Category Archives: When

Julia Darling: electrified the ordinary

Julia Darling was a writer who lived in Heaton’s Stratford Grove between 1995 and 2005.  Among her many published works were several collections of poetry, two novels, two books of short stories and many works for stage, TV and radio. She was a major literary figure in the north-east until her untimely death.

Early life

Julia was born in Winchester, Hampshire on 21 August 1956 in the very house in which Jane Austen spent her final days and eventually died. Later in life, Julia spoke about the connection with Austen and how, when she was a teenager, the Austen Society had complained about anti-apartheid, pro-abortion and women’s lib posters she had put in her bedroom window.

Julia’s father, John, was a physics teacher at Winchester College (which owned the house the family lived in); her mother, Patricia, was a nurse and a Quaker. Julia attended Winchester High School for Girls, but was expelled at the age of 15, before going on to Falmouth School of Art. 

To Newcastle

Julia’s connection with Newcastle began in 1980. She had just completed her fine art degree, when she visited friends in the city. She was so struck by it, still years before its Quayside renaissance, that she later told the ‘New Statesman’ that Newcastle was, ‘an overwhelming place with its soaring bridges, its black, oily river, and train lines that ran through ancient castles,’ before continuing ‘The moment I got here I knew I would never leave.’  She never did.

Early Works

It was around this time that Julia began her writing career. Between 1980 and 1988, she worked as a community arts office in the Pennywell area of Sunderland but at the same time she set up the Women’s Intellectual Group (Wig) and began collaborating with writer, Ellen Phethean, on a women’s political cabaret, Sugar and Spikes.

In 1984 Julia, married trade union organiser Ivan Paul Sears, with whom she had two daughters, Scarlet and Florence.

When, in 1988, Julia was appointed writer-in-residence by Newcastle City Council and Northern Arts, she gave up a regular wage in order to explore her potential as a writer. Newcastle City Library published her first pamphlet ‘Small Beauties‘ following the residency and, not wanting to read alone for the launch, a performance group, The Poetry Virgins was born, comprising Julia herself, Ellen Phethean, Charlie Hardwick, Fiona MacPherson and Kay Hepplewhite.

Ellen recalled: ‘We used to gather round Julia’s kitchen table with bottles of wine and nibbles, laughing and bouncing ideas for poems and performances.’ Julia observed that The Poetry Virgins were ‘a troupe of raucous women who liked a wild night out and who took poetry to the places that least expected it (and probably didn’t want it either!) like housing co-op AGMs and women’s refuge coffee mornings.’

Julia was always prepared to take on subjects that were controversial at the time, including teen pregnancy and homophobia. Indeed when looking back in 2005 at this early period of her writing, she wrote: ‘My early plays were all rather worthy. I wrote about patriarchy, single mothers, bad capitalists and nice socialists, rotten men and brave women trying to find themselves.’ 

But Julia’s early work in theatre also laid the foundation for her close collaboration with actors, directors and artists, which continued throughout her life. Tyne and Wear Theatre in Education brought her into contact with Live Theatre, where powerful new writing flourished. She felt proud that her writing fell into the tradition of men like C P Taylor and Tom Hadaway, but said that in the late 1980s-early 1990s she ‘did seem to be one of the only women on the landscape, which was odd’.

Julia and Ivan had separated in 1989 and Julia met her life-long partner, Bev Robinson. The 1980s had kick-started Julia’s career but it was arguably now that it really took off.

Wider Audience

The success of The Poetry Virgins had encouraged Julia and Ellen Phethean to set up a small press, Diamond Twig, in 1992. The original idea was to establish an outlet for work by The Poetry Virgins. Later the press went on to support other women writers from the north-east, publishing their poetry and short fiction.

In 1992, a theatrical partnership was established between Julia and Quondam, which was a small-scale Cumbrian professional touring company.  Andy Booth, Quondam’s founder and producer, commissioned her to write ‘Rafferty’s Cafe’.  This play toured England and was followed by two further historical plays ‘Head of Steel’ and ‘Black Diamonds’. In 1993 Julia won Tyne Tees Television’s Put It In Writing short story competition with her story ‘Beyond’. This  was a spiritual tale, which was was published in her 1995 collection, ‘Bloodlines’.  Now Julia’s stories were widely published, including ‘The Street’ which featured in ‘Penguin Modern Women’s Fiction‘ (1997); ‘Breast’ in the British Council’s ‘New Writing 6‘ (1997) and ‘Love Me Tender’ in ‘New Writing 10′ (2001). In 1995, ‘The Street’ from ‘Bloodlines‘, was recorded for broadcast on BBC Radio 4. 

In 1998, Julia’s first novel, ‘Crocodile Soup’ was published by Anchor.  It was long-listed for the Orange Prize for Fiction, which recognise the achievements of female writers. The novel went on to be published in Canada, Australia, the USA and across Europe. Later editions were published by Penguin and Mayfly.

Soon after this, Julia had a residency at the Live Theatre in tandem with Sean O’ Brien and five of her plays were developed into a series called ‘Posties’ for Radio 4. 

But amidst this success, in 1994, Julia was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of just 38.  She was able to write about her illness, including in the play ‘Eating the Elephant’, in which the four female characters all are dealing with cancer diagnoses.  Julia herself wrote: ‘I always thought that the four characters were parts of me, all in conflict, but trying to find common ground.’

After being awarded a distinction on her MA in Poetry Studies at Newcastle University in 2002, Julia was appointed an Associate Royal Literary Fund Fellow of Literature and Health at the university.  Her room in the Percy Building was directly opposite the Royal Victoria Infirmary where Julia received treatment for advanced breast cancer. She called this time ‘the most creative year I have ever had’.   It was at this time that she Julia began her popular blog, talking about books and exhibitions and about people she cared about. She said this about her reason for the blog: ‘Here I am, I want to say, still here, not that pale or insubstantial‘. When interviewed by The Crack in 2003, she also commented that, ‘it’s also a little box to stand on if I have an opinion about anything.’

Critical acclaim

2003 was the year in which, arguably, Julia gained most critical acclaim. That March, she won the Northern Rock Foundation Writer’s Award, worth £60,000 over three years.  As part of this, Julia was able to take  a trip to Brazil to research her unpublished novel ‘A Cure for Dying’.

And in August 2003, her novel, ‘The Taxi Driver’s Daughter’ was published by Viking and in paperback by Penguin the following year. It went on to be long-listed for the Man Booker Prize and short-listed for the Encore Award given by the Society of Authors.

It is, of course, a particularly loved work in Heaton, set as it is in places close to Julia’s heart and her Stratford Grove home and re-imagining, as a key part of the plot, the birth of Armstrong Park’s famous ‘Shoe Tree’. The book’s central character, Caris, has echos of her own young, rebellious self.

Shoe Tree, April 2021 (Copyright: Chris Jackson)

Unfortunately Julia’s success could not prevent her from being typecast as ‘Newcastle writer’ rather than simply a writer.  Alfred Hickling, in ‘The Guardian‘ referred to the London-centric perception of Julia being based in the ‘provinces’.  He observed: ‘Darling is routinely labeled a “Newcastle writer”, as though literate people on Tyneside were a breed apart. And though her novels of working class life undoubtedly belong to the great tradition of Sid Chaplin, Tom Hadaway and Alan Plater, Darling herself is not a native Geordie at all… But the great strength of her writing is its sense of place, which she often evokes with a few well-chosen smells.’ 

In early 2003, Julia was asked to contribute to the ultimately unsuccessful bid by Newcastle for the title of European City of Culture. She commented: ‘It sounds sentimental, but for many of us who live here, the city of Newcastle is like a person who we feel very emotional about. When I arrived as a young woman it was like falling in love.’ Julia developed her thoughts about her adopted city after traveling to Barcelona as part of a Northern Playhouse project about George Orwell’s ‘Homage to Catalonia‘.  The trip resulted in Julia’s powerful poem ‘The Manifesto for Tyneside upon England’ which she described as ‘Luddite’ and which was performed a the Playhouse at a cabaret night of music and poetry called ‘Flying Homages‘.

In further recognition of her talents, in June 2003, Julia was elected as  a Fellow of the Royal Society of  Literature  and in 2003, she was also invited to be part of a British Council trip to Mauritius, which she described as a ‘passionate, political place’.  Julia also became a television star of sorts by agreeing to be filmed by the BBC ‘Inside Out‘ team for a documentary about her life. The programme gave a flavour of her family and working life, running workshops and reading poetry. ‘Inside Out‘ featured Julia’s own video diary which she had recorded over the summer. Writing in her blog about the TV broadcast she noted: ‘I liked the simple message of it although there were weepy bits, on the whole it showed what it’s like to have cancer with its good days and bad days’.

About Health

Julia continued not to shy away from writing about illness. Her collections Sudden Collapses in Public Places (2003) and Apologies for Absence (2005) explored issues around body, health and illness, including the experience of being treated for and living with cancer. Sudden Collapses in Public Places was set as a song cycle and performed by Zoë Lambert at The Sage Gateshead. Julia loved music and wrote: ‘There is something wonderful about having ones words interpreted by gifted musicians.’

Another piece about health issues featured a character called Rhona who sought solace on the Scottish/Northumbrian border after having finding out that she had multiple sclerosis. Poignantly,  Rhona doesn’t find peace, discovering instead a noisy and restless spirit about which she comments: ‘My body is a debatable land. It is full of marauders who come looking for blood and wealth but I am going to shake them loose.’ Rhona eventually comes to the conclusion that: ‘All we can do in the face of fear is to become ungovernable.’ Gina McKee narrated the story when it was broadcast on Radio 4 in January 2005.

And there was a collaboration with the artist Emma Holliday. Julia’s ‘First Aid Kit for the Mind’  poems were exhibited alongside Emma’s paintings at The Rebellious Stamp Exhibition held at The Biscuit Factory and in waiting rooms around the country.

Julia was further inspired by her own situation to write about another character, Maureen, who had been given a diagnosis of an inoperable brain tumour.  She then took on the role of The Guardian’s online poet in residence and also wrote a piece for Radio 3’s The Verb about waiting.    

Despite her illness, Julia maintained a connection with her work and in her own words, ‘hoiked’ herself out of bed in March 2005, to see dress rehearsals for her final stage play, ‘A Manifesto for a New City’ , which Julia hoped would inspire people of the Newcastle to stand up for their city.  The play was inspired by manifesto poems written as part of the earlier Home to Catalonia project at Northern Playhouse.  

Last Days

In the month Julia died, The Poetry Cure, described as a ‘a significant anthology on the subject of illness’, edited by Julia and Cynthia Fuller was published.   In response,  Ruth Padel wrote that ‘this beautiful and humane anthology should be on the waiting room of every ward’.

Poignantly, Julia’s introduction included the words:  ‘I believe that poetry can help make you better. Poetry is essential, not a frill or a nicety. It comes to all of us when we most need it. As soon as we are in any kind of crisis, or anguish, that is when we reach out for poetry, or find ourselves writing a poem for the first time.’

Julia died on 13 April 2005 in her beloved adopted city of Newcastle upon Tyne, having already chosen her burial plot in Jesmond Old Cemetery.

The inscription on her gravestone reads: ‘Mother & Writer; she electrified the ordinary; we all matter, we are all indelible; miraculous here‘, the words taken from her poems.

She wrote this poem about choosing her plot:

Old Jezzy

I went to old Jesmond Graveyard to find my plot, to mark a place.

Doug from Bereavement showed me a spot green and reflective, under a willow.

He apologised for the trimming of the weeds, he liked it messy overgrown, but the government had made stipulations for health and safety.

Things must be neat, in case of gravestones squashing children, so raggy old Jezzy was having a clean up.

But you know, said Doug, death isn’t tidy.

It’s a plague of knotweed, a bed of nettles, a path through thistles, that’s how it should be.

Reviews   

In their obituary, The Guardian commented that Julia’s  ‘love of the north-east informed much of her work

The Independent said this of Julia in their obituary: ‘Julia Darling was a writer of great gifts and versatility and, in recent years, an extremely prolific one. She wrote novels and short stories, plays and poetry, as well as collaborating frequently with painters, musicians and other artists. She was also an instigator and a teacher, though the latter word, which she viewed with suspicion, does not adequately suggest her power to excite and inspire a sense of possibility – in writing, in life – among the many who encountered her.’ 

Jules Smith for the British Council commented that, ‘Julia Darling’s work is brave, engaging, often funny; but above all, thoughtful.’

In its review of ‘Crocodile Soup’, a ‘Goodreads‘ review stated that the book is,‘a narrative studded with relentless humor and giddy self-deprecation, Julia Darling introduces an endearing cast of characters whose shared and wayward search for love is irresistible.’

Northern Stage revived A Manifesto for a City in 2015, saying: ‘There are so many ways to begin the story of Julia Darling and often it feels like there is just that one world-shatteringly sad ending. But even ten years after her passing, Julia’s voice is still as gripping as before. It manifests itself as a presence of a kind. The Manifesto receives a new production at Northern Stage this week, and one can’t imagine a more fitting moment than the one in the aftermath of Jeremy Corbyn’s victory as the leader of the Labour party. It is a time of renewed idealism which Julia and her Poet would certainly have relished. It represents an opportunity for a happier ending. In the run up to this production I opened an old box looking for the final version of the script, and I found one of those notes Julia used to write and leave around the place. And that certainly makes for a happier ending for me’.

Perhaps the most unusual review of Julia’s work was written by another cancer sufferer,  Anthony Wilson, who in a blog entitled ‘Lifesaving Poems’, compared Julia’s poetry to Psalm 102, as both could be seen as cries for the light of life amid the dark pain of serious illness.  Wilson said ‘I had come across Julia Darling’s marvellous poem Chemotherapy” nearly a year before I fully understood what she was talking about. There is not much I need to add to it, except to say I think “the smallest things are gifts” sums up for me the entire universe of pain, gratitude, suffering, relief, anxiety and humour which the word “cancer’ registers in me.’

Julia was a woman and a writer who touched many people’s lives, with her wit and her courage, both in her life and in her writing.   As she lives on in her writing, so may this continue.

Last Word

The last word goes to Ellen Phethean, the Heaton-based writer, who was a good friend of Julia’s for over a quarter of a century, as well as being a close colleague of hers in many writing ventures. 

When asked for her memories of Julia, Ellen said:

‘I first met Julia when we performed together in the women’s political cabaret group Sugar and Spikes back in 1979/80. When  Julia began to focus seriously on her writing, producing a pamphlet of poems, ‘Small Beauties’, she asked some women to perform with her and so began The Poetry Virgins, which I joined as another writer.  The PVs were extremely popular, breaking the boundaries of traditional poetry readings, encompassing Trade Union Study Days, Women’s Aid AGMs and Literary Festivals, producing two collections ‘Modern Goddess’ (1992) and ‘Sauce’ (1994).  

‘Julia and I also began our small press, Diamond Twig, with the aim of encouraging other women to write, a central tenet of our philosophy, and we ran all sorts of events and reading nights.

‘We inspired each other: ideas would bubble up, we’d bounce them around, coming up with some grand wacky ideas. Her humour and imagination meant she was a joy to work with.  Her generosity of spirit brought writers together, she was at the heart of the vibrant, busy writing world of the north-east. Everywhere I go I meet women who tell me how important Julia was to their writing journey.  Despite her cancer diagnosis, she was always busy living, not dying, believing that poetry gave her a language and control over her bodily experiences. Her openness in the face of death was inspiring, anticipating it as the beginning of a wild new adventure.’

Acknowledgements

Researched and written by Peter Sagar of Heaton History Group. Thank you also to Arthur Andrews and Ellen Phethean for their contributions.

Sources

http://juliadarling.co.uk/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Darling

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/apr/14/news.sarahcrown

https://durhambookfestival.com/review/book-review-pearl-by-julia-darling/

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/julia-darling-489445.html

https://literature.britishcouncil.org/writer/julia-darling

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1013611.Crocodile_Soup

Can You Help?

