Kieran Carter's 'North East Heritage Library'

I know I've mentioned Kieran Carter's adventures in local history before (and will, no doubt, do so again), but if you're interested in any aspect of the history of the top right-hand corner of England you really should be a regular visitor to the young man's excellent 'North East Heritage Library' (NEHL). There are two ways in: with the homepage proper being here, and the Patreon gateway here.

Kieran is a lovely chap and his endeavours remind me of my own efforts to popularise the subject matter through my old mail order magazine, The North-Easterner, during 1994-2004. That all seems like a very long time ago now, and I know there are still a few of you out there who subscribed to the journal (you know who you are!). Unlike me and my old-school launch in the mid-1990s, Mr Carter is having to deal with the intricacies of the digital age. I started with a typewriter with no wordprocessing capabilities - and I didn't even have access to the burgeoning Internet until a year into my venture!

OK, then, enough of the bad old good old days. 

I was prompted to mention the NEHL again on account of a couple of Newcastle-related articles I have recently spotted there. The first is a sideways look at the town's famous (infamous?) siege of 1644 by Miriam Bibby - a fellow Novocastrian and far better qualified than me when it comes to the study of history. Then there was a more recent look at outsiders' views on Novocastrians through history by Sue Hope, who herself has a long history of writing in the field.*

Anyway, I just thought I'd point out the existence of the NEHL on the off chance that you may not have yet come across it. And do try to offer Kieran your support by joining his band of Patreon followers. There are several levels of financial support you can offer - and being once myself in desperate pursuit of such support during my publishing days I can fully appreciate what a struggle it can be at times. Kieran is young, keen and remarkably knowledgeable - so let's reward him with a bit of support.

* Readers may be interested in my own published booklet on the subject - see left-hand column for further info.

The Morpeth Olympic Games

 

As you know, my wife and I have recently moved to Morpeth, and, not knowing a great deal about the town's history, I am keen to find out as much as I can about the topic in double-quick time. I don't want to overload you with Morpeth stuff in the coming weeks and months, but I was particularly taken with the tale of the Morpeth Olympic Games. 

Unbelievably, this was a professional sporting gathering that took place in the market town from the 1870s through to the 1950s, with big money prizes up for grabs. It wasn't always known as the 'Olympics', but the term was adopted by the event organisers in the 1880s to add a layer of lustre to proceedings. And this was before the modern-day Olympics were revived in 1896. Once again, then, the Great North-East was ahead of the game!

In my search for information on the athletic shenanigans upon the banks of the Wansbeck I came across an excellent article by Jack Brodie in the Inside Morpeth Magazine of Aug/Sept 2024. It's on pages 14-15 and can be found here. Further detail can also be found in Tony Henderson's piece on the ChronicleLive website; and there is even a YouTube video to enjoy.

It all sounds rather splendid. Isn't the history of the North-East just full of surprises?

Charlton Heston's Geordie Roots

Overhearing a conversation the other day between my wife and a friend, I heard Angie re-iterate (for the umpteenth time) that her favourite film was Ben-Hur, the 1959 effort starring Charlton Heston. My better half loves this movie, and, I think, fancied the lead actor no end. Her friend then recalled that she'd seen the American star perform at Newcastle's Theatre Royal back in 1988 as Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons. Angie was suddenly overcome with barely-concealed envy.

Her jealousy soon, though, turned to anguish as her friend checked the fine detail on the internet, only to find that the great man had actually called into St.Thomas More School in her home town of Blaydon during the same visit. She had no idea that she'd come so close to her idol!

Heston, it turns out, was in the North East to appear in the famous play on the theatre's opening night following the building's 20-month closure and refurb. The grand occasion took place on 11th January 1988. He is understood to have had a bit of a soft spot for the Toon, claiming that he loved the place due to it having 'so much history'. I am starting to warm to the man myself now.

He was well aware of his ancestral links to the city, too. Heston said during a Press conference at the Theatre Royal: “My grandfather [John Carter] came from the Newcastle area. He worked in the mines as a boy of eight or nine around 1890 to 1895. He emigrated to America soon after with his mother. I believe Carter is not an uncommon name in Newcastle, although I don’t know of any relatives who might still be living here.”

