Tag Archives: St Gabriel’s

Parish Church of St Gabriel Part 1: wood, iron & stone

An exile remembers: Part 3 – changes

Heaton History Group is often contacted by people who used to live in the neighbourhood and have vivid and usually fond recollections. We love to hear their memories. ‘RS’ still returns to Heaton from time to time. Here is the third instalments of his thoughts.

‘And so I cross the road to the south side of Rothbury Terrace, and continue my westward walk to the parks, now becoming steadily more visible ahead. As I do so, I absent-mindedly reflect on two obvious changes in the demography of this area which, for the sake of convenience, will be referred to as central Heaton. Neither of the changes are regarded here as being necessarily good or bad in themselves, but noticeable and interesting changes they most definitely are.

The first is the clear establishment of so much student accommodation in central Heaton, including my own 1960s home on Simonside Terrace (see part 1). I recall none of this at all half a century ago, although I suppose there must have been some, somewhere in this area, even then; however, there was certainly nothing on the scale that there is now. I suspect that the rising student population has been a steadily growing phenomenon over the last few decades, rather than being the result of any single event or cause.

But I do know something more definite about the other demographic change that cannot be missed around here. In the early 1960s central Heaton was an overwhelmingly white area, and although the statistic in question was most unlikely to have been 100%, equally probably it was not far off that figure. Certainly, in my first few years at Ravenswood, I can recall no ethnic minority pupils whatsoever. Until things began to change.

And – in central Heaton, at least – they began to change here, on Rothbury Terrace. I can’t give an exact date, but let’s say around 1963-4. That was when the first Pakistani-Muslim family moved into this street, and the two (possibly three) children began to attend at Ravenswood. There was a boy in the year above me, and another in the year below. (There may have been a younger sister – my memory fails me on that point.)

The oldest boy was called Anjem. He and I soon became good friends. He and his brother were great lads, and thankfully and happily there were no problems of racial tension at Ravenswood – or, as far as I recall, anywhere else in Heaton – of the sort that were being experienced and reported in other parts of the country at that time.

As the ’60s progressed and were superseded by the ’70s, an interesting phenomenon could increasingly be observed. The Pakistani-Muslim population of central Heaton began steadily to grow; and the residential focus of this expansion was located here, on this stretch of Rothbury Terrace, between Chillingham Road and Heaton Road. Perhaps initially related to Anjem’s family, but then probably with the establishment of further familial linkages, the population of this particular ethnic minority began to grow, very noticeably decade by decade – albeit fairly gradually on a year to year basis – in this very precise area of central Heaton, before then spreading further afield.

But as I approach Heaton Road, on this particular day, there is hardly anyone, of any ethnicity, to be seen; and anyway, there’s no reason to think that the particular demographic change that began to occur here all those years ago would still be in evidence now. After all, people move on and move away: indeed, just like I did.

So, finally reaching the junction of Rothbury Terrace and Heaton Road, I look along to my left. Too far to be seen from here, I nevertheless recall Heaton Presbyterian Church (just past the Co-op) where I was a member of the Lifeboys and – when older – the Boys’ Brigade. I remember too, our regular, traffic-stopping Sunday morning parades when, dressed in our navy blue uniforms, and with drums a-beating and bugles a-blowing, we ensured that quiet Sunday morning lie-ins for the late-slumbering residents of the streets on our route became something of a practical impossibility. It’s difficult to imagine that such events still occur today; indeed, on reflection, it’s a bit of a wonder that they were actually allowed even then. And do those local Lifeboys and Boys’ Brigade units still even exist? Maybe not as – the last time I drove past – there certainly wasn’t much left standing of the Presbyterian church itself. Possibly demolished by a team of sleepy, hungover and rather fed up Geordies, still in their pyjamas.

Then I turn to my right and gaze in the direction of St. Gabriel’s. This, in fact, was our family church, and where I was confirm … but crikey! What’s that? Across the road, on the other side of Rothbury Terrace. Used to be a doctors’ surgery, back in the day. Clearly it’s something else now; an entirely new building is standing there. It’s the ‘Heaton Mosque and Islamic Centre’. A bit of a surprise. An outpost of Islam … here in Heaton.