If you know any more about Julia Darling or anyone or anything mentioned in this article, we’d love to hear from you. You can contact us either through this website by clicking on the link immediately below the article title or by emailing chris.jackson@heatonhistorygroup.org

Heaton and Drinkin’: the 20th century onwards

Following our recent article ‘Town with No Cheer’, which examined the reasons for Heaton not having as many public houses in the 1890s as some nearby areas, we now bring the story of Heaton and the licensed trade into more recent times with some surprising continuity of earlier themes and passions.

The growth of Heaton around the turn of the twentieth century saw a marked rise in the number of applications for licences. Many applications to the Brewster sessions involved houses that were about to be built or had been recently constructed. The background context for this was also changing and becoming more of a political battle overlaid on the temperance landscape. This however did not stop a frequent procession of applications to the magistrates which indicates some existence of potential clientele and an associated entrepreneurial spirit. 

It is certainly the case that some locations became frequent and continued focuses for applications to the Brewster sessions. For example, on 5 August 1896 the following applications were made with subsequent decisions announced on 1 September.  

Tale of Two Turnbulls

Henry Grose Nichol seemed to be hedging his bets in applying for a variety of different licences (just beer and wine, full licence including spirits or merely a beer ‘off’ licence) for premises to be constructed on the corner of Eighth and Second Avenue. According to his solicitor, this endeavour was ‘not for the purpose of catching visitors to Heaton Park but for the purpose of supplying that great and populous district’. It was also observed that only the Chillingham Hotel (previously known as the East End Hotel) and two ‘inconveniently situated beer houses’ were in the vicinity when the population, it was argued, had multiplied four or five times.

Chillingham Hotel, 1966 (for a long time Heaton’s only public house)

300 local residents had voted for a licence to be granted but builder Richard Heslop said that one benefit that newly constructed houses on Balmoral Terrace displayed was the understanding that there were no licensed properties nearby. The application, in all its variety, was refused without any explanation given.

Alexander Turnbull, a Byker Hill brick manufacturer of 69 Rothbury Terrace where he lived with his wife and eight children, applied for a beerhouse licence for his proposed property, the Falmouth Hotel, which was to be constructed at the corner of Heaton Road and King John Street (currently the Butterfly Cabinet). We have already written about these premises at 200 Heaton Road and about Turnbull himself, who went on to become chairman of Newcastle United, in Rothbury Terrace: the Magpies’ nest

It was pointed out at the Brewster sessions that Alexander and William Turnbull, who had set up firstly his Assembly Rooms and then the East End Hotel, were unrelated despite possessing the same surname. 514 out of the 900 ratepayers who had been canvassed supported the application with only 50 opposed to it. Mr Potter of Heaton Hall as well as a local builder, John Wilson, spoke in favour. Opposition was voiced by Rev Benjamin Gawthorp of Heaton Baptist church on behalf of his congregation. Mr Veitch of 40 Rothbury Terrace objected, arguing that the development would deliver ‘moral injury to the district and depreciate the value of his property’. This application was also refused after some banter about people being unwilling to indulge in a short perambulation for a drink but happy to walk to Gosforth to cross the ‘three mile limit’ which marked the extent of the City of Newcastle jurisdiction.

Although the Bench did refuse both applications, it went to the extent of providing a written response stating that the future need of Heaton and its surrounding areas for more facilities was probable but that only the surrendering of some licences within more ‘congested areas’ would enable this to take place. This decision was reported in the ‘Newcastle Weekly Chronicle’ of 5 September 1896. 

Maria Allon, a widow, of Holly Avenue in Jesmond applied for a six day ‘off’ licence to sell beer from 96 Falmouth Road, the property of Samuel Kirk, a slate merchant of Ridley Villas on New Bridge Street. The Bench declared that they would look favourably in a week’s time if a signed six year lease agreement between the owner and tenant could be produced. It is interesting to note that the phenomenon of the ‘corner shop’ was alive and well in this time period. Mary Alice Bell wished to be allowed to sell beer from her shop at the junction of Mundella Terrace and Second Avenue. Alice Ward wanted the same for her property at the corner of Second Avenue and King John Street. John Wilson asked for a beer ‘off’ licence for a rival concern where Second Avenue meets King John Terrace. The rapid growth of Heaton was leading to an increase in potential demand and a concomitant entrepreneurial desire to satisfy it. All these applications were refused.

Many corner shops like this one on the corner of Heaton Park Road and Bolingbroke St applied for licences

Continued Opposition

The number of churches along Heaton Road and the proximity of a public park continued to exert an influence on public opinion. It is no surprise to find the Heaton Anti-Licensing Council state in 1897 that ‘with fairy lights the public house would tempt those passing by to turn aside from the path of rectitude’ and the fear that with more licensed premises ‘Heaton Road would become a bear garden’.

Just before the turn of the century on 2 Sept 1899 the following applications were made and, in most cases, refused. Fred Forster applied for a full licence for premises about to be constructed between 94 – 98 Falmouth Road and 61 – 63 Heaton Road which has seen a number of later commercial enterprises based there over the years.  Mary Laws applied for an ‘off’ licence for the house at the corner of Heaton Road and Roxburgh place. John Wilson, the builder, applied for a full licence for his property, the Falmouth Hotel, at 200 Heaton Rd and 1 and 3 King John St. This was refused as was a subsequent application for a beer and wine licence for the Falmouth Hotel. 

Falmouth Hotel, Heaton Road, which opened eventually

‘Off’ licence applications were continuing to be presented with Thomas Pickering asking for permission to sell beer from a shop on the corner of Heaton Rd and Guildford Place. William Pickering ran the Grace Inn on Shields Road. Cornelius Whillance of 32 Mowbray St (with Thomas Barker the Temperance missionary being a near neighbour at 36) was more fortunate in being granted a wine ‘off’ licence for 2 Heaton Park Rd. The magistrates may have been more positive due to Cornelius’ recent decorated service in the merchant navy.

Model Pubs

A more novel incursion into the nature of licensed premises marked the beginning of the twentieth century. Much of the opposition to licensed premises within residential areas was centred around the notion that the pursuit of profit would encourage the promotion of sales above any other considerations including health and wellbeing. To accomplish a more balanced and moderate context for drinking, on 3 June 1901 the Northumberland Public House Trust Company was established with a capital of £100,000 initially to take over the Grey Arms at Broomhill Colliery near Amble. The Trust aimed to ‘promote temperance by eliminating as far as possible the element of private profit from the retail sale of intoxicating liquors’. Any profits were to be administered for public benefit though the manager would be able to earn a personal commission on food and non-alcoholic drinks. Subscribers included Earl Grey, Lords Howick and Lesbury, as well as Andrew Noble of Jesmond Dene House, Charles William Mitchell of Jesmond Towers and William Henry Watson-Armstrong of Cragside.

In August of that year, Earl Grey published a statement declaring that the aim of the Public House Trust Company was to establish Trusts across the country before the forthcoming Brewster sessions began so that any new licences would be given to the local trust rather than to individuals. It was stated that this was ‘a national movement to manage new licences in the interests of the community’. This enterprise was based upon the People’s Refreshment House Association Limited formed by Francis Jayne, the Bishop of Chester in 1896. 

Although the Trust movement gathered some momentum, with Durham and North Yorkshire Trusts being established before the end of the year, in reality they struggled to grow as rivals to the established trade. There was some increase in their chains of ‘model’ public houses — the Durham and North Yorkshire Trust had fourteen properties by 1909 — but profitability and further expansion seemed hard to achieve. The political climate at the time was also changing with a new emphasis seeking to limit the profitability of the licensed trade so as to discourage the more pernicious effects and its encouragement by the brewers and licensees. The desire for a greater link between licensed premises and the people that use them shares elements with David Cameron’s Big Society rhetoric as well as the current desire for more community pubs within the economic context of falling profitability, declining numbers and staff shortages. 

Temperance

On 3 Sept 1901, the Brewster sessions evidenced the same arguments and often very similar properties and applicants! These include requests to extend the beershop licence at 98 Falmouth Road to encompass its neighbours at 94 and 98 as well as 61 – 63 Heaton Road. Mr Barker, the temperance missionary, had conducted a ‘plebiscite’ which resulted in 758 against and only 247 in favour. The application was refused though the continued canvassing of opinion in a somewhat unsystematic fashion meant that public opinion was often quoted without being arrived at in any impartial or balanced manner.  

On 3 Feb 1903, a public meeting was held in the Presbyterian Hall on Heaton Road to protest about new licences in Heaton.  T Cruddas and A Pascoe spoke against any new licences as this would increase drinking, criminal acts and, consequently, the rates. Guy Hayler, a nationally known career temperance campaigner who came to Newcastle to lead the movement here and who was, at this time, secretary of the North of England Temperance Society and living at 63 Rothbury Terrace, wished to add an amendment ‘to close the East End Hotel in Chillingham Road, and restore Heaton to the position it once held.’ (Laughter in the courtroom). Mr Hayler said that drunkenness in Newcastle was on the increase compared to other places and that Northumberland was ‘one of the blackest’ 

Guy Hayler

Subsequent applications later that year included a repeated attempt by the Northumberland Public House Trust Company to run premises about to be constructed at the corner of Chillingham Road and Trewhitt road on land belonging to William Armstrong Watson-Armstrong. This again serves to illustrate that the relationship between the landowners and licensing laws was more complex and circumspect than often assumed.  Despite the reputable nature of those involved in this application the magistrates refused it on the grounds of lack of need as demonstrated by the small number of applications. 

Restaurant licences

In 1891, Mary Laws and William, her husband, were living at 8 Holmside Place. After William’s death in 1897, Mary moved to Farne House on Stannington Avenue and, in 1903, made a second application for a restaurant licence for the Victoria Hotel, on the corner of Heaton Road and Roxburgh Place. The first unsuccessful application in 1901 for a licensed restaurant to be instituted in what was otherwise a temperance hotel was met with the expected gibe from the opposing solicitor, Mr Copeland. ‘Would it mean that anyone buying a half penny biscuit could get a drink?’ Although this application was refused, the request for a billiards licence was granted. Ward’s Directory of 1902 described the premises as ‘Victoria Commercial Hotel, superior accommodation for commercials and professionals; livery stables; moderate tariff’.   

The determination to gain licensed status for hotel establishments was however a continued feature of this period. Two years later Thomas Blackett, wine and spirit merchant with a number of properties across the east end, applied for full licence for the ‘Falmouth Hotel’ from its current status relating to wines, spirits and liqueurs. Application had been made before and the Bench knew the house. This was opposed on behalf of local property owners and the application was refused.

Victoria Hotel

In the same year the manager of the Guildhall Restaurant, Spero Gosma, applied for a full licence for the Victoria Hotel, the property of Mrs Mary Laws. It was argued that the establishment had continued for eight years without a licence as a first-class hotel but that the management of Mr Gosma was much needed in the densely populated district which now totalled around 16,000 people. There had been no new licence for 13 years and to support the application a petition was presented of 656 residents and visitors as well as 45 property owners. Mr Dodds opposed on behalf of Co-operative Society, Presbyterian and Baptist churches with a supporting claim that a ‘plebiscite’ the previous year had indicated 3,305 individuals voting against any new licences. A meeting held the previous Sunday 5 February of around 800 people had been unanimous in their opposition. The application was then refused. 

Heaton Road with the Victoria Hotel in the centre

The Victoria Hotel was then the scene of a depressingly familiar story of crime and punishment. On 10 May 1906 John Henry Soppitt 25, (whose aliases included John Stobbart, Edward Henry Stoppitt, John Kennedy, and John Blake) plead guilty to stealing a number of joiners’ tools valued at £1 10 shillings and 6 pence, the property of John Ogle Haddon and others, from the Victoria Hotel. It was stated that the accused had obtained money by deceit especially from children who had been sent on errands. One example was that the accused had taken 3 shillings and 7 pence from a boy whilst giving him a jar of whisky and saying ‘Fly home, your mother is bad’. The accused admitted his guilt and ‘promised to be a better man’. Sergeant Dale noted that the accused had been before the magistrates 13 times across the North East. In June 1904 he had been sentenced to 9 months with hard labour at Durham for stealing a number of items and some money. Alderman Ritson sentenced the accused to 18 months with hard labour declaring that he was a ‘cowardly thief to take things from little children’. The sad story of an individual, despite their relative youth, being a habitual criminal is not unfamiliar to any age or period.

Corner House

In February 1934 James Deuchar applied for a provisional publican’s licence for a hotel on the corner of Heaton Road and Stephenson Road (before the building of the Coast Road). Although this was some years on from our earlier excursions into the Brewster sessions it is interesting that the proposal caused ‘a storm of controversy’ as reported in the ‘Evening Chronicle’ of 6 Feb 1934.  The Chief Constable of Newcastle, F J Crawley, gave a survey of recent changes. He pointed out that prosecutions for drunkenness had increased from 693 in 1932 to 807 in 1933 and that this was reflected in both male and female figures. 21 people had been arrested for being under the influence of drink or drugs whilst in charge of a mechanically propelled vehicle. It is interesting to note that the newspaper headlines contained the line ‘Trade revival the cause’ though the article makes scant reference to this and brackets it with the availability of a higher gravity beer.

Corner House Hotel, 1936

Magistrates were told that the plan was to ‘erect a hotel in the modern style with Georgian and Dutch touches…’ On resubmission in 1935, proceedings were dominated by barristers and clergymen. 6 February 1935 saw a provisional granting of the licence before confirmation on 26 March which led to a flurry of involvement and organisation.

Opposition was put forward by a lawyer representing 52 nearby residents who asked the magistrates to ‘visualise the possible effect on the minds of school children in the neighbourhood’. Rev Albert Brockbank of Bainbridge Memorial Methodist Church and the Dene Ward branch of the Citizens League vowed to continue the fight ‘trying to prevent people from an evil, just as you would try to prevent your children getting diphtheria’.

The churches were by no means united, however. A counter argument was put by Rev Verney Lovett Johnstone, vicar of St Gabriel’s, who complained that when he entertained friends for dinner, he had to go as far as the Chillingham Hotel to buy beer and that people did not realise how far the Cradlewell was. ‘My congregation certainly desire it. This is a free country and they want it on the grounds of the liberty of the subject’.

He continued by declaring that the opposition was confined to a dozen property owners and ‘some religious sects’. Unsurprisingly Rev Johnstone’s comments brought a flurry of letters into the Evening Chronicle, including from ‘Disgusted’ of West Jesmond. The sessions on 26 March were very well attended and attracted much notice in the local press. On his re appearance Rev Johnstone declared that the ‘quiet’ supper as reported previously was actually a ‘choir supper’ and that if he wanted a drink, he did not see why he should not have one. He also said that he had offered to meet his fellow clergymen but that they were not willing as ‘their minds were presumably made up.’ Within a few months Reverend Johnstone and his family had left Heaton for a new life in Australia.

The opposing view, given by the solicitor J Harvey Robson, stated that despite the growth in population and the nearby new estates there was no need for such premises in the modern world. ‘The time has gone by when the family puts on its hat and goes to the local public house for the evening. They now go to all forms of more modern entertainment.’ There was also the inevitable discussion of the distances needed to be traversed to purchase alcoholic beverages.  Support given by a prominent local abstainer who lived nearby as well as a petition signed by 3000 voters may have helped to sway the magistrates who confirmed the granting of the licence despite the continued opposition of some clergymen who held protests in their churches on 7 April.  

Corner House interior prior to opening, 1936

Permission was granted and the Corner House Hotel opened in 1936. The original seating for 263 was increased the same year to 283. It was observed that this was a ‘striking commentary on those criticisms offered by people saying there was no demand for licensed premises ……customers had to be served in an undesirable state of crowdedness’ .

Lochside

Although it may be a little outside our boundaries, in 1954 the Lochside opened via a transfer of licence by James Deuchar.

