Category Archives: Tenth Avenue

The Gilhomes of Heaton

Gwen Usher of Gosforth has kindly shared with us the history of her family, who lived, worked and went to school in Heaton. And she told us about the parts various members played during the First World War.

Isaac

Isaac, the third of four children of William and Sarah Elliott Gilhome, was born in 1860 in Embleton, where his father had a butcher’s shop. After leaving school, Isaac went on to become a butcher himself and the 1881 census records him, aged 20, working in his father’s shop. By 1891, the family’s circumstances had changed completely. Sarah Gilhome had died, leaving William as a widower, aged 64. He had moved to Jesmond, where he was living in a toll-house and working as toll collector. By this time, Isaac had met and married Mary Isabella Porter, which is when the family’s connection with Heaton began.

Isaac Gilhome

To Heaton

Mary Isabella Gilhome nee Porter was born in Newcastle on 29 November 1857, daughter of a mariner, but she grew up with her paternal grandmother, Mary A Porter, in Cley, Norfolk. But by 1881, aged 23, she had returned to Newcastle and was living in Jesmond as nursemaid to the children of the Sopwith family.

Mary Isabella Gilhome in later life

Isaac and Mary Isabella married in 1887 and lived in Bensham before, some time around 1891, moving to 35 Tenth Avenue, with their two eldest children Dorothy and Sarah Elizabeth.

Sisters Dora, Lizzie and Mary Gilhome

The family continued to grow, with John Porter, Mary Isabella and William born in the 1890s. At some point before 1911, the expanding family moved to a bigger house at 31 Cheltenham Terrace. Isaac eventually opened his own shop. By the time of the First World War, he had three shops in Dalton Street, Gibson Street and Shields Road. Isaac died in 1924 and Mary Isabella in 1930. This is the story of their children, all of whom grew up in Heaton.

Dora

Dorothy, known as Dora, the oldest of the Gilhome children, was born in 1888 and in 1894 was in the first intake of children to the new Chillingham Road School. When she left school, aged 14, Dora stayed at home to help her mother with the family home and care for the younger children. She married Jack Denmead in 1923 and the couple eventually settled in Romford, Essex. Dora died of cancer tragically young in 1942.

Lizzie

Sarah Elizabeth, known as Lizzie, was born in 1890. When Lizzie left school in 1904, she trained as an upholstress, working for Robson’s furniture store, on Northumberland Street, where she was joined, four years later, by her younger sister Mary. Lizzie married Robert Davidson from Berwick, a plumber who worked for the gas company, before opening a sweetshop next to one of Isaac’s butcher’s shops. Their only daughter, Mary Isabella, was born in July 1918. Gwen clearly remembers being allowed to play in the sweet shop when it was closed. Lizzie died in 1976.

John

John Porter was born on 7th January 1892. Like his father before him he worked in the family butcher’s shops in the evenings and weekends from the age of 8. At the outbreak of war, John joined the Navy and in May 1916 was involved in the Battle of Jutland, the only major naval battle of World War One. It’s not clear whether John Porter’s ship was one of those lost in the Battle of Jutland. We do know, however, that in 1917, he joined HMS Caledon, when it was commissioned on 6 March 1917. The Caledon saw action in the second battle of the Heligoland Bight. It was struck by a 12” shell, but fortunately not seriously damaged.

John Porter Gilhome (front right)

After the war, John married Edith Wilkinson. He died in June 1947 in Hexham of TB.

Mary

Mary Isabella was born in 1894, leaving school in 1908 to work as an upholstress with her sister. At the start of the war, when John signed up for the Navy, Mary was also keen to do something to help the war effort. There was a particular call for young women to train as nurses and Mary responded, starting her two year probation period at Lemington Infectious diseases hospital.

Mary Gilhome

Whilst at the hospital Mary set up the Newburn Isolation Hospital War Savings Association. The War Savings Movement was established in March 1916 as a way to bring in much needed revenue to fund the war effort. The National Savings Committee was supplemented by volunteer local committees and paid civil servants. Posters encouraged workers to invest in the National Savings Scheme and would buy stamps for 6d, with a promise that each 15/6 saved would be repaid as £1 in six years time. Interestingly, the movement used the swastika as its logo, although this was subsequently abandoned by the government.