Of course, if you are a resident of any part of Heaton, but especially of this central area, you probably knew about the existence of this building already; however, you may not have known how or why it came to be located here, of all places, on this corner of Heaton Road and Rothbury Terrace. Perhaps my ramblings have afforded a little insight in that regard. It’s here because when Islam first came to Heaton, all those years ago, it first came to Rothbury Terrace, in the form of Anjem and his family, and all those who came after them. And from that small seed it clearly took root, and flourished.

But across the road, Armstrong Park now beckons. So it’s time to see what changes may lie in wait for me there …’

What do you remember?

We’d love to hear your memories and see photos of anyone who has lived, studied, worked or played in Heaton. Either leave your comments below the heading of this article or email Chris Jackson, Secretary, Heaton History Group.

VAD Nurses in Heaton’s Avenues

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Following the end of the Boer War, the War Office was concerned that, in the event of another conflict, the medical and nursing services wouldn’t be able to cope sufficiently. The peacetime needs of a standing army, in relation to medical care, were very small and specific, and to find thousands of trained and experienced personnel at very short notice, without the expense of maintaining them in peacetime, was a difficult problem to overcome. On 16 August 1909 the War Office issued its ‘Scheme for the Organisation of Voluntary Aid in England and Wales’, which set up both male and female Voluntary Aid Detachments to fill certain gaps in the Territorial medical services. By early 1914, 1757 female detachments and 519 male detachments had been registered with the War Office.

VAD recruitment poster

When war came, the Red Cross and Auxiliary hospitals sprung up rapidly in church halls, public buildings and private houses, accommodating anything from ten patients to more than a hundred. The proportion of trained nurses in the units was small, and much of the basic work was the responsibility of the VADs – they cleaned, scrubbed and dusted, set trays, cooked breakfasts; they lit fires and boiled up coppers full of washing. They also helped to dress, undress and wash the men – which was of course a big step for young women who may never have been alone and unchaperoned with a member of the opposite sex before, other than their brothers.

There were about 50,000 women involved in the movement immediately before the war, and it’s thought that in total somewhere between 70,000 and 100,000 women served as VADs at some time during the war, some for very short periods, some for up to five years.

As part of the commemoration of the centenary of World War 1, the Red Cross has been digitising its VAD records, which has allowed us to identify three VAD nurses living in the avenues as well as two male members of voluntary aid detachments, shedding some light on their lives and contributions as well as the role that they played during the war.

The English Family

The English family lived at 30 Third Avenue, Heaton. The 1911 census shows Robert English (55), a plumber, and his wife, Isabella (48), had four children living at home, twins Annie and Mary Jane (28), Isabella (20) and William 18.

In 1911, William was working as a stained glass designer. On 29 October 1915, aged 22, he enlisted in the army. His military record describes him as 5’ 8” in height and weighing 7st 8lbs. His physical development was described as ‘spare’, with a chest measurement of 33 1/2 inches. It was noted that his sight was defective, except when wearing spectacles. He also had slight varicose veins. These were deemed as slight defects that were not significant enough to cause rejection. Given his physical development, it is perhaps not surprising that he was placed into the Royal Army Service Corps rather than a combat roll.

Four days after enlisting, on 1 November 1915, William married Lillian Phillips at St Gabriel’s Church. The next day, he joined his regiment at Aldershot. What is interesting about William, is not his relatively unremarkable military career, but that both his sister, Mary Jane, and his new wife, Lillian, were to go on to become VAD nurses.

Mary Jane English and the Liverpool Merchants’ Hospital

Mary Jane saw service with the VAD from 2 October 1915 to 12 November 1917 and is listed as a sister, although it’s not clear whether this meant she was a qualified nurse. Interestingly, the 1911 census does not show any employment for Mary, although it is possible that she trained as a nurse between then and the start of the war. Mary was posted to the No 6 Hospital of the British Red Cross in Etaples, also known as the Liverpool Merchants Hospital. She was awarded the 1915 star for her service.