And it wasn't the first time he'd called in to the region. As detailed in this revealing ChronicleLive article, he had a holiday here in the late 1970s, during which time he hiked along Hadrian's Wall and did a little family history research in Jesmond! He also popped into Newcastle for a stage appointment in 1952 ... and yet another visit, in 1968, included this televised interview.

Well, who'd have thought it? Not my wife, Angie, for one.

The Mystery of the Grey Horse Fortune

Grey Horse Inn, 1828

The Grey Horse Inn was a famous hostelry that once sat in a prominent location facing out onto Newcastle Quayside, where roughly now stand the footings of the Tyne Bridge. It fell victim to the Great Fire of 1854.

However, during one of its many renovations, in June 1815, its cellar was cleared of many decades’-worth of accumulated rubbish and dumped in a brick-yard near Shieldfield. Almost immediately local children pounced on their new playground attraction and began ferreting around to see what they could find. And they started picking up guineas, here, there and everywhere. As word spread, more and more folk arrived to join the scramble, and the money just kept turning up.

The cartman who had dumped the rubbish, hearing of the good fortune of so many, recollected that he had taken some of the material to another brick-yard near New Bridge Street. So off he snuck, and was soon richly rewarded. But then this site, too, became overrun with people, young and old. One girl was said to have found 22 of the gold coins – but they all dated from the 1750s to the 1770s. So how exactly did they get there, among the years’-old debris in the cellar of the Grey Horse Inn?

Some of the older folk half-remembered a story from the 1770s that a traveller was robbed in the Grey Horse, and that the thief, a servant, had hid the plunder in the cellar and not been able to ever retrieve it. Others reported that a landlord of the pub had said on his death-bed that he was worth a considerable fortune – but which afterwards could not be found….

[Source: Richardson’s Local Historian’s Table Book, vol.3, 1843]

Article taken from Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Fragments of the Past, vol.3.

A Wander Around Killingworth Village

I am not overly familiar with Killingworth. My experiences of the North Tyneside new town, or indeed the old village, are few and far between. As a green-as-grass teenager I was bussed out there to an industrial park for a six-week 'office skills' programme to (ostensibly at least) improve my chances of escaping the dole. This was during the Christmas and New Year period of 1983-84, when my thoughts were otherwise engaged in Newcastle United's promising promotion push. I saw nothing of the town/village itself during my brief incumbency, other than the inside of the local pub during our Friday afternoon sessions - more of which later.

Other than that there were my occasional childhood visits to Woolco, the giant big brother of Woolworth's - a huge superstore situated amidst the concrete jungle of the strikingly bleak 'new' town. And a really rather exciting prospect it was, too, given the store's immense toy section! Even then, though, I thought of Killingworth as a strange and unloved corner of the region. Those bleak blocks of grey masonry have since been bulldozed, to be replaced by more amenable new-builds, accompanied, too, by a cleaner and attractive shopping centre. Not perfect, but better.

I was always aware that there must have been, somewhere, an 'old' Killingworth village, but don't ever remember passing through it. So I thought I'd have a little look a few days ago. What follows is a sketchy 'once-over', aimed at putting similarly-ignorant folk in the picture - at least a little bit, anyway.

After exiting the bus station, I headed a short distance to the south to St.John's parish church:

The parish was founded in 1865 (out of the parish of Longbenton) and the church itself consecrated in 1869. An informative narrative of both the church's and the area's history can be found here. A nice touch is the re-erection of the 'Communicare Cross' nearby, and the helpful information panels (click on images to enlarge):

And thence down the old 'High Street' (or rather West Lane, as it is known). A random selection of excellent stone buildings:

Tigger Cottage!

Killingworth Hall

I really must get my house crenellated.

And a few other bits and bobs:

A surprise find was the region's lowest trig point, at an impressive 0m above sea-level!:

Towards the eastern end of the old village - and on the southern side of the road - can be found the site of Killingworth Colliery. Now nicely landscaped and accompanied by several marker stones (suitably graffitied of course):

As you probably know, this was where a young George Stephenson cut his engineering teeth - and indeed conducted his dangerous underground experiments with his Stephenson safety lamp. This truly is one of the region's most evocative spots, where one is acutely aware of treading in the footsteps of one of the nation's biggest historical heroes.

