Gilbert Featherstone was a miner at Victoria Garesfield and on my mother's side the Minks had been in Victoria Garesfield as early as 1877, from the colliery's early days. And so my fate was decided; my childhood and youth all told would last fifteen years: on 4 January 1957, the very day I turned fifteen, I was to start work at the pit, just like my father, and both my grandfathers had done before me. But let’s start at the beginning and go back to my childhood. |
School...
I started school when I was five, in January 1947. I remember my mother taking me to school on the first day – l was left to my own devices after that. We children who lived in Victoria Garesfield went to Highfield School, a twenty or so minute walk away. The school that had been built in the village in 1883 by the then owners, the Priestman Coal Company, had been closed in 1908 and converted into houses since the nearby village of Whinfield/Highfield, which had grown up around the coke works associated with VictoriaGaresfield, had become bigger than Victoria Garesfield. Our walk to school took us along 'the line' that was used by the locomotives to deliver coal from the colliery to the coke works. This wagon line had been built when the colliery was opened and dated back to 1870. Sometimes we were unable to get to school if the winter were harsh, my earliest memory of such an incident being the terrible snow storms of March 1947, shortly after I had started school. |
One particular memory ...
The severe winter of 1947 also marked the setting for one particular memory which remains ever vivid in my mind. I recall going to the pit yard with my dad who, like all the other miners, had been given a day off that day. With all the village in attendance, a notice board was put up; it read 'This colliery is now managed by the National Coal Board on behalf of the people'. As a small child I was obviously unaware of the enormity of the event, yet the jubilation and raw enthusiasm of the crowd was so tangible it has stayed with me to this day. I also remember a flag being raised on a flag pole, this of course being the blue and white flag of the National Coal Board and the day 'Vesting Day': 1 January 1947; the day that saw the mines shift from private to public ownership. The Labour Government had set up The National Coal Board to administer the coal industry and miners had been promised better working conditions in order to encourage higher productivity. To the miners of Victoria Garesfield, as to those in most mining communities, this was seen as the long-awaited victory of their battle to obtain better pay for their work and greater security for their families. |
Play... and work
After school, Victoria Garesfield and the endless surrounding fields, woods and countryside became our vast playground. Every season brought endless opportunities for our self-made fun and amusement; in winter we would have a great time making 'slidies' and sledging down the countless banks and slopes around about, and spring sent us scouring the woods in search of birds eggs. Summer brought us the long-awaited 'light nights': with my pals from the village - John Wallis, Bobby Allison, Billy Harrison and his brother John, we'd play cricket, 'canons' - which was just knocking sticks off tin cans - and footy. My football wasn’t always a real football; sometimes it was just a pig's bladder that my dad had blown up – and it was just the job! I would often walk up to 'top Garesfield' to play, as one of our favourite places to play football was by the ventilation shaft beside Alexandra and Albert Street, or in the big field where Mr. Bullerwell the farmer kept his cattle. During the summer holidays we would play in Chopwell Wood and go swimming in the River Derwent at nearby Lintzford, where 'table rock', a huge stone jutting out into the river, served as our diving board. Come autumn, it was time for collecting woodnuts and picking blackberries that I would eagerly take home to my mother to make jam. Then, whatever the season, the big oak tree where we had made a swing was a favourite; we would play out for hours on end – without a care in the world and well after it got dark – nothing to be afraid of and always feeling safe in our rural idyll. School holidays were invariably spent trying to earn a bit money. In the summer we'd help the farmer, Mr Lawrence, at Lintzford, get the hay in, and during the autumn holidays we'd go 'tatty' (potato) picking. I used to get five shillings a day plus a bucket of potatoes for every day worked. Carrying those tatties from Lintzford to Garesfield, uphill all the way, was harder than picking them! But I was always pleased of a chance to work, and proud to be able to bring any extra, well-needed money home to give to my mother to help make ends meet. When we got paid at the end of the week, out of the twenty five shillings I earned, my mother would give me one shilling to keep. When I was about 13 my grandma, Annie Featherstone, bought me a second-hand bike; this was used mainly to bring groceries twice a week from Rowlands Gill and earn a little pocket money. I also used to lend it to another Garesfield lad, Gerald Armstrong, in exchange for a few marbles. I loved playing marbles and was really good at 'blobby', where to win all the marbles bet, you had to throw an even number of marbles into a hole in the ground. Throughout the year there were always odd jobs to be had in the village, and I would go along the streets, knocking on doors to find them. 'Putting the coal in' was a common job to come by, as everyone who worked at the pit received a coal allowance. As this was delivered in the street, in front of the coal house in the yard, it then had to be shoveled in, and half an hour of hard work could earn you sixpence! I also had a paper round but I never got to keep what I made as I had two younger brothers, Derek and Dennis, and money was always short. |
Sunday school and the chapel trip...