The Liverpool Merchants’ Hospital was constructed and equipped from funds raised by members of the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce, making it unique. The hospital opened at the end of July 1915 and treated over 20,000 people during the course of the war at a cost of some £90,000. s a Base Hospital, the hospital had 252 beds and formed part of the casualty evacuation chain, further back from the front line than the Casualty Clearing Stations. In the theatre of war in France and Flanders, the British hospitals were generally located near the coast. They needed to be close to a railway line, in order for casualties to arrive; they also needed to be near a port where men could be evacuated for longer term treatment in Britain.

Staff of the Liverpool Merchants’ Hospital where Mary Jane English served

A report from the ‘Liverpool Courier’ in January 1920 gives a description of the facilities: ‘There were eight pavilion wards, each to accommodate 27 patients, with their own nurses’ duty rooms, sink, stores and cupboards, also large linen store; and each ward had attached to it a two-bed ward for special cases. Each large ward had also its own bath and lavatory. The operation block and the kitchen block were situated in the centre of the hospital. The operation block contained also X-ray room with dark room attached, an anaesthetic room, preparation room, operating theatre, dispensary, laboratory, medical store room, splint room, quarter-master’s and matron’s store rooms and ambulance stores.’

The article closes by saying:

‘Let it be recorded to the everlasting glory of Liverpool that the Merchants’ Hospital, the only military hospital which has been “designed, built, equipped, staffed, managed, and financed” entirely by the citizens of a particular city, has never been prevented from the fullest performance of the duties for which it was devised by lack of funds.’

This last fact is particularly interesting, as all of the records show that the hospital was staffed exclusively by the people of Liverpool. It’s not clear what relationship the English family had with Liverpool, or indeed if the necessities of war meant that this particular point was overlooked in the interests of providing a service.

Lillian English and the Australian Hospital

Lillian English married William on 1 November 1915. She was the youngest daughter of Alfred and Sarah Phillips of West Jesmond. The 1911 census shows Alfred as a letterpress machine overseer in the printing industry, with 19 year old Lillian working as an assistant at a music dealer and her older step sister Mary Gregory (28) working as a booksewer in a bookbinder’s. After their marriage, Lillian continued to live at her parents’ home, 34 Mowbray Street, Heaton and William’s military record was amended to show this as his address. The couple continued to live with Lillian’s parents for several years after the war.

Perhaps inspired by the experiences and contribution of her sister-in-law, Mary, Lillian also joined the Voluntary Aid Detachment on 6 March 1918, some four months after Mary returned from Etaples. Lillian’s stay in the service was however somewhat shorter, as she was discharged one month later on 8 April 1918. This initially caused us much speculation. Typically, VAD nurses would have one month probation and it appeared at first that either she was considered unsuited for the work or could not herself cope with it. However, the answer to her hasty departure became apparent when we discovered that William and Lillian’s only daughter, Monica, was born 12 November 1918. Obviously conceived during William’s leave, Lillian must have been about four weeks pregnant when she took up her post, a fact that would have become apparent during her brief placement, leading to her premature return home. Lillian spent her brief assignment with the VAD posted to the Australian Hospital, Harefield.

Some of the buildings at Harefield Park where Lillian English served

In November 1914 Mr and Mrs Charles Billyard-Leake, Australians resident in the UK, offered their home, Harefield Park House and its grounds, to the Minister of Defence in Melbourne for use as a convalescent home for wounded soldiers of the Australian Imperial Forces (AIF). The property became the No. 1 Australian Auxiliary Hospital in December 1914. It was the only purely Australian hospital in England. The Hospital consisted of Harefield Park House, a 3-storey plain brick building, some out-buildings and grounds of some 250 acres. It was proposed that the Hospital would accommodate 60 patients in the winter and 150 in the summer. It would be a rest home for officers and other ranks, and also a depot for collecting invalided soldiers to be sent back to Australia. As Harefield Park House could only accommodate a quarter of the number expected, hutted wards were built on the front lawn, and a mess hall for 120 patients in the courtyard.