War Savings Association membership card

The National Savings Movement continued to thrive after the war and was instrumental in providing funds in World War 2. It continued until 1978, before becoming National Savings and Investments, which still operates today and runs, amongst other things the Premium Bond scheme. Mary’s role as Honorary Secretary of the association was recognised in a letter from Lloyd George after the war.

Letter from Lloyd George to Mary Gilhome

After the war, Mary briefly gave up her nursing career to nurse her father. She then studied midwifery, qualifying in 1928, and she continued her career as a nurse, moving to the West Riding of Yorkshire, where she worked as a district nurse, until she retired in 1959 (some five years later than she should have) when she returned to Newcastle to live. Because of the isolated nature of her caseload, Mary replaced the district nurse’s bike for a motorbike. Mary died in November 1992.

William

William, the youngest child of the family, was born on 29 June 1898 and like all of his siblings went to Chillingham Road School. Unlike his siblings, he was in the first cohort not to have to make a contribution to the school board, receiving free education. At the age of 8, William had a severe bout of diphtheria and was nursed at home, in part by Mary, which may have helped spark her interest in both nursing and working with infectious diseases.

Like his brother, William helped out in the shop and was keen to join the war effort. The family legend is that he joined the Northumberland Fusiliers at the age of 16 and was sent straight to fight in Italy, along with a battalion of the Royal Muster Fusiliers from Ireland. However this story raises some questions. Firstly, the army only recruited young men aged 18 or over and didn’t send them to the front until they were 19.

Secondly, Italy was not a major focus for fighting in World War 1. The 10th and 11th service battalions of the Northumberland Fusiliers were deployed to Northern Italy to strengthen local resistance, but not until November 1917, when the first garrison battalion of the Royal Munster Fusiliers were also deployed to the area to defend lines of communication. It seems likely that this was when William was deployed, although he never spoke to the family about his wartime experiences. There is a photo of him in Italy with his Lance Corporal and his medal records show him as having fought in both the Northumberland and Royal Muster Fusiliers, which supports this position.

William Gilhome

William would have been involved in the battle of Vittorio Veneto, which was instrumental in the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the end of the war.

After the war, John and William completed their training as butchers and after their father’s death in 1924, jointly took over the family shops. This proved not to be a successful arrangement and John subsequently bought William out of his share. William then went on to manage a shop in Gateshead before opening his own store in Low Fell. He married Ann Armstrong at St Silas’ Church, Byker in 1928 and the couple settled in Gateshead. Their daughter Gwen was born in Gateshead in June 1936. During World War 2, William served in the Home Guard as a Private in E Company of the 8th Cumberland Battalion. William died on of a heart attack in 1964, having suffered from heart disease since 1945, thought to be as a result of his childhood diphtheria.

Thank you

Thank you to Gwen Usher for sharing the Gilhomes’story with Heaton History Group member, Michael Proctor, who carried out additional research. If you have information, memories or photographs of Heaton to share, please contact Chris Jackson

Castles of Heaton

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Heaton History Group member, Arthur Andrews, has been researching his family tree. Luckily for us, although Arthur lives in Whitley Bay, a number of his family members lived in Heaton, including during World War One, the period we’re researching for our ‘Heaton Avenues in Wartime’ project. Here is Arthur’s poignant account of the life of William Castle and his family.

‘My great-grandfather, William Castle was born in London on 24 July 1858. He was the third of the six children of John and Susan Castle. Susan came from Southborough in Kent and John from Letcombe in Berkshire. We know that by 1861, when William was two, his father was a domestic servant/valet and the family were living in Lillington Place, London. Ten years later, with William still a schoolboy, they were in Paddington.

William Castle

Country estate

‘However by 1878, for reasons I haven’t yet discovered, 19 year old William had moved to the other end of the country. He had followed his father into domestic service and was, at the age of 19, employed as a footman to a wealthy Northumberland couple, Watson Askew Esquire and the Honourable Sarah Askew. His new home was what can only be described as a stately home, Pallinsburn, near the Scottish border. A bit different from Paddington!