The Lochside, 2022

The name is a tribute to the sea coast steamers (Lochside and Lochside II) which brought beer from Deuchar’s Montrose brewery to Tyneside. This was still the case when the pub opened. There is a possibly apocryphal tale that the men who worked the river, ferry boat and tugboat men as well as the river pilots, would touch their caps when the Lochside was sighted in the Tyne on its return journey. This was augmented by the associated belief that the beer itself tasted better if it had suffered stormy weather on its 16-hour voyage down the coast.

Lochside II

Northumberland Hussar

Another addition to the local hostelries was added in 1955 with the Northumberland Hussar, which was a transfer of licence from the Gosforth Arms in Shieldfield. It was heralded as ‘the latest example on Tyneside of a new-style inn specially designed to offer the traditional atmosphere of the English hostelry with the requirements of present-day customers’.

Flamingo Club

Many older Heaton History Group members have spoken about the Flamingo Club at 130 Heaton Road. Its Grand Opening Night was on 11 October 1963. Advertised attractions included wining and dining as well as roulette, dancing and an all-star cabaret. As had been the case with other premises, the Flamingo was a members club where non-members would require signing in as guests and would need to pay a cover charge. According to the ‘Journal’, the club was founded by the owners of a garage on Back Heaton Road.  It is interesting looking at the range of entertainments and attractions on offer. The club advertised its late licence until 2am as well as its panoply of exotic dancers including tassel, belly and striptease.

28 January 1972 saw the demise of the club when two police officers in plain clothes were served drinks without being signed in as guests. Their visits over four evenings also led to evidence of after-hours drinking. The manager, owner and waiter were all arrested and given a three-month suspended sentence, £200 fine and conditional discharge respectively. The Flamingo Club did not reopen its doors as a new buyer could not be found. 

Flight

And nothing really changes. This article was on the brink of publication when it was reported in the ‘Evening Chronicle’ (1 March) that the owners of ‘the stylish Flight Bar’ on Heaton Road ‘were forced to appear before councillors on Tuesday in a dispute over the drinking establishment’s licence’. The owners had asked to extend the premises’ licensing hours and change its operating style so that it was no longer required to have a ‘substantial’ food menu.

Echoing arguments of the past, one local resident told the committee that the establishment’s substantial food offer comprised ‘pork pies, bowls of olives and chocolate brownies’. He pointed out that the Chillingham and Corner House were at Heaton’s extremities and told councillors ‘If you were to approve this, you could fundamentally change the fabric of Heaton and, I think, potentially create another Osborne Road’. In addition, the council’s planning department complained the owners had not obtained the required planning permission and the case was under investigation. In response, the owners said that the bar was ‘a high-end location, specialising in quality cocktails, beers and wines’ and that that there had been no complaints. They pledged that Flight would not be the kind of ‘vertical drinking’ venue seen in busy parts of Jesmond or the city centre’.

So, at a time when many licensed premises earn as much (perhaps most) of their income from food and non alcoholic drinks, suggesting that the ambitions of at least the more moderate Temperance campaigners may have been achieved, the debate continues.

At the same time, in Heaton and its environs, the number of micro pubs, ‘pop ups’ and mixed-use ventures seems to be evidence of an alternative and entrepreneurial character. Those of us who are inhabitants of Heaton are fortunate to live within such a lively and diverse neighbourhood. The slogan may not have yet taken off as it has in Portland, Oregon but perhaps this culture does go some way towards ‘Keeping Heaton Weird’.

Acknowledgements

Researched and written by Karl Cain of Heaton History Group.

Can you help?

If you know any more about the subject of this article, we’d love to hear from you. You can contact us either through this website by clicking on the link immediately below the article title or by emailing chris.jackson@heatonhistorygroup.org

Sources

Ancestry 

British Newspaper Archive 

Drunkenness in turn of the century Newcastle / B Bennison; Local Population Studies (52), 1994  

From Byker to Heaton – the origins and history of Heaton Methodist Church / N F Moore and W K Robinson; 2000

 From Lochside to Tyneside – Montrose Port Authority

Heaton from farms to foundries / A Morgan, Newcastle City Libraries, 2012  

Heavy Nights A history of Newcastle’s Public Houses Vol 2 The North and East / B Bennison; Newcastle City Libraries, 1997

Lodge Temperance 2557: Guy Hayler 

Methodism in Newcastle upon Tyne 1742 – 2010 / G Fisher and Rev T Hurst; North East Methodist History Society, 2010 

Other online sources

Wooden Porches of South Heaton

Much of Heaton’s housing stock comprises terraces which have stood for a hundred years or more. You might think at first that they are all the same and haven’t changed in that time but you can roughly track the development of local vernacular architecture through time if you start in the extreme south west of Heaton, where some of the houses are over 125 years old and walk north east. You’ll also spot the new extensions, loft conversions and myriad of other changes that people have made to their properties over time. Some of the most striking differences are the alterations that people have made to their entrances: their front doors and, especially, their porches. The photograph below of Meldon Terrace shows that originally every house had a wooden porch with a slate roof.

Meldon Terrace, early 20th century

Wooden porches

Obviously wood degrades in our climate unless it is very well looked after and so the number of original porches is declining year by year. Indeed, it’s perhaps surprising that there are any left at all a full century and a quarter after the houses were built. It can also be difficult to know what is original and what is a copy, a much changed original or a later addition. This article simply celebrates and records wooden porches of some of the older terraces of Heaton as seen in early 2023. All of the properties featured were built in the 1890s.

South View West

Some of the oldest houses in Heaton are at the far end of South View West, the block on which Shakespeare’s head and shoulders has since been created in brick on the gable end. These houses are well looked after and the porches enhance their appearance but were they originally full length like those in the Meldon Terrace photo above?

Among the residents of these houses around 1897 was H Winterburn, a detective, and two head of households who described themselves as ‘foremen’. These occupations give us a feel for the status of the people who called the terrace home at that time.

Malcolm Street

There are a few similar canopies on nearby Malcolm Street. J Merrilees, a rent collector, lived at the property below c 1897.

There are also a number of properties grouped together that have fully enclosed wooden porches. A Pattinson, a joiner lived at number 33 below. Is this porch some of his handiwork?

Warwick Street

There are a number of full length open porches on the south side of Warwick Street, eg:

Two more foremen lived at 69 and 70 above and J Begbie, a cutter, and A Renton, a commercial traveller at 41 and 43. Note the spindles on the top of the porches of 41 and 43. Very few of these survive but there is another at number 13 and this one has spindles at the sides as well. A Mrs E M Cummings lived here just before the turn of the last century.

Heaton Park Road

On Heaton Park Road there is a pair of properties that not only have their spindles preserved at the top of the porch but they also point rather menacingly down at visitors.

And although this article is primarily about wooden porches, there are other vulnerable decorative features surviving on the opposite side of Heaton Park Road:

We don’t know who they are but world champion cyclist, George Waller and his brothers built houses on this road and he lived just a few doors down. Perhaps he was having a bit of fun with his own likeness or those of friends or family? Maybe someone can tell us?

Waller by Brewis
George Waller, photographed by Edward Brewis

Falmouth Road

Some of the finest wooden porches in Heaton can be found on Falmouth Road. There are many that are well preserved or that have been restored or added more recently in a variety of styles.

Around 1897, N Wanless, a grocer, lived at number 9; J Briggs, a waterman at 83 and R Milne, a blacksmith, at 85. Among the other occupations represented on Falmouth Road at this time were a photographer, a surveyor, a caulker, a bookbinder, a ship surveyor, a bottle manufacturer, a wherry owner, a bicycle agent and a brewer.

There are also a number of properties with ironwork balustrades which have survived the ravages of time, including enforced removal during the Second World War.

Meldon Terrace

Finally, let’s return to the street pictured at the top of this article. A number of full-length wooden porches can still be found on Meldon Terrace.

In the late 1890s, J McNeil, a journalist, was the ‘head of household’ at 98 and H Clarke, a draughtsman, was at 100. At 126, was A Straiton, a commercial traveller, and, at 128, Mrs I Moor.

Meldon Terrace, in the late 19th century, also seems to have been something of an enclave for artists and other creatives (as it may well be now). Among the residents c1897 were HR Molyneux, a musician; H Rothfield, a picture framer, J J Prembey, a bookseller, and, at number 101, John Andrew McColvin, a noteworthy painter.

McColvin’s paintings are in a number of public collections. We haven’t yet found one depicting a Heaton scene but you could imagine this one having been inspired by neighbours leaning on their fences and chatting to each other on Meldon Terrace (and on Mowbray Street, where he also lived) – and then romanticised a little. The search for one showing a full length wooden porch goes on.

Can You Help?

Do you know more about any of these porches – or porches and the vernacular architecture of Heaton more generally? Or have we missed your favourite Heaton wooden porch? We’d love to hear from you (See ‘Leave a reply’ just below the title of the article) or email chris.jackson@heatonhistorygroup.org

Also let us know what architectural features you’d like to see featured in a future article.

Acknowledgements

Researched and written by Chris Jackson of Heaton History Group. Modern photographs all by Chris Jackson.

The Sinking of the Cobra: a Heaton maritime disaster

When, on 18 September 1901, HMS Cobra sank on its maiden voyage on route from Newcastle to Portsmouth, it was a huge shock for the country and a particular tragedy for the north-east, but nowhere was the loss felt more keenly than in Heaton.

Steam

Only four years earlier, Charles Parsons had amazed onlookers by gatecrashing Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee Fleet Review and racing his yacht, Turbinia, between the lines of the officially invited vessels at speeds of up to 34 knots.

Sir Charles Algernon Parsons (1919) by Walter Stoneman
(National Portrait Gallery)

Turbinia was powered by marine steam turbines invented at C A Parsons and Co in Heaton by Parsons himself alongside other great engineers such as Gerard Stoney, whose home, as well as his office, was in Heaton and Robert Barnard, who worshipped at Heaton Congregational Church.

Turbinia

Turbinia’s spectacular demonstration of speed prompted local armaments and shipping firm Armstrong Whitworth to build a torpedo destroyer to be fitted with a turbine engine, confident that a buyer would quickly be found. The ship’s design was based on those of two other vessels built at Elswick and it was launched on 28 June 1899. Six months later the ship was offered to the Admiralty.  However, the turbine machinery on board was much heavier than the machinery on the earlier ships (183 v 110 tons) and 30 tons more than expected. Despite the assurances of the designer, Philip Watts, who was head of the Elswick shipyard and the firm’s chief naval architect, that the weight was within tolerance limits, the prospective purchaser expressed a number of concerns including about the  strength of the upper deck. 

Viper

While what was to become HMS Cobra was being modified on the quay at Elswick, a collier ship accidentally collided with her, delaying completion by another seven months. This misfortune allowed a sister ship, HMS Viper, ordered by the Admiralty from another Charles Parsons company, Parsons Marine (who subcontracted the building of the hull to a third local firm, Hawthorn Leslie) to become the world’s first turbine-driven warship. Sadly on 3 August 1901,  HMS Viper was grounded on rocks during naval exercises in fog off Alderney in the Channel Islands. The crew were forced to abandon ship as she sank.

HMS Viper

Disaster

Less than seven weeks later, at 5.00pm on 17 September 1901, HMS Cobra was deemed ready to leave Newcastle for Portsmouth, where she was to be armed and commissioned. On board were 79 men, 24 of whom were from the north-east, mainly employees of Armstrong Whitworth, the shipbuilders,  and Parsons, the turbine builders. 

HMS Cobra

As the weather deteriorated and the ship began to roll, the thoughts of many of those on board must have turned to the recent demise of the Viper, a ship well-known to the Parsons contingent in particular. Conditions, however, began to improve at first light until a sudden shock was felt throughout the Cobra. Within seconds, the ship had broken in two. There wasn’t time to launch any of Its five lifeboats but twelve men, including the ship’s chief engineer, John J G G Percy, were able to scramble into a small dinghy. They were the only survivors. Sixty seven men lost their lives, twenty three of them from ‘contractors’, mainly Parsons.

Local

Among those known to have Heaton connections were:

John Abel

John originated in Brighton, Sussex and, aged 28, worked for Parsons as a ‘steam engine maker and fitter’. His daughter had been born in Portsea, Hampshire in December 1899 so it’s possible that the family hadn’t been in Newcastle long. At the time of the 1901 census, they were living at 12 Morley Street but by the time John lost his life on the Cobra, they were at 44 Denmark Street.

Robert Barnard

The Essex born marine engineer was the senior Parsons Turbine representative aboard the Cobra. He was manager of Parsons Turbine Works, Newcastle and Wallsend. He had assisted in the design of Turbinia and superintended its construction. During its trials, he usually acted as steersman alongside Gerard Stoney and Parsons himself.

Barnard had also superintended the erection of the works at Wallsend and supervised the building and engineering of the Viper and the King Edward as well as the Cobra. Aged 38, he had been ‘associated with the development of the modern steam turbine from the very first. No one next to Mr Parsons believed more in the possibilities’. He was also, until shortly before his death,  treasurer of Heaton Congregational Church. He is buried in Preston Cemetery, North Shields with his wife, Mary.

Alfred Bryans

Alfred’s was one of the first six bodies to be found and it was formally identified in Grimsby Hospital mortuary by the coroner’s jury three days after the disaster. An envelope addressed to him at his home address of 25 Meldon Terrace, Heaton was found on him. Alfred was born and raised in Co Durham but in 1901, aged 25, was living in Heaton with his widowed mother. He described himself as a ‘steam engine maker and fitter’.Regarded as an exceedingly promising and capable young man’, he had worked as an electrical engineer at Parsons for five years and was previously on board the Viper ‘superintending work in connection with the dynamos’ when it sank. 

He had then been sent to Stockport to be in charge of the dynamos of the new electric car system there and had just returned to Tyneside to travel to Portsmouth aboard the Cobra ‘in the same capacity as he had worked on the Viper’. He had three brothers, one of whom was a doctor at the Middlesbrough hospital where some of the survivors of the Cobra disaster were taken. His older brothers were also engineers, one in London, and the other on a railway in South America. Alfred was among the first to be buried. His funeral took place at Bishopwearmouth Cemetery. Among the mourners at his funeral were Gerard Stoney, John Barker, manager of Parsons Turbine, and Sir Richard Williams who, in 1889, had moved from Clarke and Chapman with Parsons to help him set up his own company.

Edward Lee

Edward was a foreman fitter from C A Parsons and Co. He lived at 21 Morley Street.

George McGregor

Aged only 17, George was the youngest of the Heaton victims. He lived with his widowed mother, younger brother  and  two sisters at 69 Molyneux Street and was an apprentice fitter at Parsons. His older married brother, David McGregor, aged 29, who lived nearby at 33 Algernon Road was also a fitter at the firm.

John W Webb

John, a 32 year old Parsons fitter, lived at 9 Fifth Avenue with his wife, said to be ‘of delicate health’ and his sister in law. He was reported to be ‘well known and highly respected in the eastern part of the town’,  a member of Bainbridge Memorial Wesleyan Church and superintendent of the Sunday school.

Aftermath

Among the first announcements after the disaster was one the following day from the Admiralty declaring that they would ‘cease naming vessels after  the snake tribe – first the Serpent, next the Viper and now the Cobra’ (HMS Serpent had run aground and sank in a storm off Galicia in Spain  in November 1890, less than two years after going into service. 173 of her 176 crew lost their lives).

Locally, Charles Parsons headed to London immediately and the whole Parsons workforce was given the rest of the week off. There were reports of ’the horrors of scalding steam’ adding to the other dangers experienced by those on board. ‘The Evening Chronicle’ reported that Charles Parsons had foreseen this risk and insisted that the steam pipes on the Viper (on which no escape of steam was reported) were fixed as flexibly as possible. However, on the Cobra, the Parsons Company, as engine builders ‘were bound to follow specifications and these provided that the steam pipes should be as rigidly fixed as possible.’ The war of words between the various interested parties had begun.