As the war progressed the hospital grew rapidly, becoming a general hospital. At the height of its use it accommodated over 1000 patients and the nursing staff had expanded to 74 members. Nearly 50 buildings were in use, including workshops, garages, stores, messes, canteens, a recreation hall (where concerts and film shows were held), a billiards rooms, writing rooms, a library, a cookhouse, a detention room and a mortuary. For entertainment, tours to London were arranged and paid for out of canteen funds, and the ladies of the district made their cars available for country trips, picnics and journeys to and from the railway station, both for patients and visitors. The hospital gradually closed down during January 1919 and the whole site was sold to Middlesex County Council who planned to build a tuberculosis sanatorium. The site is now the site of Harefield Hospital.

Irene Neylon

Mary Irene Neylon was born in 1881 in Ireland. Somewhere around the end of the 19th Century, Irene and her sister Susannah moved to Newcastle, possibly to join their Uncle James, a wine and spirit manager living in Jesmond. Irene lived at 60, Third Avenue, with her sister and her husband John William Carr and their family. She never married and remained at Third Avenue until her death on 16 March 1947, where probate records show that she left effects to the value of £164 3s.

Irene was working as a shop clerk at the time of the 1901 census, but by 1911 had trained as a nurse and was working at the Infirmary of the Newcastle upon Tyne Workhouse (later to become Newcastle General Hospital). Between 27 February 1917 and 20 January 1919 Irene is listed on the Red Cross Records as being a VAD Nurse. Unfortunately, Irene’s record only lists her placement as T.N. dept, so it’s not clear exactly where she was posted. However, we do know that part of the infirmary was taken over by the army to treat venereal diseases, with beds for 48 officers and 552 other ranks, so it is possible that she continued to work at the same location but with a different employer. What sets Irene apart from the other VAD members in the Avenues is that she was, as a qualified nurse, a paid employee, earning £1 1s per week when she joined, rising to £1 4s 10d when she was discharged.

Irene Neylon’s VAD record card

Life as a VAD Nurse

‘Do your duty loyally
Fear God
Honour the King

And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall blame.
And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame,
But each for the joy of working, and each in his separate star,
Shall draw the thing as he sees it for the God of things as they are.’

These were the final inspirational comments of a message from the Commander in Chief of the VAD, Katherine Furse. The message was handed to each VAD nurse before they embarked. The message was to be considered by each V.A.D. member as confidential and to be kept in her Pocket Book.

The nurses were subject to full military discipline and required to assist in any way they could, with only minimal training. Given that we know that Harefield, for example, only had 74 nurses for its 1000 beds, it’s safe to assume that VAD nurses would have been carrying out most of the care. They wore a distinctive blue uniform with a white apron and sleeves and a red cross on the apron to distinguish them from other nursing staff.

VAD uniform

The rules they were expected to work to included detail around personal cleanliness and presentation, including gargling morning and evening, but especially in the evening with carbolic, 1 in 60; listerine, 1 teaspoonful to 5 oz. water; glyco-thymoline and water, ½ and ½. They also advised combing the hair with a fine toothed comb every day!

There are several contemporary accounts of the lives of VAD nurses, including this from Kathleen Marion Barrow, who worked at a base hospital in France, similar to that where Mary Jane English worked:

‘In France, when convoy after convoy poured in, and when one piteous wreck after another, whose bandages were stiff with mud and blood, had been deposited on a clean white bed; the extent of a VAD’s work was bound to be decided far more by the measure of her capacity than by rule of seniority, or red tape. Matron and sisters soon discovered those whose skill, quickness and level-headedness, justified trust. In every new venture there are few who have not to walk for a space some time or other in the Valley of Humiliation, the military hospitals in France were a magnificent school, not only for actual nursing, but for self-control and nerve.’