Pallinsburn, Northumberland

‘I managed to find records relating to William’s time at Pallinsburn in the Northumberland Archives at Woodhorn and so know that his starting wage was £26 a year but that within a year, he’d been promoted to the role of First Footman and earned an extra £2pa. The Askew family’s expenditure books show that he received an advance on his wages occasionally.

‘While at Pallinsburn, William was presented with a small, personally inscribed, leather bound bible, which I still have. The bible has gilt edging on all the pages and a decorative metal clasp and ornate metal corner protectors, which make it quite special. Expenditure records suggest it cost £3 to purchase, quite a lot of money at that time. The inscription says “William Castle, from honourable Sarah Askew March 10th 1880“. We can only speculate as to what prompted the gift.

Bible presented to William Castle

The 1881 census shows that William was still living and working at Pallinsburn but the final reference to him in the family expenditure records is in May of that year, when his annual pay of £30 is recorded.

Heaton home

‘The next I know of William, he was working as a tobacconist on Shields Road and living above the shop at number 145. On 31 July 1884, he married 22 year old Elizabeth Stanners, a shepherd’s daughter from the small hamlet of New Etal in North Northumberland. The wedding took place in a Primitive Methodist chapel in Milfield, a few miles north of Wooler, which is still used for worship today. The newly-weds seem to have immediately come to live in Heaton, which must have been as big a shock for Elizabeth as the move from London to rural North Northumberland had been for William.

‘Between 1886 and 1900, Elizabeth and William had four children, John, Eleanor Susan (known as Nellie), Winifred (‘Winnie’) and Ruth. During this period, the family lived at various addresses not too far from the Shields Road shop, including 172 Tynemouth Road and 5 Charles Street, before moving, by 1900, to 47 Tenth Avenue. William kept his tobacconist’s shop until September 1915, when he retired, receiving a silver fruit bowl from his staff. I still have the bowl.

Just before then we have found a reference to him in the local newspaper: On 25 March 1915, his gift of cigarettes to the sick and wounded of Armstrong College Hospital was publicly acknowledged.

John

‘The Castle children all attended Chillingham Road School, newly opened in 1893 to accommodate the growing number of children in the rapidly expanding suburbs of Heaton and Byker. Eldest boy John was among its first cohort. He was registered as pupil number 91 on 17 November 1893. He went on to the secondary school, which he left on 21 July 1899 to join his father’s business as a ‘tobacconist’s assistant’. I have at home, a lovely memento of John. In 1904, he was given a fine wooden smoking cabinet, with a small engraved plaque, which reads “Presented to J Castle for meritorious work, by the proprietors of The British Advertiser, Dec 1904″.

Sadly, less than two years later, John died at home in Tenth Avenue, aged only 20, of appendicitis, not a disease we normally think of as fatal today.

Nellie

‘Nellie also went to work in her father’s shop until, in 1912, she married a young Irishman, Arthur James Andrews, in St Mark’s Byker.

Nellie and Arthur on their wedding day

Her husband was a dentist who, at the time of their marriage, worked and lodged in Wallsend. They went on to have five children: Dorothy, Ronald William, Marjorie, Nellie and another Arthur, Arthur James. In 1931, however, seven year old Dorothy and her father died of meningitis within days of each other. Nellie, widowed with four children at the age of 31, left the family home at 137 Heaton Park Road to live in Whitley Bay. Youngest son, Arthur, who you might have guessed was my father, was brought up by his grandparents to ease the burden on his mother.

Winnie

‘Winnie married Frederick Justus Hurdle, a Canadian engine fitter, on 18 October 1916. Within three months, they left for Canada, perhaps to get away from the war, which was causing such distress and hardship at home. Perhaps Winnie found it hard to settle or maybe because the war was over, she and Frederick returned in June 1919 but, in yet another tragedy to hit the family, Winnie died of meningitis just three months later.

Winnie Castle outside her Toronto home

Her widowed husband returned to Canada. As I write this, we’re reminded that meningitis is still a killer, with a new vaccine for all babies having just been authorised.