The Admiralty immediately absolved the ship’s captain of any blame or navigational error, reporting that the ship was in deep, clear water when it sank. It conceded that it could have struck a wreck or some floating obstruction. A Captain Smith of a Yarmouth herring drifter which was the first vessel on the scene said that he might have seen a shark’s tail but it was impossible to know. A wounded whale, seen in the area, was also implicated until it was discovered that it had been landed a week earlier. The inquest jury expressed  ‘an informal opinion that the Cobra was too lightly built and hoped the government would build stronger destroyers’.

Meanwhile a special memorial service was held at Heaton Congregational Church on Sunday 22nd, led by the Reverend William Glover.

Appeal

And on Saturday 21st, a public meeting was announced by Councillor Thomas Cairns, to be held at the Victoria Hotel on Heaton Road ‘with a view to forming a committee to give assistance where necessary to the families deprived of their bread-winners by the loss of HMS Cobra’. The meeting was said to be crowded. Letters of support had been received from the Mayor, the Sheriff, MP Mr Crawford Smith, eminent trades unionist and Heaton resident Alexander Wilkie and the Reverend J Robertson of St Gabriel’s Church among others. Councillor Cairns made a stirring speech which concluded by assuring listeners that the organisers wished to alleviate distress only where it existed and so prompt enquiries into the circumstances of every case would be made. It was stated that the appeal would only be on behalf of the bereaved of the ‘Tyneside district’. A committee was elected and a further meeting convened.

However, a few days later it was announced that a national relief fund had been opened in Portsmouth. When Councillor Cairns contacted the mayor to ask that the Heaton committee be left to support its own bereaved as they better understood individual needs and appealed for the national fund not to appeal for donations for Parsons’ families, he was told the 600 letters had already been sent to national and local newspapers and that the fund would be for the widows and orphans of all those lost, not just the naval men. Cairns responded that Newcastle wouldn’t have dreamt of setting up a national fund. ‘If it had been set up in London, that would be different’. An agreement was soon made for the Heaton executive committee to be broadened to include the mayors of all the Tyneside boroughs. Mr Alfred Howson of 8 Heaton Road was appointed secretary and local councillor Thomas Cairns, treasurer.

Armstrong Whitworth contributed £1,000 to the Tyneside fund.

Court Martial

On 10 October 1901, the naval enquiry or court martial opened at Portsmouth. The Hon Charles Parsons was in court to hear his company absolved of any blame for the accident but Philip Watts, the designer of the ship for Armstrong Whitworth, endured lengthy questioning about the strength of the vessel and what might have caused it to sink. Watts said that he believed that wave action alone could not have sunk the Cobra because of where the ship broke and he maintained that the disaster could not have been caused by striking a rock as the shock felt by those on board would have been greater still. His best guess was that the destroyer had struck some drifting wreckage perhaps with an iron mast attached. He believed that if the aft half of the boat, which was still missing, were to be found, the likely damage would show this to be the case.

Parsons then gave evidence to the court. Perhaps undiplomatically, he said that he believed destroyers like the Cobra were intended to be ‘fine weather vessels but that gradually, having been found to survive heavy seas , they were not taken the same care of as they were originally.’ He clarified that he meant that they were designed to shelter in bad weather. When pressed on the fact that heavy seas were to be expected around the British Isles, he confirmed it ‘would become a necessity to ensure that the strength of these vessels is sufficient to stand any stress they may be likely to come across.’

He confirmed that the turbine machinery installed exceeded the original estimate of 155-160 tons, being 183 tons.

The enquiry concluded that Cobra didn’t meet with any obstruction and that there was no navigation error but ‘the loss was attributable to the structural weakness of the ship’. The court also found that the ‘Cobra was weaker than other destroyers and, in view of that fact, it is to be regretted that she was purchased into his Majesty’s service.’

Defence

Armstrong Whitworth immediately contested the court martial’s findings. The company pointed out that similar boats had sailed to Australia and Japan without incident.

Asked about Parsons’ comments the following day, an Armstrong Whitworth representative said that Parsons had meant that destroyers fitted with the turbine system of propulsion were constructed essentially for their high speed and this high speed could only be obtained in smooth water.

The company authorised Philip Watts, the ship’s designer, to conduct a search operation to try to restore its and his damaged reputations.  However, the missing aft section, which could have provided evidence of a collision and exonerated both Watts and the firm, wasn’t found.

Tutor

However, Armstrong Whitworth was invited to submit an article to a literary and current affairs magazine ‘The Monthly Review’. It commissioned John Meade Falkner, the English novelist best known for ‘Moonfleet’, the classic children’s story of shipwrecks and smuggling, written just a few years earlier, to write the piece. 

Why him? Well, soon after the Wiltshire born, Marlborough educated Falkner had graduated in history with a third class degree from Hertford College Oxford in 1882, he was introduced to an Eton schoolboy who was struggling to prepare for his Oxford University entrance examination. The boy was John Noble, son of Sir Andrew Noble, physicist, ballistics expert and partner of Sir William Armstrong.

John Meade Falkner

Falkner came to Newcastle to be a tutor both to John and to Sir Andrew Noble’s other children. You can see the 32 year old listed among the large extended household living in Jesmond Dene House on the 1891 census, even though by this time the youngest of the Noble children at home was 20 year old Philip who was recorded as being at Balliol College. 

Falkner’s occupation then appears to read ‘MA Oxon Secretary’. There is a second census entry for him as a lodger in Elswick and ‘secretary to engineering company’. He had become company secretary to Armstrong Mitchell in 1888. ‘Moonfleet’ was published in 1896.

By the time of the Cobra disaster in 1901, Falkner was living in Divinity House, Palace Green, Durham and described as a ‘mechanical engineer’  and an ‘employer’. At some point during that year, he became a director of what was now Armstrong Whitworth. His persuasive writing skills were undoubtedly a reason for him being chosen to pen the piece.

Like the naval enquiry, Falkner, in his article, quickly exonerated Parsons and the turbines but questioned the credibility of the court by drawing readers’ attentions to its members’ lack of knowledge of marine engineering. He went on to cast doubt on the competence of the naval divers who had dragged the wreck into deeper waters, searched in poor visibility and, in one case, ‘a foreigner, and his evidence, which seemed naturally vague, was rendered still more obscure by difficulties of interpretation.’

Falkner called for a ‘properly qualified tribunal’ … ‘which will command respect, and the country will accept nothing less’. The  truth would then be uncovered ‘on better authority than the verdict of a casual court-martial.’

His words fell on deaf ears but Armstrong Whitworth survived the blow to its reputation and, like Parsons’ turbine business, went from strength to strength in the following decades. Falkner succeeded Sir Andrew Noble as Chairman of Armstrong Vickers in 1915. He later became Honorary Reader in Paleography at the University of Durham and Honorary Librarian to the Dean and Chapter Library of Durham Cathedral. 

Sixty seven men, including twenty four from Parsons and at least six who lived in Heaton, weren’t so fortunate.

Acknowledgements

Researched and written by Chris Jackson, Heaton History Group.

Can You Help?

If you know any more about the people named in this article or the sinking of HMS Cobra, we’d love to hear from you.You can contact us either through this website by clicking on the link immediately below the article title or by emailing chris.jackson@heatonhistorygroup.org

Sources

Ancestry

British Newspaper Archive

‘The Cobra Trail’ / George Robson and Kenneth Hillier in ‘The John Meade Falkner Society Journal’ no 9, July 2008

‘Down Elswick Slipways: Armstrong’s Ships and People 1884-1918’/ Dick Keys and Ken Smith; Newcastle City Libraries, 1996

‘From Galaxies to Turbines: science, technology and the Parsons family’ / W Garrett Scaife; Institute of Physics Publishing, 2000

www.rjbw.net/JMFalkner.html

Other online sources

BBC at 100 and a Heaton choir boy at 14

Before her recent death at the age of 105, Lilian, the wife of St Gabriel’s parishioner Herbert Dixon (‘Dix’) Hodgson, shared some memories of her husband. Among the stories about Dix’s short but eventful life was one about a solo performance by him being broadcast on the opening night of Newcastle’s first BBC radio station. She also said that, as a young girl, she was taken to a neighbour’s house to listen to the historic launch. What she said she didn’t realise was that, among the voices she heard seemingly magically beamed across the Tyne into her neighbour’s living room in Whickham, was that of her future husband.

Dix and Lilian, March 1940 aboard SS Kirriemoor (Lilian borrowed one of the Mate’s uniforms and the captain’s cap!)

Chorister

Herbert Dixon Hodgson was born in October 1908.  Records show that in 1911 he was living at 41 Tosson Terrace, Heaton with his father William, mother Margaret and his four year old sister Hilda Annie. Another sister, Nellie Blue (Blue was a family name) came later.

Young Dix became a member of the choir at St Gabriel’s Church. He was soon recognised as having an excellent voice and starred as a soloist at church concerts. This seems to have led, as we have heard from his wife’s account, to him being selected to sing solo to mark a momentous occasion, the opening night of Newcastle’s first radio station.

There are, however, a number of unanswered questions around Dix’s involvement. We wondered whether his performance was live. And when and where did it take place? How old was Dix? And the listening Lilian? What do the historical records tell us about the occasion?

5NO

Newcastle’s first radio station was known as 5NO, its call sign. According to the BBC, its opening broadcast was a hundred years ago this year, on Christmas Eve 1922, so Dix would have been 14 years old. Incredibly the British Broadcasting Company had been in existence for only a couple of months. It had been set up by a consortium of wireless manufacturers, including Marconi, General Electric and Metropolitan Vickers, primarily in the hope of a commercial bonanza from the sale of radio equipment, although very few people at that time saw its full potential to ‘inform, educate, entertain’ as its first director, John (later Lord) Reith later put it.

Newcastle was just the 4th BBC station to open behind London, Manchester and Birmingham, set up by Marconi, Metrovick and General Electric respectively, all of which were a matter of months or weeks old. In fact, it was the first to be established by the BBC itself: the other three had been put in place before the national broadcasting company’s formation. The British Broadcasting Company had been set up on 18 October and BBC broadcasting had officially begun on 14 November. John Reith had been appointed General Manager on 14 December and hadn’t even started work that Christmas Eve. In fact he was to visit Newcastle on 29 December en route from Scotland, where he had spent Christmas, to London to take up his appointment.

The station Reith visited was set to become the first radio station to operate from new premises, independent of their parent wirelesss manufacturing company. They were in Eldon Square and had been kitted out by a small group of enthusiasts. However, there were technical problems on the 23rd, the night of the promised ‘before Christmas’ opening and so a decision was made to conduct proceedings as close as possible to the newly constructed transmitter on a tower at the Cooperative Society buildings on West Blandford Street. So, the opening broadcast of Newcastle’s first radio station was from a ‘donkey cart’ in a stable yard. Very Chrismassy! And perhaps not surprising that the BBC chose to ignore this first broadcast in its official records.

The station manager was a man called Tom Payne. Tom was born in South Shields in 1882 and was an accomplished musician. But he was most famous for his feats during a competitive walking career which began in 1906. By 1916, he had broken world records for 12 and 24 hour duration feats and won three London to Brighton and six Manchester to Blackpool races. In the meantime, he had found time in 1910 to  open Morpeth’s first cinema, ‘The Avenue’, and then set up a business on Gallowgate as a wireless dealer and a music promoter.  It was because he recognised the potential for his business that Tom got involved with 5NO and, at least according to Tom himself, financed the arrival of broadcasting in the city out of his own pocket. (You can hear him tell the tale on the podcast mentioned below this article.)

Programme

It isn’t easy to tell whether later references to the opening night referred to 23rd or 24th December. But we know it was scheduled to last just one hour. There were live acts including Tom himself playing violin and a Mr W Griffiths playing cello. Miss May Osbourne sang ‘Annie Laurie’ but she couldn’t be accompanied in the stable yard as intended by pianist, W A Crosse, because the piano Payne had borrowed for the occasion wouldn’t fit on the cart. There may have been  recorded music on both occasions, as well as other live acts whose names aren’t recorded. There were no listings in the press ahead of the event. The first we have found date from the first week of 1923 but, as you’ll see if you scroll right at the bottom of the image below, they weren’t exactly comprehensive in Newcastle’s case. The Radio Times didn’t appear until 28 September 1923.

In the event, on that very first night a barking dog in the stable yard reportedly forced proceedings to end early.

It was because of these difficulties that John Reith was asked to break his journey from Scotland a few days later. Reith was unlikely to be of much help to Tom. He admitted that he knew nothing about broadcasting, he didn’t own a radio set and, unlike Lilian, aged 5, hadn’t even listened to a BBC broadcast. His diary entry for the day reads:

‘Newcastle at 12.30. Here I really began my BBC responsibility. Saw transmitting station and studio place and landlords. It was very interesting. Away at 4.28, London at 10.10, bed at 12.00. I am trying to keep in close touch with Christ in all I do and pray he may keep close to me. I have a great work to do.’

Dix’s Debut

So where did Dix’s solo fit in? The truth is we don’t know. It has been suggested that the full St Gabriel’s Choir performed and that the concert took place in Newcastle Cathedral. Both are unlikely.

There certainly was no outside broadcast from Newcastle Cathedral. The first music outside broadcast nationally did not take place until January 1923 and was a high profile performance of ‘The Magic Flute’ from Covent Garden.

If St Gabriel’s choir had performed on the very first night, it would have had to have been in the Co-op stable yard. Ensembles did perform in those early days but, even in a proper studio, a full choir would have posed enormous problems for the equipment and space available in Newcastle at the time. It certainly wouldn’t have fitted onto a donkey cart!

Perhaps the choir had been recorded on a previous occasion and played on a gramophone on the opening night. But recording music was still an expensive and laborious process. In the early 1920s, the quality of the live music broadcast would be far superior to any recordings used. A search through the St Gabriel’s parish magazine from that period yielded nothing.

This suggests that, if Dix did perform on that opening night, it was as a solo, probably unaccompanied, voice. Achieving the right balance between a singer and an accompanist or multiple voices had not been fully mastered at that point even if there hadn’t been the issue with the borrowed piano. 

What did Dix sing? Given the time of year, one could imagine him singing carols but the above poster for a St Gabriel’s concert just a few weeks later on 13 February 1923 suggests another possibility. Then, Master Hodgson sang Handel’s‘ Rejoice greatly’ and ‘Angels ever bright and fair’ . There may not have been a dry eye either in the Coop stable yard or that Whickham living room.

Lilian

Lilian would have been one of a select few listening to that first north-east broadcast. There were apparently only about 100 potential listeners in the Newcastle area at that time and only those within about 15 miles of Newcastle were expected to be able to hear 5NO, although a ship’s radio as far away as Gibraltar reportedly picked up the signal. At home, many of the radio hams who had crystal sets or early valve radios at that time were ex-servicemen who had learnt how to use radio during the war.

However, there had been a huge advertising campaign for sets ahead of that Christmas. They weren’t cheap (from about £4) but the audience was set to expand quickly.

Petition

Tom Payne did not last long at 5NO. There are conflicting accounts about his departure sometime in 1923. One account says that he was heard to swear on air and was fired, another that his quirky presentation didn’t fit with the more formal style favoured by Reith. A petition to have him reinstated was unsuccessful.

But Tom’s walking exploits continued to keep him in the public eye. Indeed on 15 November 1926, he delivered a lecture on athletics to members of Heaton Harriers at their headquarters in Armstrong Park Refreshment Rooms.

The headline of a local newspaper report of his death at Walkergate Hospital in 1966 said ‘Champion walker dies’ rather than the ‘Broadcasting pioneer’.

Master Mariner

Two years after Newcastle’s first BBC broadcast, aged 16, Dix signed indentures and became an apprentice to the Moor Line, the merchant fleet operated by Walter Runciman and Co. He attended college to gain qualifications, including, to obtain his Master’s Certificate in 1936, at Nellist’s Nautical College.