She also talks of the comradeship and the humour amidst the pain and tragedy: ‘One recalls the dummy – carefully charted and hideously masked – which was tucked into bed for the benefit of the VAD and orderly when they came on night duty, and the stifled laughter under the bedclothes in adjoining beds. One recalls, too, the great occasions when some Royal or notable person came to visit the wards. Then we spent ourselves in table decorations, emptied the market of flowers, or ransacked the woods and meadows for willow or catkins, ox-eyed daisies or giant kingcups. Incidentally, we made the boys’ lives a burden to them by our meticulous care in smoothing out sheets, tucking in corners, and repairing the slightest disorder occasioned by every movement on their part, till the occasion was over. Sometimes the expected visitor did not turn up, and when another rumour of a projected visit was brought into the ward by a VAD, she was hardly surprised to find that her announcement was greeted on all sides by the somewhat blasphemous chorus of “Tell me the old, old story.” ‘

Male VAD members

Interestingly, our search for VAD nurses on the avenues identified two male members of Voluntary Aid Detachments: William Holmes and Richard Farr, both members of the St Peter’s Works Division, allocated to air raids, coast defences and convoys and employed as part of the St John’s Ambulance Brigade’s 6th division.

William Holmes, aged 51 at the start of the war, lived at 25, Eighth Avenue, with his wife Maria and five children, three of them, Harriet, William and Mary being adults.

Richard Farr, aged 32 at the start of the war, lived at 45, Second Avenue, with his wife Mary and nine year old daughter Madge.

Both were marine fitters and joined the detachment on 4 August 1914. William was too old to fight, but it’s not clear whether Richard was subsequently called up, although it is possible, given the nature of their work, that they would have been exempted. Although it was not a naval base as such, Tyneside played a huge role in World War One. A third of all the battleships and more than a quarter of the destroyers completed for the Admiralty were built here. Many other naval vessels were repaired on the Tyne particularly after the Battle of Jutland. There were no fewer than 19 shipyards on the Tyne at the outbreak of war, and five of them were big enough to build warships. Hawthorn Leslie alone built 25 royal navy vessels during the war.

Unlike the VAD nurses, the role that William and Richard would have played is much less clearly documented, although it is clear that they were expected to work on an as required basis, most likely dealing with emergencies and possibly manning coastal monitoring stations such as those at Blyth and Tynemouth.

That we have identified five Voluntary Aid Detachment members just from the ten Heaton Avenues* perhaps gives some indication of scale of the enterprise. What is even more startling is to recognise that the women in particular came from all walks of life and, with very few exceptions, worked, often for a number of years, on a purely voluntary basis, receiving no pay and little recognition for their huge commitment to the war effort.

Heaton Avenues in Wartime

This article was researched and written by Michael Proctor, with additional input from Arthur Andrews, for Heaton History Group’s ‘Heaton Avenues in Wartime’ project, which has been funded by Heritage Lottery Fund.

*Postscript

Since this article was written, the Red Cross has continued to post the names of VAD volunteers and so far we have found four more from Heaton’s avenues:

Annie Maud Monaghan, 90 Second Avenue

Lillian Rankin, 21 First Avenue

Annie Isabella Richardson, 55 Tenth Avenue

William Ernest Statton, 27 Ninth Avenue

Those from elsewhere in Heaton include:

Margaret Dora Burke, 146 Trewhitt Road (who served in France)

Mary Douthwaite, Woodlands, Alexandra Road, who served in France and was mentioned in dispatches (30/12/1918)

Mary Haswell, 7 Stratford Villas (who served in France)

Kate Ogg, originally of 21 Bolingbroke Street, who died of influenza on 23 February 1919 while on active duty

Mary Sharpley, 3 Jesmond Vale Terrace, who served in Egypt and was mentioned in dispatches (5/3/1917)

Plus:

