Heaton History Group is often contacted by people who used to live in the neighbourhood and have vivid and usually fond recollections. We love to hear their memories. ‘RS’ still returns to Heaton from time to time. Here are his thoughts, which will be serialised over the next few months.
Now here’s something that may be of interest. Ever wondered what that old Heaton house you lived in many years, or even decades, ago looks like now? Externally? Easy enough. But internally? Not so easy? Well, you may be in luck. Go to the RightMove property website and enter its address into the ‘Sold price search’ search box. As long as your old home was on the market within the last decade or so, then estate agent details, including interior photographs, should be there, as well as the price(s) at which it has recently found new owners.
Which is how I know that the house I’m standing outside, on this sunny August day, now has – among other changes – three bathrooms and no fewer than nine bedrooms. Yes, you’ve guessed it: what was once a one bathroom, four bedroom family home when I lived here as a child, from 1960 to 1968, is now student accommodation, as indeed are so many of its neighbours.
So it’s about time I told you where I am. Pretty much in the centre of Heaton, as it happens, on that stretch of Simonside Terrace lying between Chillingham Road and Heaton Road. No, I won’t give the number, but it’s the house with the rather bizarre white extension sprouting out of the roof, and in which some of those new bedrooms must surely be located.
Fond memories come flooding back, from fifty years ago and more. I lay my hand on the permanently cold, grey granite coping stone atop the low front wall, and see the small holes where the original decorative railings were once fixed, before they were conscripted to serve King and country in 1940 or so. And in that context I’m grateful for the photograph on this website of young Ruth Castle, standing outside number 47 Tenth Avenue, in the early years of the last century. The low wall and granite coping stone in evidence there are identical to the ones here on Simonside Terrace – and, for that matter, on so many other Heaton streets – rendering it safe to assume that the railings also seen there (and the gate) are of the same style that was once seen all around Heaton, and including on this house, before they were forcibly carted off, three quarters of a century ago, ostensibly to help the war effort.
But in truth, back in the ’60s, I didn’t spend much time here at the front of the house. No, most of my childhood activity took place in the back lane shared with Warton Terrace. Ah! The stories I could tell about the games we played there. And perhaps I will, in another article. (Memo to the council: the state of that back lane now is a disgrace.)
The RightMove website tells me I’d probably need something north of £200,000 to buy this house now. In the ’60s I vaguely recall the price of £4,000 being mentioned by my parents … but, a little unhelpfully, I can’t remember if that was the 1960 purchase price or the 1968 selling price. (Suggestions on a postcard.) What I do recall is my late father lifting up a floorboard one day and finding a newspaper from 1904 underneath, which we took to be a ‘message’ from the builders of approximately sixty years earlier, to an indeterminate future generation, as to when they had completed their work.
And then I turn to the west, and towards Heaton Road. For I didn’t come here to pay particular attention to the old house – although clearly the temptation could not be resisted once standing in front of it – but merely to use it as the necessary personal historical starting point, in the retracing of my frequent walks of half a century ago, to Heaton Road … and from there, across the road, to the fondly remembered parks of my childhood.
What do you remember?
We’d love to hear memories and see the photos of anyone who has lived, studied, worked or played in Heaton. Either leave your comments below the heading of this article or mail Chris Jackson, Secretary, Heaton History Group.