Ruth

‘Youngest daughter, Ruth, is pictured here outside the family home at 47 Tenth Avenue, in the earliest photograph Heaton History Group has seen of the avenues.

Young Ruth Castle outside 47 Tenth Avenue

Ruth married Leslie Daykin Jeffcoat of 34 Third Avenue in 1925, if not quite the boy next door, then not far off. But theirs is a ‘Heaton Avenues in Wartime’ story which I’ll tell on another occasion.

Heaton resting place

‘After William’s retirement and with two of their four children having died prematurely, he and Elizabeth continued living on Tenth Avenue for another ten years, before moving in 1920 with youngest daughter, Ruth, to a much larger house in Shotley Bridge. Elizabeth died on 28 February 1929, aged 69 years and William a little over a year later on 5 May 1930, aged 72. William’s estate amounted to almost £10,000, showing how far the footman and the shepherd’s daughter had come.They returned to the area in which they’d spent most of their married life to be buried together in the family grave in Heaton and Byker Cemetery with John, the son, and Winifred, the daughter, who had pre-deceased them. It was to be less than a year before a son-in-law and granddaughter were to join them.’

Can you help?

This article was researched by Arthur Andrews.

Heaton History Group member, Arthur Andrews

It forms part of our HLF-funded, Heaton Avenues in Wartime project. If you have a story to tell about your family or would like to help us research the history of Heaton, please contact: chris.jackson@heatonhistorygroup.org Arthur would especially like to hear from anyone who has a photograph of William Castle’s tobacconist shop on Shields Road or has any information about the British Advertiser.

High Flyer of Tenth Avenue

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On 23rd March 1915, 17 year old William Douglass Horsley became the third young man from Tenth Avenue to be charged with an offence relating to national security. A few months earlier Leo and Aloysius Beers, who lived just five doors away, had been charged under the Official Secrets Act while William fell foul of the Defence of the Realm (Consolidation) Act of 1914. This wide-ranging act, known as DORA, governed many aspects of life during WW1. It forbade, for example, the purchase of binoculars, the flying of kites, the feeding of wild animals with bread and, understandably, communicating with the enemy.

As the Newcastle Journal reported the following day, William was accused of possessing wireless telegraphy apparatus Including ‘one complete receiving set of a fairly formidable type that could receive a message from a considerable distance, probably Paris or Berlin’. The apparatus was ‘home made but very powerful and much more than a mere toy’. Furthermore, its aerials were concealed. William pleaded guilty.

The chairman of the court said that while the equipment reflected great credit on the boy’s ability, the offence was a serious matter for the well being of the country. He ordered the equipment to be confiscated and fined William 20 shillings plus costs.

The Accused

William Douglass Horsley was born on 3 January 1898 in North Shields, where his father, William Percy Horsley, was a wherry owner.

Family photo of William as a very young boy

Engineering ran in the family. Young William’s grandfather was described as an ‘engine builder’ as far back as 1871 at which time he employed ’50 men and 31 boys’. And his father in turn, yet another William, was a ‘colliery and railway engineer’ in 1851, the earliest days of rail. According to William Douglass Horsley himself he was the latest of six generations of engineers. Thank you to Teresa Gilroy, a descendant of William’s grandfather, who provided the photographs, along with information about the family. One of her sons, continuing the family tradition, is an electrical engineer. Notice that the photograph below was taken at the studio of Edward George Brewis, another Heaton resident.

William Douglass Horsley as a young man

By 1911, William Senior, his wife Margaret, 13 year old William Douglass and his 8 year old sister, Phyllis, had moved to Newcastle. They were living in Jesmond and William Senior was employed as a pattern maker in an iron foundry, a skilled engineering job. By the beginning of World War 1, the family were at 8 Tenth Avenue, Heaton.

High Flyer

The engineering skills and inventiveness which impressed the chairman of the court would have made young William attractive to many Tyneside employers and in 1913, on leaving school, he had secured what would have been a highly-prized apprenticeship at Parsons. A year later war broke out and soon after that came William’s arrest.