Mollie Allen, 62 Chillingham Road

Thomas Atkinson, Street 150 Hotspur Street

Ralph Boyd 160 Warwick Street

Hannah Buttery, 28 Sefton Avenue

John D Cant, 19 Trewhitt Road

Margaret Clare Checkie, 88 Bolingbroke Street

Mary Cowell, 36 Wandsworth Road

Margaret Annie Douthwaite, 3 Alexandra Road

Ernest Edward England, 99 Rothbury Terrace

Mary P Field, Silverdale, Lesbury Road

Gertrude Fotherby, Silverdale, Lesbury Road

Florence Garvey, 9 Meldon Terrace

Alberta Louise Gerrie, 137 Addycombe Terrace

Robert G Horne, 64 Balmoral Terrace

Gladys Mary Miller, 16 Bolingbroke Street

Hilda Oliver, Bellegrove, Lesbury Road

Jane Ethel Park, Westville, Heaton Road

Mary Isabella Roberts, Heaton Hall

E D Scott, 21 King John Terrace

Eva May Stroud, Cresta, Heaton Road

W Theobold, 39 Cardigan Terrace

Matthew Tulip, 13 King John Street

Elizabeth H Turner, 22 Bolingbroke Street

Jennie Walton, 10 Falmouth Road

Laura Whitford, 17 Guildford Place

Irene Helena Whiting, Cresta, Heaton Road

J Wilson, 101 Warwick Street

Can you help?

If you know more about any of the people mentioned in this article, please get in touch either by posting directly to this site by clicking on the link immediately below the article title or by emailing Chris Jackson, Secretary of Heaton History Group at chris.jackson@heatonhistorygroup.org

Coquet Villa – house of romance

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Take a stroll through Jesmond Old Cemetery and you’ll come across this imposing headstone.

Headstone of George Thompson, Coquet Villa

Inscription on Thompson family vault (detail)

It marks the grave of George Thompson, who, the inscription tells us, ‘died at Coquet Villa, Heaton on May 2nd 1905’. It’s quite unusual for a gravestone to pinpoint where its incumbent passed away so it suggests that Coquet Villa was a special place for the deceased and his family.

The name ‘Coquet Villa’ may not be familiar to you – the gatepost on which its name was carved was replaced decades ago – but, a hundred and ten years later, the house is still much admired, one of only two private residences to have been nominated in Heaton History Group’s 2013 bid to find Heaton’s favourite buildings. Coquet Villa was the original name for 246 Heaton Road, which you probably call ‘the turret house’.

Coquet Villa 2015

Lifting the spirits

The land on which the house stands was sold by William Watson-Armstrong, Lord Armstrong’s nephew and heir, on 31 December 1900 just 3 days after his uncle’s death. The agreement stipulated that two semi-detached residences be constructed within nine months of the contract being signed. George Thompson paid £574 11s 1d, a substantial sum then. However, it was some 21 months earlier, in March 1899, that he had first commissioned the well-known local firm of architects, Hope and Maxwell, to draw up designs for a pair of semi-detached houses to fit the site. This suggests that plans for the sale of land were in train well before Lord Armstrong became ill.

Hope and Maxwell’s plans for Coquet Villa and Redthorpe next door

The two houses were of similar specification, apart from the distinguishing feature of that on the right – the one which Thompson chose to be his own home and called ‘Coquet Villa’. It’s only this one that has the famous attic turret. Like you, we wondered why.

William Hope and Joseph Charlton Maxwell are particularly remembered for their design of theatres, not only locally in Blyth and Newcastle, but as far afield as Glasgow, Margate and Southampton. Sadly the Hope and Maxwell theatres have all been demolished or destroyed by fire, but another of their public buildings does still stand – almost next door to Coquet Villa: it’s Heaton Methodist Church – and it too had a single turret until very recently.

Churches and theatres have to be more than functional buildings, of course: they’re designed to raise the spirits. If that was the aim of Hope and Maxwell and their client, Coquet Villa, still much enjoyed by passers-by as well as those lucky enough to live there, can be considered a huge success.