Shields Daily Gazette, 7 Nov 1936

Between 1931 and 1938, Dix’s name appears on the Newcastle electoral register. He is still living with his father and mother but now at 31 Tosson Terrace, a few doors away from where he grew up. In 1938 and ‘39, a Leonard and Wilhelmina Runciman are registered at his childhood home at number 41. A coincidence? Were they part of the Runciman shipping dynasty and were they known to the Hodgsons? By 1939, the Hodgson family is registered  at 305 Chillingham Road.

We don’t know when and where Dix eventually met Lilian Mary Spittle. They lived on opposite sides of the Tyne but we know that Lilian had trained as a fever nurse and the Newcastle Upon Tyne Infectious Diseases Hospital was situated at Walkergate just up the road from Heaton.

Dix and Lilian were married in spring 1939, sixteen and a half years after that first broadcast, and Andrew their first son was born in late 1940. Douglas came along soon after.

By now, Dix was a master mariner, the highest rank in the merchant navy and what is usually referred to as a ship’s captain.

Tragedy

But on 21 May 1942, he was in charge of the SS Zurichmoor as it left Halifax, Nova Scotia in ballast bound for St Thomas in the Virgin Islands.

SS Zurichmoor

Three days later while 400 miles east of Philadelphia, it was torpedoed by a German U-boat and sank within 90 seconds. Dix, his crew of 38 and six naval gunners were lost. Many of them were, like Dix, from north-east families.

Tower Hill Memorial Panel 121

They are all remembered on the Tower Hill Memorial, London, a war memorial to ‘merchant seamen with no grave but the sea’.

Runciman and Co Moor Line Book of Remberance 1939-40

In Tyne & Wear Archives there is a Book of Remembrance commissioned by the directors of Walter Runciman and Company, owners of the Moor Line.

Angels ever bright and fair, take o take them to your care.

Acknowledgements

Researched and written by Robin Long of Heaton History Group with additional material from Chris Jackson; thank you to Andrew and Douglas Hodgson for their help and for the photograph of Dix and Lilian.

Can You Help?

If you know any more about the people named in this article or about the launch of the BBC in Newcastle or the sinking of SS Zurichmoor especially as they relate to Heaton, we’d love to hear from you.You can contact us either through this website by clicking on the link immediately below the article title or by emailing chris.jackson@heatonhistorygroup.org

Sources

Ancestry

‘The Birth of Broadcasting 1896-1927’ by Asa Briggs; OUP, 1961

‘British Broadcasting Century with Paul Kerensa’ podcast series

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-british-broadcasting-century-with-paul-kerensa/id1516471271especially Season 1 Episode 20 ‘The First BBC Christmas’ and Episode 34 ‘Newcastle’s Christmas Launch: Let it 5NO, Let it 5NO, Let it 5NO’.

British Newspaper Archive

‘Into the Wind’ / by Lord Reith, 1966

Other online sources

Heaton’s Building Society Uncovered

Earlier this year, during building work on their home, some Heaton residents spotted a dusty pile of fragile, browning papers under the floorboards of their boxroom. Luckily for us, they didn’t just bin them because the documents were able to shed considerable light on the economic conditions and social and political networks in Heaton at the time they last saw the light of day.

The find comprised around fifty copies of a leaflet advertising a public meeting and a subsequent ‘subscription night’ to which people could buy shares in ‘Newcastle upon Tyne East End Economic Building Society’. The meetings would take place on Monday 2 and Tuesday 10 February 1891. Considerable detail about how the society would work are given on the leaflet along with the names and addresses of the provisional directors, bankers, solicitor, surveyor and secretary – and the name ‘Joseph Peers FSA’, whose role wasn’t clear, other than that he would fully explain ‘the principles and working of these societies’.

We thought it might be helpful to find out a little about the Heaton people mentioned before investigating a little further the society and others like it – but our first question was:

‘Who was Joseph Peers?’

This took a bit of working out. We had no birthplace, date of birth or address for the man named on the leaflet and, in the 1891 census, many people with that name appear. Some we could dismiss because they were too young and others we thought perhaps unlikely because of their occupation or where they lived. There was a prominent Justice of the Peace in Denbighshire, to whom grateful neighbours had erected a monument, who seemed like a possibility. But eventually, after combing through newspaper articles including the occasional court report, we were able to pin him down to the Joseph Peers who was born in Bury, Lancashire in 1837, the son of a woollen weaver. He apparently started work in a mill aged six, but went on to be an affluent accountant and an influential figure in local politics.

Despite his difficult start in life, Joseph said later that he was alway determined  to be a teacher and somehow he educated himself sufficiently to win a bursary to a teacher training college. After qualifying, he opened his own boarding school, at which he himself taught languages and mathematics. According to Peers himself, after some seventeen years, he gave up teaching due to ill health and trained as an accountant, after which he practised mainly around Clitheroe and Burnley in Lancashire. 

During the 1880s, he began, with great energy, to tour first of all the north-west of England and then the north-east, Scotland and increasingly further south, encouraging the establishment of a series of local building societies. By 1887, he and his wife had moved to the highly desirable Lancashire town of St Anne’s-on-Sea, where he became president of the Liberal Club, choirmaster and deacon of the Baptist church: a stalwart of the local community. 

Joseph Peers died on 18 January 1915. Curiously, the obituary in the local paper which gave so much detail of his early life, didn’t mention his role in building societies for which he was known all over the country. We will try to unpick this a little below. 

But first, the locals.

Directors

There are 6 ‘provisional directors’ listed on the flyer, all referred to as living in Heaton:

Mr J S Nicholson of 8 North View

Mr J Stokes of 26 Tynemouth Road

Mr A C Whitehead of 40 Clive Terrace

Mr H Weighell  of 10 Cardigan Terrace

Mr J Lively of 1 Molyneux Street

Mr C H Smith of Stratford Villas

What sort of men became proposed directors of a new building society in eighteen nineties’ Heaton? Here we were assisted by the fact a census took place only a couple of months after the advertised meetings and that most of the men (and, of course, they were all men) were featured in the press from time to time. 

Joseph Nicholson had been living at 8 North View for over ten years. However, his middle initial was not ‘S’ but ‘I’ for Innes. Joseph was born in Corbridge around 1843 and, aged 18, was a student at Gilesgate Training School in Durham. By 1881, he was living in Heaton, married with a young daughter and a servant. His employment status was recorded as ‘managing director of a glass ????’ (likely to be factory or similar), employing ‘38 men, 38 boys and 10 women’. At the time we are interested in, 1891, he and his wife, Anne, had two children but he had changed tack in his career again. Now, aged 48,  he was a ‘commercial traveller and clerk to the burial board’. By the next census, he described himself as ‘burial board clerk and journalist’.

There is corroborating evidence for some of this sketchy census information in the form of regular mentions in newspapers, especially in connection with his duties for Heaton and Byker Burial Board. It was Joseph who, in 1890, had announced that the new cemetery was open for burials. He was also mentioned as the ‘honorary secretary (pro tem)’ for a public meeting at Leighton Schools calling for Byker Bridge to be made toll-free. And in 1894, he stood unsuccessfully to be Assistant Overseer of St Andrew’s parish. There are also some articles by him including one about the new Royal Victoria Infirmary and a letter commenting on the proposed width of a new bridge over the Ouseburn ‘near the mill’.

Joseph Innes Nicholson died on 3 September 1903, aged about 60. He is buried, not in the Heaton Cemetery he helped run, but in Jesmond Old Cemetery along with his wife, two of their children who died in infancy and two other people whose identity we don’t know. An obituary in the newspaper refers to Joseph’s friendly nature, his work as clerk to the burial board, as a journalist and in teaching but sheds no light on his directorship in the glass industry or his unusual career path. The East End Economic Building Society isn’t mentioned either.

John Stokes was, in 1891, living at 94 Tynemouth Road (not number 26 as the leaflet stated but he may have moved) in what was, at that time, usually described as Byker rather than Heaton, with his wife, Annie, and four children aged between four and fourteen. He worked as a solicitor’s clerk. Twenty years later, the couple were still at the same address and still had four of their total of eight children at home. John continued to work as a solicitor’s clerk.

He had been born in Northampton in 1850. His father, a wheelwright, had died aged 29 less than three months before John was born. Initially, John and his mother, Sarah, lived with Sarah’s sister and family but three years later, Sarah married Richard Christmas who worked as a butler and footman in grand houses in London and the south. By 1871, John was lodging in Stamford, Lincolnshire where he was employed by a solicitor. Within four years, he had married Annie, who, like John, hailed from Northampton and they had moved to Newcastle. By 1881, they had four children. John died in Gateshead in 1932. Annie outlived him. 

Arthur Charles Whitehead was a Brummie, who at the time of the building society launch was 38 years old, living in Clive Street in Byker (although  the leaflet places it in Heaton)  and the ‘secretary of a glass manufactory’. Maybe this is what brought him into contact with Joseph Nicholson. Ten years before he had been a grocer in Aston near Birmingham and, aged 18, he was a clerk in a brewery. 

We also know that Arthur was an active member of the Perseverance Lodge of Good Templars, Byker.  The  Independent Order of Good Templars was an organisation which advocated temperance and had a structure based on freemasonry. It was founded in the USA in the early 1850s but soon became international and a returning British emigré, Joseph Malins, established the first British lodge in Arthur’s native Birmingham in 1866.  The Byker lodge was certainly a place where he could have met some of his fellow directors. Arthur Whitehead died in September 1905, aged c 52.

Henry Weighell was, in 1891, aged 31 and living with his wife, Hannah, three children and a servant at 10 Cardigan Terrace. As a young man, ten years earlier, he was boarding with an uncle of his future wife, a Northallerton grocer, and working as his assistant. But now, the Yorkshireman was described as a ‘commission agent’. We know from newspaper advertisements that he was a rep for ‘McGregor’s Dumfries Home Made Preserves’ and sold ‘Balmoral Crystalline Marmalade (as supplied to Her Majesty)’ and ‘Far-famed gooseberry jam (new season)’. At this time, he was living on Mowbray Street.

Ten years later Henry, Hannah and their five children were at 26 Kingsley Place next door to artist John Wallace, with Henry running his own wholesale confectionery business. 

By 1911, however, the family had left Heaton for the west end of Newcastle and Henry had changed sector. He was, by now, a ‘commercial traveller in cattle food.’ By 1915, 55 year old Henry and 61 year old Hannah had relocated again, this time to Belford in Northumberland, perhaps because in and around Newcastle, houses had increasingly replaced the farms of his erstwhile customers. We know this both from advertisements for the cattle food which Henry was selling and the announcement of Hannah’s death in December 1915. Henry was soon placing an advert in the ‘Wanted’ column for a country house with modern conveniences, a garden and a garage a reasonable distance from a station. He was looking for a new home because he was about to remarry. In July 1917, he married 44 year old Isabella Tindall, whose now deceased father had farmed 504 acres near Chatton in Northumberland.  Henry continued to trade in agricultural products. He died on 10 March 1939, aged 79. 

James Lively was recorded on the leaflet as living at 1 Molyneux Street but, by the time of the census, a couple of months later, he was living at 75 Mowbray Street with his wife Sarah and three young daughters and earning a living as a self employed watchmaker and jeweller. He lived and had  shops at various times on Shields Road, Molyneux Street, Mowbray Street and Warwick Street.

James was born in 1859 in North Yorkshire. His father, also called James Lively, was an Irishman from Sligo, who at the time of the 1851 census lived in ‘hawkers’ lodgings’ in Painters Heugh, All Saints parish and described his occupation as a stationer. Two years later, he married local girl, Mary Watson, who seemed to have been just 15 years old at the time. Mary had at least three children over the next six years, the youngest of whom was James, before her husband disappeared from her life.

In 1861, aged 23, Mary was living in Bishopwearmouth near Sunderland with her three young children and no visible means of support. By 1871, however, things seem to have looked up for the family. They were living on Low Friar Street in Newcastle. Mary had a new partner, Patrick Develin, also from Ireland. Both he and Mary were described as clothiers and the oldest of Mary’s children was an upholsterer. James and his other siblings were at school. All were described as Patrick’s children and were recorded on the census with his surname. However, two years later Patrick had died, aged only 48. 

A couple of years later, Mary was married for a third time to seaman Stephen Easten. She had two more children with him before he too died, at sea. In 1881, the unfortunate Mary, aged 43 and still described as a clothier, had upped sticks again to South Hetton in County Durham. She now had some financial help as 21 year old James was employed as a watchmaker and his younger brother, Michael, was a draper. 

It sounds like a tough start in life for young James but despite the poverty the family must have endured, having three father figures in his life, all only briefly,  and the frequent changes of address, he somehow learned a trade, built up his own business (He placed advertisements in the newspapers for an apprentice) and was nominated as a building society company director. Another indication of James’ status was his mention in the press the following year as being one of a group of friends to have made a presentation to James Peel, Newcastle United’s treasurer, who was leaving the city for a job in London. Most of the other friends listed were either directors of the football club or like James Birkett, who we’ll meet again later, a councillor.

By 1901, James, Sarah and their five children had moved away from Heaton to Ashington in Northumberland. James died in 1905, aged c 44.

Charles Henderson Smith was, at the time of the 1891 census, a 51 year old ship surveyor living with his wife, Mary, at 4 Stratford Villas in Heaton. He had been born in Aberdeen but his father, a blacksmith, and mother relocated to Wallsend with their young children in the 1840s. After serving an apprenticeship at Charles Mitchell and Company in Walker, Charles joined Andrew Leslie of Hebburn as a lofts man and then a ship carpenter in which role he spent several periods at sea.  He married Mary Ann Mein in 1861 and the couple soon had two children, the younger of whom was somewhat confusingly also called Charles Henderson Smith, also had a wife called Mary and worked in the same profession. They don’t make it easy for us historians! 

As Charles senior advanced his career with a number of different companies,  the family lived briefly in both Glasgow and Barrow in Furness before coming to Heaton where, in 1883, Charles set up his own business as a ship surveyor and then went into a partnership, a decision which, he gave as a reason for led his being declared bankrupt in 1889, while living on Falmouth Road, Heaton. This doesn’t seem to have prevented him from becoming the director of a building society less than two years later. However, an otherwise extensive obituary in the ‘Whitley Seaside Chronicle’ doesn’t mention either his financial misfortune or his association with the East End Economic Building Society. It does refer him to being a ‘staunch nonconformist’ and specifically a member of Salem United Methodist Church in Newcastle and then the Congregationalist Church in Whitley. Charles and his wife, Mary had moved to Whitley Bay in 1899. It was there that,  in 1911, first Mary then, six months later, Charles died. He was 71. Notice the name of his house as given on the notice of his death in the obituary.

Six men from diverse occupation but what they seem to have in common is that they were aspirational. Many had endured tough upbringings but had gone on to forge successful careers for themselves. They were the sort of people who might have had a little money to invest and to whom the idea of owning a house might appeal. You can see why they might be attracted to an organisation which could help them achieve their aim, something open only to a small minority in the late nineteenth century. It is striking though that, just as with Joseph Peel, neither of the two directors’ obituaries we have seen mention involvement with the East End Economic Building Society

The Officers

Morris Robinson, who must at some point have put a pile of leftover flyers for the building society under the floorboards of his home of 5 Holmside Place was listed as secretary of the society. (Is it just a coincidence that ‘Holmside’ was the name of Charles Henderson Smith’s residence?) On census night, 5 April 1891, he was aged 24, employed as a solicitor’s clerk and living with his stepmother, three siblings and two lodgers. Morris’s father, a Prussian Jew, also known as Morris, had emigrated to Newcastle and set up in business as a slipper and shoe manufacturer. By 1881, he employed 30 people. Sadly, he had been admitted to Newcastle Lunacy Asylum a year before the 1891 census and would die a matter of a few weeks after it took place.