Before he had a chance to complete his apprenticeship, William was conscripted into the armed forces. For most of the war, there were just two options for young men: to join either the Royal Navy or the Army. And it was the latter to which William signed up in February 1918. But William’s academic ability and technical aptitude made him the ideal recruit for a soon to be established service, the Royal Air Force.

The RAF was formally established on 1 April 1918. Some 20,000 aircraft and 300,000 men and women were transferred from the Army or the Royal Navy branches of the Royal Flying Corps (RFC), William among them. The RAF was already a considerable force bearing in mind that it was less than 10 years after Louis Blerioz had become the first person to fly across the English Channel but it was still very much a place for pioneers. Aircraft were used for both combat and surveillance and in both areas the knowledge of telecommunications, which William had precociously demonstrated some three and a half years earlier, were indispensable. The painting below is by Howard Leigh, who illustrated the early Biggles books by W E Johns. (Leigh lived in High Heaton before his death in 1942 but that’s another story!)

Aerial combat in WW1 by Howard Leigh

William was never posted overseas partly because on 11 November 1918, just over eight months after he had enlisted, the war was over. He wasn’t discharged until March 1919 at which time he was designated an Honorary Second Lieutenant, a Junior Officer rank. William Horsley had clearly come a long way in the four years since he was branded a threat to his country’s security.

Career Ladder

William returned to his parents’ home in Tenth Avenue, Heaton and resumed his position at C A Parsons and Co Ltd. Here too, he was soon promoted. On discharge from the RAF, William worked first of all in the drawing office before entering the design department. He became a senior designer and in 1938 was appointed chief electrical engineer. If you put his name into a search engine, you will find many patents in the UK, Canada and the USA, registered on behalf of Parsons under the name of William Douglass Horsley.

In 1949, William was appointed to the board of directors on which he served until 1967, when he was aged 69. During his career, he was an active member of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, chairman of the NE Centre in 1937. He was also a longstanding member of the North East Coast Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders. The pinnacle of William’s career came in 1971 when he was awarded an Honorary Degree by Newcastle University. His misdemeanour 56 years earlier was well and truly behind him. During the award ceremony he recalled that the day after his appearance in court and heavy fine for making a powerful radio receiver, William was summoned by Sir Charles Parsons himself. Fearing for his job and indeed his career, he entered the great man’s office where to his surprise and relief, Sir Charles asked ‘Could you make one for me?’ (Thank you to Newcastle University for providing us with the citation read out at his degree ceremony.)

William Douglass Horsley died in 1989, aged 91.

Heaton Avenues in Wartime

Heaton History Group has been awarded Heritage Lottery Fund funding to enable it to research and recount the impact of World War One on a Tyneside neighbourhood. Children at Chillingham Road School have been involved in the project. Below is a collage based on W D Horsley’s wartime experiences made by a Year 6 pupil, who clearly shares William’s engineering aptitude.

Collage based on William Horsley's life in WW1

Collage based on William Horsley of Tenth Avenue’s life during WW1 by a Year 6 pupil at Chillingham Road School

If you would like to get involved by helping with research, illustrating the stories we uncover, mounting exhibitions or organising events – or if you have information relating to WW1, especially relating to Heaton, including First to Tenth Avenues, or to William Horsley, please contact: Chris Jackson, Secretary, Heaton History Group via chris.jackson@heatonhistorygroup.org

There is a related exhibition of original documents and artworks in the lounge bar of the Chillingham pub on Chillingham Road. It is planned to run until May 2016. The display will change approximately every two months.

The musical ‘spies’ of Tenth Avenue

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On 11 August 1914, only a week after Britain had joined World War 1, newspapers right across a country on edge reported that two brothers ‘British born but of foreign extraction’ had been arrested and charged under the Official Secrets Act.

Beers brothers at Tynemouth photo collage reimagining

Photo collage reimagining by Heaton History Group member, Janet Burn

A young sea scout from North Shields said he’d seen them, along with a third man, direct a camera at the fortifications at Tynemouth. In court he said that at 7 o’clock the previous Sunday he had seen three men, two of whom were in the dock, proceeding along the sands towards the castle. One of them had a camera. They were playing with a ball. Afterwards they sat down in a circle. The scout said he was unable to see the camera at this point. He kept observation on them and afterwards saw them upon a seat. One of them put the camera on his knee and against his breast, pointing it towards the fortifications. He tried to conceal the camera with one hand. The scout added that he at once reported the matter and the men were arrested.