Echoes of childhood

George Thompson, the son of a Warkworth grocer, described himself as a ‘commercial traveller’. He and his Scottish wife, Margaret, moved to Newcastle, living first in Malvern Street, Elswick, and then at 22 Simonside Terrace before they were eventually able to afford their long term family home, which they nostalgically named after the river that flows through George’s boyhood village.

After the delay to the start of the build, things moved apace and George and Margaret soon moved in with their teenage sons, 17 year old Lonsdale Copeland and 14 year old Norman Malvern (who, again rather romantically, seems to have been named after the Elswick street in which his parents began their married life).

Perhaps Warkworth is a clue to the turret too. George grew up in the shadow of the famous castle and perhaps wanted to recreate some of its grandeur in his own dream home. Margaret too grew up close to a magnificent castle not short of turrets: she was from Edinburgh.

But a visit to Tyne and Wear Archives to view the original plans showed that internally the turret served a more practical purpose. As you can see from the image below, the front room in the attic was designed to be a billiards room. It was the ideal place for the two boys to hang out without disturbing their parents or perhaps George enjoyed the company of his sons over a game. We don’t know. But it is clear that the room was designed to accommodate the table with just enough room for the players to move around it comfortably. So where would onlookers and the player awaiting a turn at the table sit without being in the way? On a recessed window seat of course, with lovely views over Heaton Park towards Newcastle. In a turret. Genius!

Hope and Maxwell’s plans showing the attic billiard room at Coquet Villa

Family home

The house is a large one for a family of just four but the additional space was used. The Thompsons were joined by a niece of George’s, Christiana ‘Cissie’ Robson and the 1901 census shows them having a live-in servant, 18 year old Agnes Chandler.

Sadly George did not enjoy Coquet Villa for long. As we have seen, he died there just a few years later at the age of 52. But what happened to his bereaved family?

Margaret, Cissie and the boys remained in the family home until, in 1910, Lonsdale married Frances Maud Holland, daughter of Sir Thomas Henry Holland, an eminent geologist. (In 1939 Thomas was awarded the Royal Society’s prestigious Albert Medal, an honour earlier bestowed on at least two other men with Heaton connections, Lord Armstrong in 1878 and Charles Parsons in 1911). Frances had been born in India where her father was working at the time. Her mother was also born in India). The newlyweds started married life in Gosforth with Lonsdale making his living first as a woollen merchant and then a tailor, with his own business. At the time of his death, in 1957, he was living in Great Malvern in Worcestershire.

In 1916, Norman married Jeanne Julie Maude Rodenhurst, the youngest of six children of Harry, a wholesale millinery merchant, and his French wife, Jeanne, who lived in Deneholme on Jesmond Park East. The wedding was at St Gabriel’s Church. Norman set up as a market gardener in Ponteland, where he was eventually succeeded by his and Jeanne’s son Derrick. Jeanne’s brother, also called Norman, described himself as a tomato grower, so it’s possible that the brothers in law set up in business together. Norman died in 1968 and is buried in the family vault in Jesmond Old Cemetery with his wife Jeanne, his father and his mother, who died in 1935 at the age of 79.

Cissie died on 25 October 1914. Three days later, her funeral cortège processed from Coquet Villa to Heaton Station to meet the 8.05 train to Rothbury, where she was interred.

But with the war over, Cissie having passed away and her sons flown the nest, Margaret sold the family home, now clearly too big for her. The purchaser was a man called Frank Fleming, who stayed only three years.

The wanderer

Next came Charles and Mary Kirk, whose family was to be associated with Coquet Villa for another 14 years. Charles, like his father Samuel before him, was a slate merchant. Samuel Kirk was born and grew up in Boston, Lincolnshire but by 1871 had moved to Newcastle, no doubt to take advantage of the building boom in the industrial North East. He set up on his own in 1883 in Ridley Villas, following the dissolution in 1883 of a partnership, Kirk and Dickinson. The firm eventually passed to his son, Charles, who in 1911 was living at 14 Rothbury Terrace with Mary, his wife, five children (May 8, Annie 7, Samuel 6, Mary 4 and Charles 2) and two servants, Annie Wood and Florence McIntoch.