There was a Methodist chapel in Victoria Garesfield. This had been built in 1885 using bricks donated by the Priestman Coal Company and erected in the main by the voluntary efforts of the men who worked at the pit. In my time the chapel was important for some, less so for others. For me as a lad it meant Sunday school on Sunday. My mother was not a religious woman by any means, but to get me from under her feet she would dress me in my best clothes, comb my hair and send me off with a penny for the collection. I readily attended although I must admit, always with an ulterior motive as you had to go to Sunday school to be able to go on the annual summer trip organised by the chapel – a real big event! We looked forward to this all year; a bus would be hired and off we’d go, ‘happy as Larry’, sitting on its wooden seats for a day to the coast. We often headed for Whitely Bay or Alnmouth, but my favourite destination was Bamburgh. Other events organised by the chapel also brought variety into the lives of us children, and offered rare treats that I remember well. The Harvest Festival in the autumn was a major event; everyone would take something - whatever they could; Vegetables from the allotments were always plentiful - I once took a tin of soup - then everything would be laid out on a table and the chapel-goers would place bids for whatever they wanted, the money raised going to the chapel funds. At Christmas there would always be a party at the chapel with dancing. The real highlight for me, however, was the jelly and custard that was served there. Sunday was also a day I looked forward to, as this was the day Figiolini's ice cream van would come down from Chopwell. Two words suffice to describe the taste of that cornet I got now and then with money from my gran: 'heaven sent'! |
My house, my home ...
Although my family lived in a stone house at 50 Victoria Terrace, as a young lad I lived mostly at my grandparents' - Gilly and Annie Featherstone's house in 'the Ducketts' as they were known. A 'duckett' in local terms, possibly a local pronounciation of 'dovecote", was a wooden shed in which homing pigeons were kept - a pigeon cree -, the link presumably being the fact that these houses were also made of wood and similar in design (or lack of). There were two rows of wooden houses, the top ducketts and the bottom ducketts. A duckett was a small, single-storey, basic house provided rent-free to men employed at the colliery. The house, about 28 square meters all told, stood on a brick base and, as already mentioned, was made of wood. The cavity between the inner and outer walls was filled with sand which provided excellent insulation - in winter the house was always red hot - and it had a grey, slate roof. Of the simplest design, it had a door and window to the front and back and two rooms: a living room and a bedroom, no bathroom, with a small adjoining yard, approximately five square meters, and an outside toilet. The living room with its range oven was the heart of the house. We would fill the fire with coal to heat the house and cook. Baths were taken in a tin bath in front of the fire: the water for the bath also being heated by the fire that was never left to go out. The living room led off to a back ‘scullery’: a kind of kitchen/work room with a 'pantry' which had stone slab shelves and was used to store food that had to be kept cold. When first married, my parents Ida and Johnny Thompson lived at number 40 Victoria Terrace. When they were later allocated a larger, brick-built house at number 50 once the family had grown with the arrival of my two brothers Derek and Dennis, I willingly went to live with my grandma and grandad in their wooden duckett at number 43, because the ducketts were always warm and cosy and I remember always feeling safe there. As was common for workers' houses, ours came with an allotment; a large piece of land where we would grow all our own vegetables such as potatoes; carrots, cabbage, onions, and leeks along with rhubarb and gooseberries for making jam and pies. We also kept hens, ducks, geese and pigs on our allotment and every year we'd kill two pigs from which we’d make ‘black pudding’ and cure the hams and bacon. My mother baked her own bread and also made jam from the blackberries we collected (jam and bread being the staple 'bait' my dad, and later myself, would take to the pit). Mushrooms were also plentiful in the surrounding fields. My mother was a great cook and meals were invariably 'high-carbohydrate' and filling; all the physical work at the pit would quickly burn up the calories, and the cold weather of the North East (about eight months of the year) required hearty eating. My favourite meals were broth, leek and onion suet puddings, mince and dumplings, and dripping (fat kept from fried bacon and sausages) on bread that I often enjoyed for breakfast. As a young lad I think I was very lucky because we never went hungry. |
My mother
That my father had no easy life at the pit is undeniable. Looking back, however, I think my mother's life was no easier, as keeping a miner's home going was no light task; everthing was highly organised and revolved around looking after the every need of her husband and sons. My mother worked all hours of the day, getting up first to prepare bait for the pit, cooking to ensure a hot meal was ready on the table when my father returned home from his shift, keeping the fire stoked up to ensure heating for the house and hot water for a bath and, of course, washing clothes and keeping the house clean. My mother was very house proud, we certainly didnt't have a lot but she prided herself on keeping our clothes and our house spotlessly clean. She would scrub the concrete floors inside the house down on her hands and knees, the steps to our door were white-washed, the yard 'swilled' down, the grate on the fire black-leaded and the nets at our windows washed in 'Dolly Blue' to ensure they were whiter than white. In hindsight, it's not surprising my mother had what sometimes seemed to be a regimental approach to running our home. Certain 'jobs' had to be done on a certain day and nothing could ever disrupt her routine; Sunday was baking day and Monday was washing day so if Christmas day happened to fall on a Monday washing went ahead regardless. Perhaps she organised her week according to the old rhyme which, although its source unconfirmed, is thought to come from the coal mining communities: Wash on Monday, Iron on Tuesday, Bake on Wednesday, Brew on Thursday, Churn on Friday, Mend on Saturday, Go to meeting on Sunday. Saturday was the only day my mother had time to herself when she would take a walk down to Lintzford and catch the bus to Newcastle to do 'a bit shopping'. As the eldest child she often took me along with her, and I delighted in going to Marks and Spencers for dinner, sometimes followed by a visit to Mark Toney's where she would treat me to the ice-cream of all ice-creams; a 'knickerbocker glory'! |
Facilities...