Morris junior was also a keen athlete and member of Heaton Harriers. He went on to marry and have children but in 1908, just like his father, was admitted to the Lunacy Asylum and died the following month, aged 41.

5 Holmside Place remained in the Robinson family for over fifty years until after the Second World War. It seems likely that Morris Robinson senior, a successful businessman, bought it as a new build but we haven’t seen documentary evidence of this and whether he had a building society loan and, if so, which one.

Andrew Robinson, the society’s solicitor, was Morris’s elder brother, four years his senior and the first-born boy of the large family. In 1891, Morris was his clerk. Andrew lived in Tynemouth at this time with his wife and family.

The North Eastern Banking Company was founded in Newcastle in 1872 but with branches throughout Northumberland. Its Byker branch was at 184/186 Shields Road. It became part of Martins and eventually Barclays.

William Hope, listed as the society’s surveyor, was an architect, particularly well known for his design of theatres, including Byker’s Grand Theatre. In Heaton, he later designed Heaton Methodist Church and large houses on Heaton Road, including Coquet Villa and Craigielea. 

The  Venues

Leighton School Rooms The initial public meeting was to be held at Leighton Schoolrooms. We have already written extensively about William Brogg Leighton and his church, with its attached schoolrooms, which opened in 1877 at the southern end of Heaton Road. The rooms were used extensively for public meetings. 

Leighton Primitive Methodist Chapel c 1910
Leighton Primitive Methodist Chapel c 1910

Moore’s Cocoa Rooms

The subscription meeting was to be held at Moore’s Cocoa Rooms, which were described as the society’s temporary offices. The cocoa rooms  were at 46 Shields Road, opposite where Morrisons is now, between about 1886 and 1894 and often used as a venue for meetings. There were many cocoa rooms in and around Newcastle at this time. John Thomas Moore, the manager, was 39 years old in 1891 and lived in Byker. He had managed cocoa rooms for over ten years but went on to work in insurance. For a while, the Byker rooms also bore the name of his business partner, John Wilson.

The Chair

James Birkett, had, in 1891, been a well respected Liberal councillor in the East End for eight years. He lived at 37 Heaton Park Road. 

James was born on 4 February 1831 in Gatehouse of Fleet in Scotland. He came to Newcastle in 1855 as a young man and began work for a firm of anchor and chain-makers of which he eventually became a managing partner. 

James soon became involved in public life, where he was known as a radical. For example, in January 1867, he was a member of the committee which planned a demonstration in Newcastle in favour of extending male suffrage and, in particular, in support of Gladstone’s Reform Bill, initially shelved when the Tories came to power. 

In 1873 and 1884, he was the mounted marshal at the head of further large protests in favour of greater suffrage and electoral fairness, part of a national campaign which led eventually to the Third Reform Act, which extended the right to vote to about 60% of the male population.

He was also president of the Northern Republican League and a member of the Congregational church.

Locally, Birkett was elected chairman of Byker Liberals in 1874 and he was an active supporter of East End Football Club and other sports in Heaton. He campaigned tirelessly to improve sanitation in the city and for Byker Bridge to be toll-free and he was instrumental in Heaton getting parks and a public library.

He was the first chairman and then vice chairman of the Byker and Heaton Burial Board, in which context he will have known Joseph Nicholson, the clerk, and possibly also Andrew Robinson as can be seen from this plaque, still to be seen at the entrance to the cemetery. Note also the names of champion cyclist George Waller and his brothers.

Like Arthur Whitehead, Birkett was a vociferous and effective temperance campaigner who had a lasting influence on the development of Heaton as a suburb with very few public houses, up until the present day, yet another link between two of the names on the flier. As President of the Byker and Heaton Temperance Council, Birkett chaired a meeting in 1886 ‘to celebrate the success their friends had secured against the granting of certain licences for pubic houses’, and ‘condemned the idea of granting a licence to a public house on the main road to a Board School and on a road which the majority of their workmen traversed to and from their work’.

He had also, as early as 17 December 1889, chaired a meeting just like the one advertised in Heaton for a ‘new and improved Economic Building Society‘ in Newcastle at which Mr J Peers FSA would explain how to ‘Become your own landlord’. The office at which people could enrol was 76 Grey Street.

James Birkett died on 10 February 1898. On 20 July 1899, a clock was unveiled in his memory above the aviary in Heaton Park close to where ‘Mr Birkett’s figure was the most prominent among those who night after night patronised the bowling green in season’.

The James Birkett memorial clock can be seen on the Heaton Park aviary.

So they were the people involved in the proposed building society. But what was the context?

Housing

As late as 1914, only around ten per cent of houses in Britain were owner-occupied. In 1891, there was very little social housing and no council housing, certainly in Newcastle. As elsewhere, the vast majority of people in Heaton, even the more well-to-do, lived in the private rented sector. Indeed some wealthy people bought houses to rent out, while renting from others the property they themselves lived in. 

Renting was the norm and working class people in particular often moved house very frequently. We see this when looking at the census records and electoral registers for Heaton. Sometimes people moved just a few doors down the same street. Many poorer people’s tenancies were weekly, meaning landlords could evict them almost at will. Conversely, tenants could easily trade down if their income was reduced or up if they hit better times or if the size of their family grew or reduced.

However,  that doesn’t mean that some people didn’t aspire to or support the idea of home ownership. 

Building Societies

Building societies were not new in the 1880s and 90s. In fact, the first seems to have been founded in Arthur Whitehead’s birthplace, Birmingham, almost a century earlier in 1795. Their popularity increased throughout the nineteenth century, resulting in an Act of Parliament in 1874 to safeguard the interests of owners, investors and borrowers. From then, new building societies had to become incorporated companies under the act.

The building societies we are familiar with today in Britain (and more so before most became banks in the late twentieth century) are what is known as ‘permanent societies’, that is their rules allow them to exist indefinitely. But in the nineteenth century, many building societies were what were called ‘terminating’ building societies.

Such a society was open to subscribers only until the required number of investors needed to make it viable had been found (and then a new society could be formed). Depositors would be contracted to make a small regular deposit. They did not receive interest. The society invested the deposits in property. When the society had enough funds, a ballot would be held to determine which saver received an interest free loan, typically for 60% of the value of a property. The saver’s investments would usually be expected to cover the other 40%.

A local society might operate for around 10 years before it held any ballots at all. It would only hold ballots when it could afford to and would  suspend them if the economic situation was considered unfavourable. People invested knowing that they wouldn’t own a property in the short term and not even in the expectation of owning one in the medium or long term but with a dream that one day they just might. 

Peers’ Building Societies

The first building society that we have come across associated with Joseph Peers was in Darwen, Lancashire, close to where he lived. A newspaper report in 1985 refers to him as the secretary who had submitted the annual accounts. The society is referred to as the Starr Bowkett Darwen Society ie one based on monthly lotteries. The following year the neighbouring Heywood ‘Economic’ Building Society was described as ‘based upon rules drawn up by Mr Joseph Peers‘, suggesting that he had further developed the Starr Bowkett idea.

For the next ten years or so local newspapers, particularly in the north and Scotland, advertised forthcoming talks or opportunities to subscribe on pretty much a weekly basis. Joseph Peers was the advertised speaker at most of them.

Controversies

There were, however, some brushes with the law.  In 1889, the secretary of Peers’ Padiham Building Society was prosecuted on behalf of the Registrar of Friendly Societies because the society had not been incorporated. He tried to apportion some of the blame to Peers.

In February 1990, a question was put at one subscribers’ meeting concerning the amount mentioned for Peers’ salary. It was requested that Peers left the room while the discussion took place; he refused and a compromise was eventually reached.

Later that year, Jesse Morton Roby of Bury took Peers to court to claim £99.95 for work done, ‘promoting and establishing certain building societies known as Peers Economic Building Societies’. It was claimed in court that Roby visited Newcastle, Sunderland, North Shields, South Shields, Chester le Street, Wallsend, Gateshead, Morpeth and Derby and established societies but had not been paid at the agreed rate. He won his case.

And, just after the Heaton meetings were due to have taken place, a long letter in the Morpeth Herald took issue with the claims made by Peers about the likely growth of his societies’ funds and the amount he was paid by each society. The writer referred to the small likelihood of a member being successful in the ballots.

Nevertheless Peers continued to tour the country, promoting his building society model and seemingly finding queues of willing subscribers. 

Scandal

But the year after the Heaton meetings, a much bigger scandal occurred, which caused nervousness around building societies in general. A group of companies, including the Liberator Building Society (a permanent building society), all associated with someone called Jabez Spencer Balfour, collapsed. Balfour was at that time the Liberal Member of Parliament for Burnley. Facing charges of fraud – his companies were using investors’ capital to buy, at inflated prices, properties owned by Balfour – and the anger of thousands of penniless investors, Balfour fled to Argentina. He was eventually brought back to the UK to face trial and was sentenced to 14 years penal servitude. Despite his being disgraced, there are apparently two roads in the West End of Newcastle named in honour of Jabez Balfour: Croydon Road and Tamworth Road (He hailed from Croydon and also served as MP for Tamworth), both built using funds invested in the Liberator Building Society.

There are a number of connections between Balfour and the East End Economic Building Society:

One is Liberalism. Peers himself was president of St Anne’s on Sea Liberal Association and the chair of the public meeting here in Heaton was James Birkett, a much respected Liberal councillor, and some of the directors such as Joseph Nicholson were also supporters. Balfour was a Liberal MP. Liberals might be expected to support ideas which they thought would further the interests of ordinary people, including tenants. But for the less scrupulous and more cynical, like Jabez Balfour, association with trusted public figures and parties who were seen to be on the side of working people, did businesses aimed at those same sort of people no harm at all. 

Another is nonconformism. Jabez Balfour was a Congregationalist, like James Birkett and Charles Henderson Smith; Joseph Peers was a Baptist. Nonconformists tended to espouse hard work, temperance, frugality, and upward mobility. Late 19th century nonconformists were mostly Liberals politically.

And lastly Burnley. Balfour was MP for Burnley from 1889 to 1893. Joseph  Peers practised accountancy in Burnley and although he had moved to nearby St Annes in around 1887, he still had business interests there as evidenced by the court case involving Padiham Building Society in November 1889. It would be surprising if the two men didn’t know each other. 

In any case, the Liberator scandal led to a rapid decrease in consumer confidence. Investment in building societies fell and led to further legislation in 1894  including a ban on Starr-Bowkett and similar societies ‘based on dubious gambling principles’. Joseph Peers’ societies including the East End Economic would have fallen into this category. Although we have found no evidence of any serious wrongdoing by Peers or his societies,  it is perhaps understandable that neither he nor the East End directors spoke much in later life about their association with a now outlawed type of financial institution. 

We haven’t found evidence that the East End Economic attracted enough subscribers to get off the ground, still less whether any of its subscribers won mortgages in its ballot or which, if any, Heaton properties were financed by it, but the discovery of a pile of undistributed leaflets under the floorboards of its secretary’s former home has allowed some light to be shone on what was until now a hidden aspect of Heaton’s social and economic history.

Can you help?

If you know any more about anyone mentioned in this article or the East End Economic Building Society, or if you come across any reference to the society in property deeds, we’d love to hear from you. You can contact us either through this website by clicking on the link immediately below the article title or by emailing chris.jackson@heatonhistorygroup.org

Acknowledgements

Researched and written by Chris Jackson of Heaton History Group (HHG). A big thank you to Josie, who shared her family’s find with us and to Marty Douglass of HHG, who acted as go-between. Also to Arthur Andrews of HHG for his help, especially for retrieving the article about Charles Henderson Smith from the ‘Whitley Seaside Chronicle’ archive at Discover North Tyneside, North Tyneside Libraries.

Sources

‘Ancestry’

‘British Newspaper Archives’

‘The Building Society Movement’ / by Harold Bellman; Methuen, 1927

‘The Building Society Promise: building societies and home ownership c 1880-1913’ / by Luke Samy; Discussion papers in Economic and Social History no 72; University of Oxford, 2008

‘Housing Landlordism in late nineteenth century Britain’ / by P Kemp; Environment and Planning A, 1982 pp 1437-1447

‘Whitley Seaside Chronicle’ , 14 October 1911

‘Wikipedia’ and other online sources

Escape to Heaton: Mike’s wartime memories

Stories of women and children hurriedly gathering a few belongings together and leaving the home they know to escape the horror of war, only to find themselves once more in the midst of it, have become only too commonplace in 2022. Heaton History Group member, Mike Summersby, arrived in Newcastle as a three year old in 1941 under just those circumstances.

We are delighted to be able to publish some extracts from the memoirs Mike has recently written. Here, he remembers those early days in Heaton, the family’s new home in Mowbray Street and the underground shelter where the family spent many hours:

‘ The wailing siren warned of the attack. Searchlight beams danced across the night sky, seeking out their prey. The dull drone of the planes heightened the sense of fear. Were they ours or theirs?

People hurried from their homes to the row of reinforced concrete air-raid shelters that sat between the Tyneside flats on either side of Mowbray Street. Hurriedly dressed over nightclothes, some carried books, or food, or other comforts. It could be a long night in the shelter. 

It was 1941. Jessie Summersby (Mam) and her two sons – my brother Peter aged twelve and me aged three – had only days earlier arrived in Newcastle. Dad was serving in the army. Mam knew not where, except that it was probably somewhere overseas. 

As a wartime street warden, Mam had witnessed close-up the horrors of the London blitz. Near breaking point, she and her boys had left the capital as evacuees. After a brief stay in the Wiltshire village of Little Somerford, she had moved us to Newcastle, her childhood home, where her father and her twin sister lived. 

From her London home she had watched aerial dogfights between the RAF and the German Luftwaffe. She could tell from the sound of the engines which planes were ours and which were theirs.

Our new home 

Our new home was a single room in a downstairs two-bedroom Tyneside flat at 164 Mowbray Street, Heaton (now, but not then of course, opposite Hotspur Primary School) in which my grandfather, William Newton lived with his ‘housekeeper’, Mrs Montgomery. 

164 Mowbray Street in 2022

Mam, my brother Peter and I were given the front room. I assume all concerned hoped that it would be a temporary measure. But these were uncertain times. No one could know how long the war would last. As it turned out this one room was to be our home for the next four years. 

We also had use of the scullery, including a shelf in the larder, and access to a shared outside lavatory (colloquially the ‘netty’) next to the coalhouse in the small, red-brick-walled back yard. 

So it was that 164 Mowbray Street became the place of some of my earliest recollections and our family home until the end of World War 2. 

Being only three years old when we first arrived in Newcastle, I had no awareness of our previous home in London. Nor could I possibly, at that young age, be aware of the sense of loss and deprivation that my mother must have felt as she came to terms with her new situation. 

The young Mike Summersby

Now, as I reflect on that time and the years that followed, I can only marvel at how brave and resourceful she was, and how magnificently she coped single-handedly during the next four years bringing up her two boys in such strained circumstances. 

Mam (Jessie)

Mam did her best with what she had. Out of necessity she quickly settled us in. Typical of the front room of a Tyneside flat, our room was roughly thirteen feet square with two alcoves, one either side of a chimney breast. The sash windows looking out onto the front street were curtained with blackout material. 

Furniture was basic and second hand or improvised. Much of the floor space was taken up by a three-quarter size bed initially shared by mam, Peter and me, and a square table and two horsehair-covered chairs (rough on the legs of a young boy wearing short trousers). 

Later, Peter slept on a camp bed which was folded away each morning and set up in front of the window each evening. I marvel now that without complaint, and for much of our four years living in that room, he slept so many nights on canvas stretched on a wooden frame. Perhaps it felt like camping out but it could not have been comfortable, particularly for a growing teenager. 