I followed the track southwards towards Great Lime Road, imagining, perhaps, of accompanying the ghost of old George:

And then westwards to Dial Cottage, the actual home of George Stephenson and his young family during his early working years. A remarkable survival:

This place was only recently sold by North Tyneside Council back onto the private market. As far as I could tell it was undergoing refurbishment when I passed by.

Not too far away can be found a rather large representation of the Stephenson's 'Geordie Lamp':

And before winging my way back round to the bus station, I called in to visit an old friend: The Station public house, last visited by me as a 19-year-old more than 42 years ago. Crikey!:

Doesn't time fly? Must remember to call back again in 2068!

The Magpie

The magpie is a bird that has become entwined in the culture of Tyneside, and Newcastle in particular. Well, at least it has been since the blossoming of Newcastle United in the early twentieth century! It has gained a sort of cult status among Novocastrians, with sayings, little ditties and even full-blown songs being dedicated to the noisy and persistent creatures. And they are everywhere these days … but it was not always so. The following article, taken from the June 1889 edition of The Monthly Chronicle of North-Country Lore & Legend outlined the perilous position of the magpie in the late Victorian era. Other late nineteenth century texts proffer a similar story of woe and expected demise. Quite a recovery, then!

The magpie (Garrulus picus, Bewick; Picus eaudatus, Yarrell) has almost as many scientific as popular names. In some parts of the country (as in Scotland) it is best known as the pyot, or pyet; in Lancashire as the pynot ; and in the Midland and South-Eastern Counties as the chatterpie. In other districts it is best known by the abbreviated title of "mag" — short for magpie. It is one of the most handsomely-plumaged of our native birds, and is brisk and nimble in all its movements. Unfortunately it is so hotly persecuted by game-preservers and their keepers, and also by farmers, that it is fast becoming scarce in most parts of the country — in fact, is threatened with speedy extinction, especially in cultivated districts.

These forays on the eggs and young of domestic fowls and game birds are chiefly confined to the breeding season, when the magpies are rearing their young broods; but at other periods of the year their chief food is the insects and vermin which prey on the produce of the farm. Though by no means so harmless as the barn owl — another much persecuted and useful bird — the magpie is almost as nimble a mouser as the former, and it will also kill and devour rats. Popular folk-lore is inimical to the magpie, as the bird, under certain natural conditions referable to certain times of the year, is looked upon as ominous of sorrow, and is consequently persecuted from stupid superstitious motives. As Mr. John Hancock remarks, “this beautiful resident species, once so abundant in the district (Northumberland and Durham) has now almost disappeared from the neighbourhood of Newcastle, and has everywhere become rare.”

The magpie is found in Europe, Asia, and Africa, while in the Northern States of America it is represented by a very similar bird. It seldom visits mountains, open plains, or dense forests, but visually inhabits lightly wooded parts of the country.

In some of the Northern European countries magpies are treated with great consideration, especially in the Baltic provinces, where they may be seen feeding in the streets of populous towns like pigeons and jackdaws. There they are so familiar and trusting that they will even enter houses in search of food, the sagacious birds well knowing that they will not be molested. How different their treatment in this country!

The flight of the bird, owing to its short and rounded wings and long tail, appears somewhat heavy, and is made with quick vibrations, as if laboured, and in a high wind it does not seem to make much progress. Occasionally, however, the bird may be seen flying very rapidly and at a great height, though, as a rule, it does not seem partial to long flights. On the ground the bird is very nimble, and it can progress quickly either by hopping or walking, while the long and handsome tail is perpetually jerked up and down. The peculiar chatter of the bird can be heard for considerable distances.

The nest is mostly placed at the top of a tall tree, but sometimes in hedges and thorn bushes. It is a domed structure, composed of thorns and sticks, with a hole at the side. The inside is lined with roots and grass. The eggs run from five to seven, rarely more. The male weighs from eight to nine ounces; length, one foot and a half; bill, black; iris, dark brown; head, crown, neck, and nape, jet black; chin and throat black, the shafts of some of the feathers being greyish white; breast above, black; below, pure white; back, dull black. The wings are short and rounded, and the white feathers from the shoulder form a distinct patch of white along them; greater wing coverts, fine, glancing blue; lesser wing coverts, black; primaries, black, with an elongated patch of white on the inner web of each of the first ten feathers; secondaries and tertiaries, fine blue. The handsome tail is graduated and rounded, the outer feathers being only five inches long, and the middle ones nearly eleven inches.