While there had been a grocer's at Prospect House in earlier days, the 1911 census recording a grocer, Mr. Whitfield, there, in my time there were no shops in Victoria Garesfield, the nearest being the 'Co-op' at Hookergate, although for some reason my mother always shopped at 'Walter Wilson's' in Rowlands Gill. The Co-op also had a branch at Rowlands Gill. In addition to food stuffs, it also stocked clothing, domestic utensils and in earlier times miners' work tools, as under private colliery owners miners had to buy their own picks. Members of the Co-op could pay for goods fortnightly or in pay week. Most families were 'self-sufficient' for staples such as bread, eggs, meat (pork and poultry), and vegetables. Thereafter, although there were some shops and a chemist in nearby Rowlands Gill, people relied on the various calling vans from outlying villages, which I recall well: - Joe Cussins, the green grocer from Greenside who came with a horse and cart, - 'Jimmy the Pole's' grocery van, John Lipski being the Polish man who owned the grocery shop in Highfield, - Jack Murray, horse and cart grocer, - Adamson, the butcher from High Spen, - John Thompson, the butcher from Highfield, - Maughan, the baker from Stanley, and - Jack Hawkins, the hardware man from Swalwell, and for me, the most important, as already mentioned, Figliolini's ice cream van from Chopwell driven by John Carrick. The vans would usually call at the village same time, same day every week. Daily visits were of course made by the milkman Billy Gillson from Highfield. Bobby Liddle from the village who was the bookie's runner for Geordie Nevin in Burnopfield, also did a daily round collecting bets on the horses. My mother used to place a sixpence bet every day as this was her only chance of coming by some extra money. |
There was a telephone box in the village located on the main road (Lintzford Road) opposite 'Prospect House'.
Not there in my day, there had also been a post office in Victoria Garesfield as early as 1896 and letters for the village had initially been brought by train to Lintz Green station. Miss Annie Lundy had run the post office in Victoria Garesfield before moving to Rowlands Gill as sub-postmistress when the first post office opened there in 1897. In 1951/1952 buses started to run three times a day from High Spen to Newcastle. To catch the bus, people from Victoria Garesfied had a bus stop by St. Patrick's Church, just past 'top Garesfield'. This involved a ten minute trek up the steep bank, but it was one we all made uncomplainingly - a slightly longer walk down to Lintzford meant we could also catch a bus to Consett. It's interesting to note that one local bus company operating under the fleet name 'Venture' had actually adopted the name of the coach belonging to the owner of the Victoria Garesfield Colliery; the Priestman family lived at Shotley Bridge and travelled to Newcastle daily up to 1939 in a horse-drawn four-in-hand 'Venture' coach - with Priestman's blessing the local bus company adopted the name "Venture" and this survived until the late 1960s. |
Working at the colliery...
I left school at the age of 14 in December 1956, and started work at the pit the day I turned 15 a couple of weeks later. The job had been organised by my parents who were eager to have extra money coming into the house. I thought nothing of this, the pit was my world; a familiar environment, the only one I knew, and any faint hopes I might have had about joining the navy were put aside. I was of earning age and had to help bring money home as what my father earned just didn't stretch far enough. At first I worked on the surface, stacking timber and loading it into tubs that were then sent down into the mine to serve as props: erected to secure the roof as the miners dug into the coal seam. |
At the age of 16, I was legally able to work underground and that's what I did; I became a 'driver', my job consisting of taking the tubs from the putting flat to a big landing area before they were hauled out of the mine. A shift would last seven and a quarter hours and a break would only be taken if or when possible. At Victoria Garesfield there was just one shift: I would start work at eight o'clock, the walk 'in bye' down to the coal seam taking ten minutes or so, and finish at quarter past three. There were no washing facilities at the pit and I remember my dad returning home covered in coal dust and often soaking wet; the ritual after a shift being a bath in the tin bath in front of the fire, clean clothes, a hot meal and sleep.