The two alcoves were used for storage of all our worldly goods, including the less perishable items of food. Orange boxes served for shelving. Mam hand-sewed hems on pieces of cretonne curtain which she then suspended on string across the front of the boxes to hide the contents. The wood floor was covered with faded patterned linoleum that had seen better days and was cracked in places where the floorboards were uneven, which made it difficult to keep clean. Heating in our room was an open fireplace with an iron grate. Teasing a fire into flame on a chilly night required the careful layering of paper, sticks of firewood and coal. One of Peter’s regular jobs was to buy and fetch coal from the coal yard next to the nearby railway line. 

Lighting was by gas from a pipe at the centre of the ceiling. When the gas was turned on, a replaceable mantle fixed to the end of the gas fitting glowed when it was lit with a match or a lighted taper. The flow of gas, and thus the brightness, was regulated by the manipulation of pull-chains attached to the light fitting. The mantles were very fragile and frequently needed replacement. The gas mantle would be lit only when the light was intended to be left on – otherwise a candle or a torch would be used as a short-term temporary light – like when someone needed to use the chamber-pot (kept under the bed) for a nocturnal pee. Whatever the form of lighting, it had to be blocked by curtains or screens so that no light could be seen from outside. Stray lights could assist enemy bombers in locating or confirming target areas. The ‘blackout’ was enforced by patrolling Air Raid Precautions (ARP) wardens who would promptly order ‘Put that light out’ if it wasn’t properly screened. 

The netty was a cold, stark, forbidding cupboard of a place housing a wooden platform straddled across its width, with an appropriately shaped opening above the lavatory bowl. Faded whitewash decorated the otherwise bare brick walls. ‘Toilet paper’ was squares cut or torn from newspapers, each square punched in one corner, threaded with string and hung in a swatch on a nail. Mounted precariously above the facility was a rusted metal water cistern from which hung a similarly rusted metal chain. The cubicle was little wider than the wooden entry door with its gaps at top and bottom – presumably for ventilation. Ceiling cobwebs added to the sense of gloom. This was a grim place of necessity in which to spend the least possible time, particularly during the winter months. 

The Culvert 

We had left London to escape the blitz but Mam soon found that the air raid threat, though less intensive than in the capital, was a fact of life here in Newcastle, too.
During our first year living at 164 Mowbray Street we spent many hours in the culvert. After a night spent there, Peter always liked to prolong his stay in order to avoid going to school, or at least to provide him with an excuse for arriving late. Grandad didn’t use the culvert or the street shelters. He preferred to stay in his home, taking refuge in the cupboard underneath the stairs of the flat above. 

About a third of a mile long, the Ouseburn Culvert had two entry points. The preferred access for us was down in the Ouseburn Valley off Stratford Grove West. The other – which we never used – was under Byker Bridge. 

The Culvert was our place of refuge many times during World War 2. At the wail of the air raid siren we would stop whatever we were doing, grab our gas masks and run out into the streets in the direction of sanctuary. There was no street lighting to guide us if it was a night raid and, anyway, moonlit nights were a mixed blessing. If you could see, you could be seen. 

The Culvert today

Once inside the Culvert we felt safe. An elliptical structure 6 metres high and 9 metres wide, with a concrete platform floor, it was dry and had the space for distractions and facilities to make the experience tolerable. A canteen, a first aid post and sick bay, bunk beds, an area for worship, a stage for performance, a library, and tolerable – if basic – toilet facilities. 

One particularly memorable evening the wail of the air raid siren sounded just a couple of minutes after we had returned to our room from a trip to the fish and chip shop on Stratford Road. Fish and chips were a hugely popular takeaway meal, especially as they were not subject to food rationing. As usual we’d had to stand in a queue to wait our turn at the counter. Then, with happy anticipation of the meal ahead, we carried the hot, newspaper-wrapped bundles the short distance back to our room in Mowbray Street. As soon as Mam had unwrapped the feast, off went the siren. We hurriedly dressed, grabbed gas masks and without a second thought Mam loosely gathered up the fish and chips in their newspaper wrappers and we all ran towards the Culvert. Sadly, on our arrival at our safe haven there was very little left of our now barely warm meal. Most of it lay scattered along the pavements between Mowbray Street and our sanctuary. 

Whilst the Culvert offered safety from whatever mayhem might be going on above ground, the overriding but generally unspoken fear was of what would happen if bombs were dropped at either end of the tunnel. Otherwise the occupants were sufficiently protected in their underground location, with its cleverly designed inner blast walls, to offer safety for up to 3,000 residents for as long as it might be needed, until the ‘all clear’ siren was sounded. 

Street shelters fell into disfavour after a number of people were killed or maimed as a result of direct bomb hits, in some cases resulting in the concrete and reinforced steel roofs collapsing on the people inside. It turned out that the Ouseburn Culvert was probably our safest option after all. 

The culvert was originally constructed to cover a section of the Ouseburn, a tributary of the River Tyne, through a valley which then would be infilled to provide improved access between Heaton and the city centre. (You can read much more about its construction and history here.)

Today, much is rightly made of the Victoria Tunnel, an underground waggon-way built in the 1840s to carry coal between Leazes Main Colliery to the waiting ships on the River Tyne. Longer than the Ouseburn Culvert, it was not as spacious in section but, like the Culvert, it was converted for use as an air raid shelter during World War 2. Tours of the Victoria Tunnel give visitors a graphic interpretation of the sounds of war and the conditions under which people sought shelter from the bombing raids of the Luftwaffe. If similar reconstruction of World War 2 facilities and other interpretation work were to be carried out at a section of the Ouseburn Culvert, it would make a very impressive addition to Newcastle’s heritage offer. 

I’ll tell you more about my memories of growing up in Heaton during and after the second world war anon.’

Acknowledgements Thank you to Heaton History Group member, Mike Summersby, for permission to publish this extract from his memoirs. We plan to feature more over the coming months.

Heaton Hall

Christmas Fayre from Heaton Hall

Have you made your cake yet? Sweets to share after the Queen’s speech? Or drinks for guests who might be driving? If not and you like to use traditional, local recipes, then look no further. We present Christmas recipes from Heaton Hall, lovingly collected over almost fifty years between about 1869 and 1915.

Heaton Hall c1907

Heaton Hall, c 1907

The Find

Heaton History Group’s Arthur Andrews acquired a unique, handwritten recipe book, when he called into Keel Row Books in North Shields and fell into conversation with proprietor, Anthony Smithson. The book, which as well as recipes, mainly for desserts and cakes, also contains diets for invalids, remedies, household hints and even advice on how to tame a horse. It had at one time been the property of cookery book collector, Irene Dunn, formerly a library assistant at Newcastle University’s Robinson Library: there is a bookplate to that effect inside the front cover, dated 1988.

The book itself was attributed in the shop’s description to Hannah Beckworth, although her name doesn’t appear in the book. Naturally, Arthur wanted to dig deeper.

Cooks

Heaton Hall was owned for many years by the Potter family and they had a large retinue of domestic servants to enable them to live in the manner to which they had become accustomed. One of the most important roles was that of the cook to keep them ‘fed and watered’. The following are the cooks of Heaton Hall, as listed in the ten yearly census.

1861 – Jane Wright (age 34) born in Carlisle

1871 – Mary A Hervison (age 31) born in Newcastle

1881 – Margaret Halbert (age 20) born in Wrekenton

1891 – Elizabeth N Peel (age 17), born in Blaydon

1901 – Hannah Beckworth (age 30)

There are no cooks specifically mentioned in 1841, 1851 or 1911. Of course, there may have been many others during the ten year intervals between censuses and before and after those listed but it was a start and it immediately became clear that the last of these was the person to whom the book had been attributed.

Further research showed that she wasn’t, in fact,  Hannah Beckworth, but Hannah Beckwith. Hannah was born in 1871 at Pelton, Co Durham to Joseph and Mary Beckwith. In 1881 she was at school and by 1891 she was in domestic service, working as a ‘scullery maid’ at Woolsington Hall, near Newcastle. By 1901 she had moved to Heaton Hall and was employed as the cook with a kitchen maid, Jane Matthewson (23), working under her. She was, at that time, cooking for Addison Potter’s widow, Mary (72) and two of their children, Charles Potter (48) and Francis Potter (31). By 1911 Hannah had moved on to Derwent Hill, Keswick, where she cooked for the Slack family. After this her whereabouts are unknown.

But, although Hannah may have been the final contributor to the recipe book, she couldn’t have been the original writer as it was started at least two years before she was born. And none of the other cooks or domestic staff appear to have been at Heaton Hall for long enough.

Guests

The first page of the book is helpfully dated.

HeatonHallrecipesFirstPage1869

This entry states that on 3rd August 1869, there were seven for dinner, mentioning four Potters, Sir Rolland Errington (sic) and Mr Gibson.

Rowland-Stanley-Errington-11th-Bt-with-his-three-daughters

Sir Rowland Stanley Errington, 11th Bt with his three daughters , early 1860s photographed by John Pattison Gibson (With thanks to the National Portrait Gallery)

Sir Rowland Errington, was a wealthy landowner, whose estate was Sandhoe Hall, near  Hexham. He was High Sheriff of Northumberland in 1855 and became the 11th Errington Baronet in 1863. The photograph above in the National Portrait Gallery was taken by John Pattison Gibson, a notable photographer from Hexham. It is the only portrait by Pattison in the national collection perhaps because Gibson’s main interest for most of his career was landscape, architectural and archaeological photography. Portraits were mainly earlier works. Gibson’s archive is held by Northumberland Archives. We can’t be sure but this photographer may have been the Mr Gibson mentioned as the second guest. Unfortunately, we don’t know who the third was or what was eaten at the dinner party.

The first writer may have been the cook at that time, possibly Mary Hervison. The writing is untidy and a guest’s name is misspelled but Mary wasn’t at Heaton Hall by 1881 and much of the rest of the book is written in the same neat hand. Could this by the handwriting of a member of the Potter family?

The Potters

In 1869, the Potter family comprised:

Addison Potter, aged 48, a cement manufacturer at Willington Quay and Addison Colliery owner near Blaydon. He was Lieutenant Colonel of 1st Northumberland & Durham Artillery Volunteer Corps and was variously Lord Mayor of Newcastle (1873 and 1874), an Alderman and a JP.

Mary Potter, his wife , aged 40 and their children: Addison Molyneux 17, Charles 16, George Stephenson 10, Mary 7, Anna 3, Margaret 2 and baby Frances Sybil.

The only plausible candidate for the cookery book compiler is Mary Potter nee Robson. Mary married Addison Potter in 1859 and in 1861 were living in Chirton House, North Shields. They moved to the Potter family home, Heaton Hall, some time before 1871. The recipe book suggests it was before August 1869.

We do not know for sure but the handwriting and spelling looks like that of somebody well educated. And as the mistress of the house, supervision of the kitchen staff and activities would have been her domain. Mary lived at Heaton Hall until she died on 21 September 1904. After her death, the book may well have passed to Hannah Beckwith, her cook at that time. But the Christmas recipes we bring to you today may well be favourites of Mary Potter herself.

Christmas Recipes

The writer says the first Christmas cake recipe is the best she has tasted.

Heaton HallRecipes4HHXmasCakes1of2

HeatonHallRecipes5HHGXmasCakes2of2

Christmas cake recipe from Heaton Hall

HeatonHallrecipes3HHXmasCakeRecipes

More Christmas cake recipes from Heaton Hall

heatonHallRecipes6HHXmasCandy

Christmas candy recipe from Heaton Hall

HeatonHallRecipes7HHXmasWine

Christmas ‘wine’, a ‘temperance beverage’ from Heaton Hall

The book gives us a small insight into the lives and the preoccupations of the Potter family of Heaton Hall and we’ll feature more from it in the future. In the meantime, Happy Christmas from Heaton History Group  – and be sure to let us know if you try any of the recipes.

Acknowledgements

Researched and written by Arthur Andrews, with additional research by Chris Jackson. Thank you to Anthony Smithson of Keel Row Books, North Shields.

Can you help?

If you know more about anybody mentioned in this article, we’d love to hear from you.  Please get in touch either by clicking on the link immediately below the title of this article or by emailing chris.jackson@heatonhistorygroup.org

Heaton Divided: the 1740 Corn Riots

Manchester’s infamous Peterloo massacre is rightly being remembered ahead of its bicentenary. But political protests weren’t unique to Manchester nor was Peterloo the earliest modern example of the military breaking up such a demonstration, leading to loss of life.  Almost 80 years before Peterloo, Heaton miners were at the forefront of a less well known incident in Newcastle in which a Heaton landowner was also a key figure.

It has been argued by A W Purdue that the 18th century was a time in England when there was: “a social order which demonstrated considerable cohesion in that, despite acute social tensions, ‘acceptable compromises could be negotiated, compromises which safeguarded the social fabric'”. 

There was indeed a strict social hierarchy, with the power in the land concentrated in the hands of a small number of men.  In return for the compliance of the vast majority of the population with this arrangement, there was an expectation that there would be enough food for the general public. But what would happen, if there wasn’t enough food or the people couldn’t afford it?  How would the population react and how would the authorities respond to that reaction?  Events in Newcastle in 1740 give us some clues.

Background

There was heavy rain in August and September 1739, leading to a bad harvest, causing the price of oats and rye to double by June 1740.  The winter of 1739-40 was also very severe. The Newcastle Courant carried reports of unemployment and shortages of food, coal and even water. Alderman Matthew Ridley of Heaton Hall is reported to have allowed the poor to collect small amounts of coals from his colliery in Byker. This was a heartening sign of compassion from a member of the Newcastle elite, but it was not  a foretaste of what was to happen the following summer.

It has been reported that by March 1740, local food supplies were running short and there developed the widespread belief that speculators were hoarding grain to sell abroad at an inflated price. With less grain being available, so the market value went up drastically, to the point where miners in Heaton and keelmen on the River Tyne could no longer afford to feed themselves and their families.

There were riots in many parts of the country during May 1740, although at first those in Newcastle seemed insignificant: a small group of women, led by ‘General’ or Jane Bogey, apparently rang bells and impeded the passage of horses carrying grain through the town. Five women were committed for trial but discharged at Newcastle sessions a few days later and a regiment of dragoons on standby was withdrawn.

But disturbances continued elsewhere and, on 17 June, orders were sent for three companies of troops to march from Berwick to suppress troubles south of the Tyne.

Heaton miners’ dispute

On 19 June 1740, miners on the night shift at Heaton Bank pit went on strike in a dispute about their coal allowance, which may have been recently reduced by the owners.

HeatonRoyalty1745

Map of Heaton in 1745 showing Bank pit just south of High Heaton Farm towards the north west (courtesy of the Mining Institute)

By 3.00am, the men had garnered support from other pits and 60-100 of them marched into Newcastle, demanding a settlement of the price of grain, higher wages and better food.

Les Turnbull has noted that, ‘the affidavits record that the overman, George Laverick, “saw about 60 in Number of Workmen belonging to Heaton Colliery go past about 6 o’clock on Thursday morning”. Later, several hundred men, women and children joined the throng in Sandhill near the quayside.’

The following day, the miners were joined by keelmen and iron joiners from North and South Shields, with a crowd of several hundred descending on SandgateThe authorities were alarmed by this and the Riot Act was read.  The protest at this stage was mainly peaceful. A group of women and children did force their way into a granary with the help of some of the Heaton pitmen but in the main the protesters were just trying to put their case. Miners and the keelmen  petitioned the city corporation and at first there seemed to be some sort of agreement to reduce the price of grain but when, the following morning, many grain stores failed to open, the mood of the protesters changed.

It wasn’t only miners who were involved. Keelmen were usually the protesters in those far-off days – they went on strike in both 1661 and 1731, arguably two of the first industrial strikes anywhere in the world.

It is instructive to see what happened in another north east town. Something similar happened in Stockton, but there the magistrates and aldermen sent letters to London, putting pressure on the government.  Consequently, they averted major violence in Stockton. The magistrates in Newcastle decided on another path.