In the dock, the accused were asked if they understood English. ‘We ARE English’ was the reply. ‘We were born in Newcastle’. Asked about their occupations, the elder brother replied that he was ‘engaged at a picture hall in Newcastle’; while the younger said he was in a Whitley Bay orchestra. Both men were remanded in custody for eight days.

The following day they appeared in court again. The Chief Constable said that he had made careful enquiries. They were respectable young men and he asked that they be discharged. Nevertheless, the Mayor, Councillor Gregg, didn’t absolve the brothers from all blame. He said they had brought the trouble on themselves through their own foolishness: had they been more frank at the time, they would not have been in that position. Both young men thanked the magistrate and left the court.

Similar incidents were taking place all over the country. Everyone was nervous; people didn’t really know what form the war would take; there was, as yet, no trained ‘home guard’ and boy scouts, in particular, had been asked to help with the war effort by reporting anything suspicious. We might draw parallels with the aftermath of 9/11.

Who were the brothers?

The two young men were Leo Luke (25) and Aloysius Anthony (21) Beers of 18 Tenth Avenue, Heaton.

Cartoon by Robin Beers, Aloysius’s grandson

As was eagerly noted in the news reports, they were indeed of ‘foreign extraction’. Their father Simon Hubertus Beers was Dutch, although he had lived in Britain for over 50 years, having been brought to Britain by his parents as a teenager. He had married a Liverpudlian, Elizabeth Hughes, and eventually settled in the North East. Simon too was a musician as was his father before him. His sister was a singer and at least one of his bothers was a musician too.

By 1891 the family (Simon, Elizabeth and three children Adrian, Hubert and Leo) were living in Heaton, at 30 Kingsley Place and by 1901, Elizabeth had died and the family had moved to 64 Meldon Terrace. Simon had been left with 6 children. On census night, 1901 Simon was at home with 3 of them and a housekeeper: Adrian, now 16 was described as a merchant’s clerk and Joseph (9) and Aloysius (7) were at school.

By 1911, Simon and the children still living at home, Leo (22), Joseph (19), Aloysius (18) and Bernard (17) were at 18 Tenth Avenue. They are all described as ‘professors of music’. Simon is said to be self-employed; Leo, Joseph and Bernard play in theatre orchestra and Aloysius is at this point out of work. Although the boys went their separate ways, Simon continued to live on Tenth Avenue for 20 more years. He died there on 6 February 1931 at the age of c86.

Leo’s story

Leo Luke Beers was born on 18 October 1888 and baptised ten days later at St Dominic’s on Shields Road. Beyond knowing that he grew up in a large and very musical household and that he lost his mother as a young boy, we know little of Leo’s childhood. However, online records and archival material afford us tantalising glimpses into his life following being branded, albeit briefly, an alien and a spy.

We don’t know whether the arrest and the attendant publicity was a factor but it wasn’t long before Leo left Newcastle. In September 1915, the Bath Chronicle, announcing the famous Pump Room Orchestra for the forthcoming season, introduced its new first violin: ‘Mr Leo Beers… has been the leader and principal violin of the Theatre Royal, Newcastle’.

Three months later, records show that Leo had enlisted for the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry. This was before the Military Service Act, 1916 introduced conscription and so presumably, Leo volunteered. However, two months later, in February 1916, by which time the Act had been passed, he applied for exemption from military service on personal and domestic grounds but asked for his appeal to be considered in private. The tribunal agreed and later announced that a temporary certificate of exemption on domestic grounds would be granted. That April, it was reported that Leo’s appeal had been heard privately by Bath City Tribunal but had been adjourned until 1 May for further enquiries to be made. Luke’s military record card shows only that he was discharged on 28 August 1918 ‘no longer fit for duty’.

The next glimpse we have is some nine years after the war ended, by which time Leo was 38 years old. On 17 June 1927, he set sail from Liverpool to Quebec as a member of the ship’s orchestra, returning two weeks later. Interestingly in the ten strong ensemble, there were two other musicians from Heaton: Vincent Caygill of 19 Heaton Grove and John Robert Young of 149 Rothbury Terrace.