At 17 I got a job as a 'putter'; this involved taking the empty tubs to the 'hewers' working at the coal face then, once they'd been filled - a tub holding half a ton - attaching to the tub the token of the man who had hewed it, as well as my own, and steering them out of the pit with the help of a pony. My first pony was called Bulla, a good-natured Shetland who was my work-mate for the first two years that I worked underground.In addition to being small yet hearty, seeing as the ceilings were low, the roads rough and sometimes steep, ponies had to be full-bodied, large-boned and short, so Shetlands and Sable Island ponies were popular breeds.
Putters received a minimum wage then they were paid 'by the score'; that's to say by the number of tubs they brought out. At the age of 17 I also made a short-lived attempt to better myself and started night-school to study towards obtaining a qualification which might have allowed me to study further in order to work in management. This was only to last three months or so as it involved travelling to the nearby village of Ryton twice a week, the cost of which took all the one pound 'pocket-money' I received out of my seventeen pound wages - I was willing but unable. And so, following the natural line of progression, for more difficult the work better the pay, as soon as I was 18 I in turn became a 'hewer' and went to work at the coal face. The hewer being the actual coal digger, regardless of the conditions my job was then to loosen the coal from the coal bed. As a hewer I was on 'piece work' which mean I was paid according to the weight of coal I extracted. I would dig coal from the coal seam with a 'windy' (pneumatic) pick - crouched in a few feet of space, often lying on my side, my shoulder propped up against a piece of wood as a support. There was no room to stand upright in the pit, the seams at Victoria Garesfield were only some 17 - 18 inches high - the highest at the 'Vic' seam being 18 - 20 inches. I worked the Victoria seam, just a five minute walk from where I lived. At the start of every shift I would proceed 'in-bye' to report to the deputy who would have checked that the proper air supply was being received and that there was no risk of subsidence. I would then find out where my place of work was and proceed onwards to my cavel (area of coal face) equipped with my lamp on my cap and a couple of blades for my pick. My bait and my bottle of water for the shift would be safely lodged in my coat pocket. Often the roof under which we had to pass was no more than a few feet high. To move forward in this space I had to keep my feet wide apart, my body bent at right angles to my hips and my head held well down with my face turned forward. Once at my cavel I would strip down to my short pants and vest and work would begin; hewing the coal and filling the tubs hour after hour until the end of the shift. In order to make a decent wage I had to fill at least ten tubs of coal per shift; digging out and loading some 5 tonnes of coal. |
When we stopped to eat, this would be on our 'hunkers', that is to say in a crouching position - and 'bait' for me, as for most, was a bottle of water and jam and bread - sometimes I had banana sandwiches. No one ate much underground as the crouching position in which we worked tended to cause indigestion if the stomach were full. On the odd occasion I might have a flask of tea, but flasks broke easily down the pit and were expensive to replace. Conditions underground were invariably cold, wet and damp - my only source of light being the carbine lamp on my helmet.Working in the dark and sometimes seeing very little daylight - especially in winter when it would be dark when I would rise to go to work with night falling soon after I would emerge from the pit - was not something that ever bothered me.
Any absence from work had to be endorsed with a 'sick note' from the doctor and no work meant no pay. In 1962, as I turned 20, the pit at Victoria Garesfield was in its final stages, due to be closed down; I was to move on unsuspecting that the end of my village was nigh and its disappearance imminent. April 13 1962 saw the closure of the pit and in 1965/1966 the colliery buildings were levelled and most of the houses at Victoria Garesfield were classed unfit for habitation and demolished... |
As all the local mines fell to the same fate, I was obliged to travel further and further afield and it was as a deputy official at Monkwearmouth colliery, Sunderland, that I ended my mining days - working there up until 1989 when I was fortunate to be offered early retirement.
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Thus ended my time working at Victoria Garesfield, but not my work as a miner and I was fortunate to be able to remain in the village after the pit closed, living there with my wife and my first two children up until 1967.
After Victoria Garesfield I went on to work at the nearby colliery at Greenside as a face hewer. I didn't stay at Greenside long, however, as it too was soon to be closed. I was to move on to Marley Hill where I worked first as a putter, then as a hewer, finally qualifying as a deputy in 1982 before moving on again. |
The last shift left the pit at Wearmouth on 10 December 1993, and so ended an era of commercial coal mining in the North East - but that's another story...