Magistrates’ response

The crowd of protesters soon grew to around 1,000 and they launched a full-scale attack on the granaries, with women and children again playing a prominent part, although even now they were peaceful and often persuaded to leave empty handed.

Many gathered outside the Guildhall, which was situated on its present site by the banks of the Tyne in the Sandhill area and at the northern end of the old Tyne Bridge, where the Swing Bridge is today.

Guildhallold

Guildhall as it would have looked in 1740

Attack on the Guildhall 

The violence escalated and the crowd, by now numbering at least 1,500, attacked the Guildhall, which was described at the time as a ‘very beautiful and sumptuous‘ building. (The building was not that with which we are so familiar with today. It had been built from 1655-60 by Robert Trollope, a mason from York, replacing an earlier building which had been damaged by fire in 1629.) It is recorded that the crowd of keelmen, iron workers and townspeople, ‘smashed the woodwork and windows, tore the paintings, and ransacked the archives and treasury.’   At least £1,300 was removed from the vaults but weapons that were captured were smashed and thrown in the river rather than used on the magistrates, all of whom escaped unharmed.

The actions that took place included the blocking of the movement of grain through the town, the seizure of grain and bread and unsuccessful negotiations with magistrates and merchants in an effort to reduce prices on a range of food items.  There was also an attempt to commandeer a ship-load of rye. Interestingly, it has been noted that women and children were again prominent in the disturbances, but they were joined by contingents of pitmen, keelmen and iron-workers, as the food protest merged with discontent over wages and labour conditions.

Much of the anger was connected to the fact that corn and rye were being exported from the Tyne, from the towns of Newcastle and Gateshead, where people needed it.  This was seen as going against the idea of a moral economy – more of which later.  It has been noted that, ‘the transportation of grain from the Tyne and the Tees occasioned food riots there in May 1740.  At Newcastle, women led protests against high prices and then attempted to unload a ship at the quayside.  When an alderman, supported by a private army confronted them and fired upon the crowd, major disturbances followed.’

The private army of 60 horsemen and over 300 men on foot, all of them bearing oak cudgels, was led by Heaton Hall’s Matthew Ridley. At first it enforced an uneasy calm but the Grand Allies, who owned Heaton colliery, refused to cooperate, perhaps because it would mean coming into conflict with their own workforce but more likely because  they could not bring themselves to work with Matthew Ridley, with whom they were often involved in bitter industrial and land disputes. There were other divisions among the authorities, too particularly between Alderman Fenwick, the mayor, and Ridley.

Over the following days, more and more people came into town to take advantage of the lower prices, which had been agreed earlier, but little grain was on sale. Eventually on 26 June, Ridley led a group of 20-30 armed freemen through the demonstrators. In the scuffling that followed, shots were fired. We know that at least one demonstrator was killed, possibly more, and others were wounded.

Understandably,  the violence escalated. Ridley was so concerned that his home would be attacked that he bricked all his valuables away in a vault but, in the event, Heaton Hall escaped unharmed.

HeatonHall1793

Heaton Hall in 1793

Mayor Fenwick had to appeal to the border garrison at Berwick to send more troops down through Northumberland before the protests were finally quelled.

Aftermath

The following day Matthew Ridley wrote a letter to the ‘Newcastle Courant’:

As it hath been maliciously reported that I was the first person that fired in the unhappy tumult yesterday, I think myself obliged to declare in this publick manner that I had neither gun or pistol in my hand nor did I give orders to any person to fire; but when the gentelmen were attacked in so violent a manner and several of them knocked down, they defended their lives in the best manner they could. Our intention at that time was to guard the delivery of the ship lying in the key laden with rye at the low price and to protect the poor upon the terms promised last Saturday’

Ninety one ringleaders’ names were collected for their part in the disturbances on 19 and 20 June, 41 of which were pitmen, seven waggonmen, seven keelmen, six women, five tradesman, one labourer and 24 of unknown occupation.

Eventually twenty pitmen, predominantly from Heaton, were indicted. Most escaped punishment as the authorities chose to respond with moderation, although there were two convictions for felony, with sentences of seven years transportation, and one of riot, with a sentence of six months in prison and a further twelve months ‘on securities’.

Among the Heaton miners were William Dunn of Gateshead, who worked under Ralph Laverick, Thomas Clough of Gateshead, who worked under George Claughton and Robert Clewett of Sidgate, who worked under John Taylor.  There was also George Clewett of Gateshead, who worked under George Claughton, John Todd, who worked under Henry Laverick and William Richardson, who worked under Ralph Weatherburn.  This suggests that men came from quite long distances to work in Heaton.

A further 213 men were identified as being involved in the disturbances on 26 June, 112 of whom were prosecuted, but again the punishments were relatively lenient, perhaps influenced by the fact that most local collieries had gone on strike while awaiting the verdicts.

The Guildhall was not, in fact, completely destroyed but, following further damage by fire, the frontage was rebuilt in 1794 to designs by William Newton and David Stephenson. In 1809, the south side was redesigned again in a classical style by John and William Stokoe. John Dobson’s east extension was completed in 1823.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Matthew Ridley failed in his bid to be elected to Parliament as a Member for Newcastle in 1741 but he was elected unopposed in 1747. He was also mayor of Newcastle in 1745, 51 and 59. Interestingly in May 1768 he spoke in Parliament in defence of Newcastle men involved in London riots and against the use of the militia in riots.

Reflections

It has been noted that two distinct views of the riot prevailed afterwards; ‘The outbreak of popular violence confirmed some people’s suspicions that “respectable” grievances served only as a pretext for the mob’s brutish desire to loot and plunder: to others it vindicated the traditional argument that it was not only unjust but also unwise “to provoke the necessitous, in times of scarcity, into extremities, that must involve themselves, and all the neighbourhood in ruin”’.

When E.P. Thompson wrote in 1971 about the Newcastle Corn Riots of 1740 in his famous paper The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the 18th Century, he talked of how the moral economy had been disturbed. Here is a definition of moral economy from the Oxford Dictionary online:  ‘The regulation of moral or ethical behaviour;  an economic system in which moral issues, such as social justice, influence fiscal policy or money matters.’

Thompson argued that the merchants and magistrates had disrupted the idea of the moral economy by not listening to the arguments of the working people that they could no longer afford rye and bread at market prices. Here was a sign of the beginning of the modern capitalist economy where items would be sold at the market value and the idea that there should still be a moral economy – which, it has been argued, in one interpretation, ‘is an economy based on goodness, fairness, and justice. Such an economy is generally only stable in small, closely knit communities, where the principles of mutuality — i.e. “I’ll scratch your back if you’ll scratch mine” — operate to avoid the free rider problem’ – was being lost.

As the economy of the north east grew during the 18th century, so society was moving further and further away from the older ideas that those at the top of the social hierarchy should be paternalistic towards those lower down the pecking order. As the market value of commodities became more important to those in positions of power than a sense of responsibility to those who would have been called the ‘lower orders‘, so it is argued, working people increasingly protested, especially when faced with starvation.

It is perhaps, then no wonder that the coming years would see the hierarchy itself being increasingly challenged but we shouldn’t forget the Newcastle corn riots of 1740 or the parts played by Heaton miners – and the local landowner.

Acknowledgements Researched and written by Peter Sagar with additional material by Chris Jackson.

Sources

‘A Celebration of Our Mining Heritage ‘ / Les Turnbull; Chapman, 2015

‘The Guildhall’, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1952

‘The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century’ / E P Thompson;  Past and Present, No. 50. (Feb, 1971), pp76-136

Newcastle in the Long Eighteenth Century’ / A W Purdue; Northern History, September 2013

‘The Politics of Provisions: Food Riots, Moral Economy, and Market Transition’ by John Bohstedt; Routledge, 2010

‘Popular Cultures in England 1550-1750’ / Barry Reay; Routledge, 1988

‘Riotous Assemblies: Popular Protest in Hanoverian England’ / Adrian Randall; OUP, 2006.

‘Urban Conflict and Popular Violence: the Guildhall riots of 1740 in Newcastle upon Tyne’ / Joyce Ellis; International Review of Social History, Vol 25 Part 3, 1980.

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/us/moral_economy

https://everipedia.org/wiki/Moral_economy/

http://englandsnortheast.co.uk/Georgian.html

https://co-curate.ncl.ac.uk/guildhall/

 

 

 

 

Peggy Murray: Lord Mayor and adopted Heatonian

Members of Heaton History Group’s  research team are always on the look-out for stories relating to our area, so when Arthur Andrews read a book called ‘Women on the March’ about early women MPs of the North East, the following paragraph, that a lesser researcher might have let pass, caught his attention:

When Grace Colman [Tynemouth MP 1945-50] died on 7 July, 1971, aged 79, she was mourned by many members of the North Labour Party, not to say the women of Tyneside and Northumberland. After cremation at Tynemouth crematorium, it was Peggy Murray who carried out her last request to scatter her ashes on a moor near Wooler.’

Arthur wondered who it was who had scattered her friend’s ashes and, in the hope that she would turn out to be a Heatonian with a story to tell, he set about finding out:

Scot

Margaret’s father James Malloch was born in Govan, Lanarkshire and was a marine engine fitter. In the 1901 census he was a ‘boarder’ living with a family in Benwell. By the time of the 1911 census, he was married to Alice from Longbenton, and they were living in Byker with 3 children. The eldest was Margaret (Peggy), who had been born in 1903 in Govan and she had two younger brothers, Thomas and Ronald, both born in Newcastle.

By 1931 the family had moved to Walker with just mother Alice, Margaret (Peggy), Ronald and, presumably another son, James. Father John and brother Thomas are not there.

In 1932 Peggy married Alexander Easson Murray (1907-1965) of 110 Cartington Terrace, Heaton. They had a son, Alan, born in 1937. For many years after that, the Murray family lived at 3 Marleen Avenue, which overlooks Heaton Junction rail yards (though later they moved to the West End before returning to Heaton). Arthur had his story!

Politics

Peggy became a Newcastle Councillor, representing the Moorside ward for Labour for almost 30 years, from 1952 to 1982. Tony Flynn, one time Moorside councillor and Leader of Newcastle upon Tyne City Council, described his former colleague:

“I knew Peggy Murray very well as I was a fellow Ward Councillor with her in Moorside from 1980.

When I was Chair of the Moorside Ward in 1979, we managed to get Peggy elected to the Moorside Ward so that she could become Lord Mayor in the City’s 900th anniversary year, after she had lost her seat the previous year.

I then stood for the Council in 1980 and was elected taking the seat from the Tories in the first year when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister.

Peggy and I used to share weekly surgeries together, at what was then the old Snow Street School, when we used to chat for an hour in between seeing ‘punters’.

Peggy was unlike many other councillors as she never hid her personal political opinions from others, who seemed to her to be personally ambitious and had forgotten why they were on the council.

She talked extensively about her past in the women’s labour movement and in particular the history of the suffragettes.

She refused to accept councillors’ allowances saying money was not her motivation for being a councillor. She was a doughty fighter for what she believed in and upset many of her fellow Labour councillors who she thought were “In it for themselves”.

Peggy was blunt with electors. She used to bring a marked electoral role to surgeries and after agreeing to help people with their problems, confronted them with the fact that they had not voted at the previous election, when women had fought for their vote. (Or worse that they had not bothered to register to vote.)

She would say, I will help you if you promise to vote in future, preferably for her as she could only help them if she was a councillor. (Peggy continued to hold surgeries the year she was not a councillor, and therefore spoke from hard experience.)

Peggy was an avid reader and believed in self education. Even when she was Lord Mayor she still managed to walk into the Central Library every week to borrow books. 

Jeremy Beecham, who was Leader of the Council at the time, would not allow Peggy to dispense with the Lord Mayor’s car during her term of office, as she did not want the trappings of office!

I suppose Peggy for a long time was my ‘mentor’and in turn would nominate me for office at the annual Labour Group meetings even though I was a novice.

When I was elected to the group executive in my first year on the council, older members disapproved of my quick elevation. Peggy would reply that they had been there all their lives and ‘had done nothing’ ‘better to give a younger person an opportunity’ before they ‘sold out’ and ‘lost their values’.

So, Peggy was a character and a ‘one off’ who had a ‘cutting-edge’ and did not mind ‘telling it’ as she saw things.”

Lord Mayor

It must have been a great privilege for Peggy Murray to be elected as Mayor by the Labour group during the Newcastle’s 900th anniversary celebrations. Her daughter-in-law, Mrs Jean Murray, was the Lady Mayoress.

MurrayPeggyandQueenMother

Lord Mayor Peggy Murray with Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother

Councillor Margaret Collins, who nominated Peggy, said that it was ‘a triumphant return’, after Peggy won back her seat in the Moorside ward.

She received an Honorary Doctor of Civil Law from Newcastle University for her ‘outstanding contribution to the wellbeing of Newcastle’ by serving on social services, residential and day care, education, workshops for the adult blind, health services advisory and St Mary Magdalen Trust committees as well as the Moorside Priority Team. She had been in her time Chairman of the Healthcare Committee,Welfare Committee and Libraries Committee. She was a former alderman.

The atlas below was produced by the School of Geography and Environmental Studies of Newcastle Polytechnic as a contribution to the 900th Anniversary of the city’s foundation. It contains many interesting facts, figures, maps and diagrams of the city’s development over the centuries. The atlas was printed as a limited, edition of 1000 copies, the one illustrated being number 495. This book is mentioned because the foreword was written by the Lord Mayor, Councillor, Mrs M S Murray (Peggy).

HistoricalAtlasofNewcastle1res

She writes that this was a daunting task for her, in trying to encapsulate ‘the many changes through the centuries, to what is now Newcastle upon Tyne’. Also noted by her is that industrial recession at the start of the 20th Century was changed to prosperity by the Great War, with women working long hours and even night shift in the factories along Scotswood Road. The women also organized a strike. She then mentions the decline in heavy industry etc and mentions Newcastle people being resilient in hard times. She finished her foreword with:

‘May we leave a pleasant city to our children in which they may live, learn, work and play in peace’.

Mayoral Year

During her year in office, Peggy:

Played host to Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother;

Stitched the first stitch in a tapestry to mark Newcastle’s 900th Anniversary, now in Newcastle Civic Centre;

Welcomed home the round the world yachtsman, David Scott Cowper, with receptions on the Quayside and the Mansion House;

Attended the opening of Odeon 4 in Pilgrim Street with the launch of the film, ‘Rocky II’. A commentator said that she declared that she was not particularly fond of fight films but nevertheless performed her civic duty perfectly, without ‘throwing the towel in’;

Murraypeggy900Aleres

Pressed the button on the Scottish and Newcastle bottling line for the first batch of a total of 900,000 half pint bottles of the special edition ‘Newcastle 900 Anniversary Ale’, selling for 30p. The teetotal’ mayor said that she hoped people on Tyneside would enjoy the ale ‘but not too frequently’.

Obituary

Peggy Murray died in August 1987, in the Freeman Hospital, aged 84. Her home at the time of her death was Stannington Place, Heaton. Her obituary noted that she refused the £1000 gold medallion for her year in office because the council could not afford it, saying: ‘I have the memories of the kindness of the people of Newcastle which no one can replace’.

Find Out More

Our talk ‘800 Years of Newcastle Mayors’ by David Faulkner on Wednesday 23 January 2019 at the Corner House will be about the renowned individuals who have held the office down the centuries. Find out more, including how to book, here.

Can you help?

If you know more about Peggy Murray, we’d love to hear from you.  Please get in touch either by clicking on the link immediately below the title of this article or by emailing chris.jackson@heatonhistorygroup.org

Acknowledgements

Researched and written by Arthur Andrews, Heaton History Group. Thank you to Tony Flynn for his time and for his memories of Peggy Murray.

Sources

‘The March of the Women’ by Tony Sleight;

Newcastle City Library;

Online sources including FindMyPast, Ancestry, British Newspaper Archive.