The Martin’s Memories series has been reproduced with the very kind permission of Tony Martin from his posts on the Old Blaydon and Old Winlaton Facebook group.
OLD Blaydon and OLD Winlaton | MARTIN’S MEMORIES 31 | Facebook
In today’s memory I am going to take you on a walk from St Cuthbert’s Church to Swalwell Bridge as I remember it from the late 1940s and into the 1950s. It is a route where there have been many changes since my childhood and the memories are clearer in some parts than others.
We leave St Cuthbert’s Church at the corner of Church Street and Shibdon Road and proceed eastwards. On our right hand side at the bottom of Blaydon Bank is a small building with a triangular garden in front. This was the original St. Joseph’s School. Next came St Joseph’s Church with the Presbytery and the first street on the right is West View with Mary Street above. On the left hand side , we pass the Rectory and a few houses once known as Victoria Terrace. I remember there was an office here and later a dentist. One time, Billy Swan had a place here. Next we come to the Blaydon County Library in what was once a Primitive Methodist Chapel.
Between West View and East View at the foot of Theresa Street was the Pavilion cinema – the Store Hall as it was called, the Coop baker’s shop and restaurant, the Reading Room and Billiard Hall and other buildings which were part of the Coop complex which filled the entire block. On the right hand side there was a street of houses and then a gap site at the top of Cuthbert and Robinson Streets with only a couple of isolated buildings remaining. On our right hand side we have the Bisley pub at the corner of East View and Shibdon Road and then, between this and Lucy Street, there were a number of shops, including Wilton’s Fish and Chip Shop, Camsell’s hairdressers where Tommy saw to the men and his wife, Vi had the ladies salon. There was a fruit shop and then Smith’s sweet shop before the Trinity Methodist Chapel at the foot of Lucy Street. On the left hand side, there was Murphy’s shop beside a bus stop and this was an isolated building opposite the Bisley. The next building on this side was the Police Station. This was commanded by Inspector Hugill, whose son Geoffrey was in my class at school. After that came Thomas Terrace.
In the next block, lay the Labour Exchange and a couple of houses on the right hand side and a large house between Thomas Terrace and James Street. At the top of James Street was another chapel, which had formerly been an independent congregation until the unification of Methodism in the 1920s. This was used as a hall for the Lucy Street congregation and they often had concerts there. On the right hand side, lay the bottom of Larch Road with a small garden area on the east side where the Council would erect a Christmas tree every year. This had been the site of High Shibdon Farm and there were still bits of the foundations of this to be seen in the 1950s.
Moving eastwards, the next building we come to is the Council Offices between John Street and George Street. In fact the top part of George Street between these and the next building, the Church Hall was not made up when I was a boy. On the right hand lay there was a building opposite the Council Offices which functioned as a cafe and a couple of other rather derelict buildings before we come to an area of park opposite the Church Hall which was accessed by steps from the main road and which stretched to the bottom of Elm Road, where I was taken to practice my hill starts when learning to drive. Next to the Church Hall was Glebe Cottage. This was the home of the caretaker of the hall, who for the whole of my childhood and youth was Sally Dixon. She had taken over from her husband, Matt who had also been verger at the parish church. I can still hear her voice shouting “Des”up the stairs after Des Carter at CLB parade nights.
After her house, there was a path which led to Edward Street. On the right hand side the stretch of road between the bottom of Elm Road and Shibdon Bank had the cemetery, an open field, then the Nurse’s Home before arriving at Blaydon East Modern School at the foot of Shibdon Bank. On the left hand this stretch was dominated in the late 1950’s by the factory built by Churchill Gears. They were responsible for the low wall and landscaping. On the bend after the cemetery, lay Low Shibdon Farm on the left hand side. This was farmed by the Tait family, hence the name Tait’s field for the site of Hazel, Willow and Linden Roads.
In my young days, Shibdon Bank had villas built on the east side. The top house was Dalreoch, owned by Mr Robert Graham snr and then there was a wood which we called Graham’s Wood, On the other side of Shibdon Bank there was no buildings between the Headmaster’s house and Park Terrace. At the foot of Shibdon Bank on the north side of the road there were a cluster of buildings which were all that remained of the former Blaydon Main Colliery which lay here.
The next stretch of the road east had housing on the right hand side between Shibdon Bank and the Avenue. Here at the bottom of the Avenue was Mary Coulthard’s shop in a green hut. On the left hand side on this stretch, there was a small shop on the roadside and a few isolated buildings before one reached what we called the Pit Line. This was the line of the old waggonway and led past the Pit Ponds which were always the haunt of swans, coots, moorhens and wildfowl. These ponds had been formed by water pumped from the mine.
Beyond the Avenue and Swalwell Bridge, the road was dominated by housing with an entrance to Axwell Park, followed by the Dower House and Axwell Park lake. On the opposite side there were open fields between the Pit Line and the Baby Clinic on the corner. These fields were farmed by the farm near Bates Cottages. There was also a small pond here which gave the name Watery Fields to the adjacent land. The baby clinic also housed the school dentist who in the 1950s was Mrs Lockett, the wife of the Headmaster at Blaydon Grammar School. After the baby clinic came the caretaker’s house for the grammar school before the school itself. The entrance nearest Blaydon was the vehicular and girl’s entrance, that nearest Swalwell Bridge was the boy’s entrance. After the grammar school on the left, there was a minor road which led to Bates Cottages and the nearby farm. Shibdon Road officially ended on the west side of Swalwell Bridge where the road to Winlaton Mill on the right and to the Chain Bridge on the left, joined it. In the CLB we had a “round the bridges” run which went from the Church Hall to Swalwell Bridge and then back via the south end of the Chain Bridge, along Chain Bridge Road and up Thomas Terrace back to the hall.