Leo Beers in later life

Leo spent the latter part of his life living in London. He died in December 1975 in Kensington.

Wishy’s story

Aloysius Anthony Beers was born on 1 November 1892 and he was baptised on 13 November, also at St Dominic’s. Like his brother, Aloysius didn’t stay in Heaton long after the start of the war. By December 1915, he was living in Glasgow and was married to Margaret Paterson, a ‘mantle maker’. On 6 January 1916, just four weeks after their wedding, their son Adrian was born. Aloysius too played in a ship’s orchestra at one stage. He sailed from Glasgow to Montreal in April 1931.

Aloysius Beers (extreme right) with other members of a ship’s orchestra

We know too that in the years following World War 2, the brothers were reunited again. For a time, Leo was living with Aloysius, Margaret and other family members in London.

It’s because his son became at least the fourth generation to inherit the Beers family’s musical talent that we can add some colour to the raw data from the archives. Aloysius was referred to in Adrian’s obituaries as ‘Aloysius ‘Wishy’ Beers, ‘a Glaswegian’ (though we know, of course, that he was in fact originally a Geordie!) double-bass player who taught his son to play cello, piano and double bass and played with him in Glasgow music halls. Adrian became a classical musician of the highest order. He played in world famous orchestras and ensembles and was a good friend of Benjamin Britten. The Melos Ensemble, of which he was a founding member, played at the 1962 premier of Britten’s ‘War Requiem’ in the newly rebuilt Coventry Cathedral on 30 May 1962, the original cathedral having been destroyed in World War 2.

Aloysius’s granddaughter, Jackie Khan, has kindly provided Heaton History Group with additional information about the family. She told us that that Leo and Aloysius’s elder brother Hubert was a musical hall artist who used the stage name Jock Macpherson.

Brother Joseph John Septimus Beers (born 8 April 1891) was, like Luke, a professional violinist until he enlisted with the 2nd Battalion King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry. He died in active service on 10 July 1917. He is buried in Coxyde Military Cemetery in Belgium. Jackie said: ‘Joseph was killed in Flanders on the battlefield in 1917, found shell-shocked, sitting holding his hands over his ears, with fright on his face, dead’.

Sketch by Heaton History Group member, Mark James

We don’t know whether Adrian’s father, Aloysius, was in the audience at the premier of ‘War Requiem’ but his son performing this powerful anti-war piece of music on such a symbolic national occasion will have been emotional for him, as he recalled not only his own wartime experiences but also his brother’s death.

Aloysius died just a few weeks later on 25 June 1962 at the age of 69. Adrian was awarded an MBE in 1990 for services to music and died in 2004.

Postscript

But that’s not the end of the story. The Beers musical genes have been passed down another two generations. Aloysius’s great-granddaughter and Adrian’s granddaughter is a very talented pianist and composer. Jean Beers has just spent a year as Composer in Residence at Eton College where she composed a piece of music for a symphony orchestra, commemorating World War One and inspired by the death of her great great uncle, Joseph John Septimus Beers.

Her aunt, Jackie Khan, who kindly found photographs of Leo and Aloysius and commissioned her brother, Robin, to produce a sketch especially for our website and exhibition, said; ‘They [the Beers of Heaton] would be very proud of her, as would her grandfather.’

Music continues to thrive in Heaton too, of course. Fittingly, there is even a well-established and still flourishing ensemble called ‘Tenth Avenue Band’, founded in 1988 at Chillingham Road School on the very avenue where the Beers had lived.

Heaton Avenues in Wartime

Heaton History Group has been awarded Heritage Lottery Fund funding to enable it to research and recount the impact of World War One on a Tyneside neighbourhood. If you would like to get involved by helping with research, illustrating the stories we uncover, mounting exhibitions or organising events – or if you have information relating to WW1, especially relating to Heaton, including First to Tenth Avenues, please contact: Chris Jackson, Secretary, Heaton History Group via chris.jackson@heatonhistorygroup.org