Meanwhile, back in twenty-first century Newcastle, the magpie’s rehabilitation now seems complete with its recent inclusion in a mural in Newcastle’s Morden Street!

Ramblings from Hazlerigg (part 2 of 2)

One thing that has been bugging me about Hazlerigg and its environs these past few weeks is some of the street names. I often wonder about things like this: you know, exactly where do the names of our countless thoroughfares come from? Who decides on the names of the streets of our settlements, old and new? I don’t think I shall ever get to the bottom of such mysteries, but it doesn’t stop me trying.

Sometimes developers just get lazy, and use the names of regional villages, or whatever (the great expanses of water in Lakeland often feature heavily). We can see a bit of this is some of the streets in Hazlerigg (Heddon, Belsay, Matfen, etc), and on other occasions Christian names are deployed, often named after the children of local landowners or developers - and, again, Hazlerigg has a few of these. Others remain an unsolvable mystery - and in Hazlerigg we have several such examples.

I was, however, especially intrigued by a few of closely grouped thoroughfares at the village’s western extremity. These are Windt Street, Lieven Street, Lola Street, Enid Street and Charles Street. The latter three are likely just named after offspring or other family members of some prominent local family; but Windt and Lieven sounded most peculiar to my North-Eastern brain.

Turns out that Windt Street was named after a prominent local landowning family in the area of the nineteenth century. These folk owned many of the fields and farmsteads around and about (the exact extent of which I know not), and were often to be found striving to improve the lots of their tenants. Prior to the opening of Hazlerigg Colliery in 1892, though, the village itself didn’t exist. But then, as domestic dwellings began to pop up, well, streets began to form, and these needed to be named. And the first set of streets were those named above.

Windt, being the family name of the local landowners, was an obvious choice. The family’s main man at this point in time was one Harry de Windt, who was actually a rather famous explorer, who travelled, quite literally, all over the place, and wrote about it rather a lot, too. He’s even got his own Wikipedia page.

Harry de Windt, preparing for another hard winter in Hazlerigg

As for that other name, Lieven, well, the de Windt family had quite a heritage going back to the Netherlands and/or Flanders. They were especially prominent in early Dutch explorations in the New World (in what is now the British Virgin Isles in the Caribbean and in New Amsterdam in America - now New York). Their most prominent father figure in these very early days - their patriarch, if you like - was one Lieven de Windt; and his memory seems to have permeated through the centuries, to the extent of having a street named after him in Hazlerigg. I have no direct evidence of this, but that’s my ‘circumstantial-evidence’ stab at it.

And then there’s the new estate upon which I presently find myself residing. The street names here are rather easier to work out:

Winder Drive - A mine worker who operates heavy machinery to raise or lower cages via cables; 

Corver Crescent - Those who made corves, being the baskets in which coal was carried from the hewer to the bank;

Collier Gardens - A catch-all term for a coal miner (also means a ship that carries coal);

Stoneman Court - A person who makes excavation in stone (i.e. hard strata) other than coal;

Dataller Drive - A ‘dataller’, or ‘dataler’ was an underground workman paid by the day (from ‘day-toller’ maybe?).

The last one threw me a bit, but I got there in the end.

P.S. You may be wondering about the name ‘Hazlerigg’, and why the new colliery and subsequent settlement wasn’t named something else - like, say, ‘De Windt’, or whatever. Well, Hazlerigg was a family name, whose ancient base was in the area a couple of miles or so to the east of the present-day village of this name - essentially around Camperdown/Weetslade/Burradon. Camperdown was, until the mid-nineteenth century, actually known as Hazlerigge (note extra ‘e’), after which it adopted its new moniker. Hazlerigg then reappeared as the name of the new colliery sunk a little to the west in the 1890s, for no other reason, I suppose, than the authorities thought it right to revive the name of a long-standing local bigwig. It is worth pointing out that the new colliery was owned  by the Coxlodge and Burradon Coal Company, which provided a handy link to the Hazleriggs’ old stamping ground. So ‘Hazlerigg’ it was then … and the de Windts had to make do with a couple of minor street names.