By 1917, the family had moved round the corner to 18 Jesmond Vale Terrace. In that year, with World War One raging, we know that Charles sailed from Sydney to San Francisco on the SS Ventura, that ship’s final voyage before it was commissioned by the Australian government to transport troops. In January 1918 he sailed from New York to Liverpool on the SS St Louis. His occupation is given as ‘exporter’. The ship’s Wikipedia entry illustrates just how hazardous these journeys were:

‘On 17 March 1917, she [SS St Louis] was furnished an armed guard of 26 United States Navy sailors and armed with three 6-inch guns, to protect her from enemy attack as she continued her New York-to-Liverpool service. On 30 May, while proceeding up the Irish Sea and skirting the coast of England, she responded rapidly to the orders, “Hard Starboard,” at the sighting of a periscope, and succeeded in dodging a torpedo while apparently striking the submarine which fired it. Later dry-dock examination revealed that 18 feet of her keel rubbing strake had been torn away. On 25 July, her gunners exchanged fire with a surfaced U-boat, some three miles away, and sighted many near misses.’

A book (‘Missouri at Sea’ by Richard E Schroeder) refers to the ‘bitter North Atlantic storms of 1917-18′. It would be fascinating to know more about what took Charles around the world at such a dangerous time. Another so far unanswered question is whether Kirk’s slates were used on the roof of Coquet Villa – and its locally famous turret.

Like George Thompson though, Charles and Mary didn’t enjoy Coquet Villa for long. Charles died in 1925, aged only 59, and Mary in 1927, after which the house was let to a number of tenants including Joseph Hilliam, a wallpaper manufacturer, and Joseph H Hood, a musician. Eventually, in 1936 it was sold to Harriet May Morton, wife of John Hugh Morton, a cashier.

Like many of the other owners, the Mortons moved only a matter of yards – from what would then have been a new house on Crompton Road almost opposite Coquet Villa. Later occupiers included Martha Ellen and Allan Frankland Holmes; Ronald George Smart, a commercial traveller; Alexander Reed Morrison, a medical practitioner; Torleif Egeland Eriksen, a Norwegian dental surgeon and his wife, June Margaret; George and Thora Brown of Thetford in Norfolk and Dr M M Ahmed. We hope you’ll help us uncover more about some of them in due course.

Full circle

Like the Thompsons, the current owners, Helen Law, a fine artist originally from Leicester (where, incidentally, her great grandfather set up a football boot manufacturing company – the firm made the retro boots used in the 1982 film ‘A Captain’s Tale’ about West Auckland Town winning the first World Cup) and Richard Marriott, a teacher, saw the house as the ideal family home. Although separated from the original owners by a century or more, they clearly share the romanticism which led George Thompson to name the house after the River Coquet, on the banks of which he played as a boy and to commission an architect to echo the magnificent castles so familiar to him and his Edinburgh-born wife. On their first night in their new home, Richard donned a suit, went down on one knee and proposed to Helen in the turret. Later, they lovingly restored the attic, which had long been an unloved dumping ground, to its former glory. They renovated the turret, building a magnificent new window seat, which they enjoyed with their children and still love to sit in today.

Interior of Coquet Villa’s turret, 2015

You feel sure that George and Margaret would approve.

Footnote

You may have noticed (June 2015) that 246 Heaton Road is up for sale. As with Margaret Thompson, almost 100 years ago, the house is too big for the current owners now that their children have flown the nest.

Can you help?

If you can add to the story of Coquet Villa and those who have lived there – or you would like us to look into the history of YOUR house, either leave a reply on this website by clicking on the link immediately below the article title or email chris.jackson@heatonhistorygroup.org

Hearing Henner Hudspeth

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We recently published Jean Walker (nee Pretswell)’s account of growing up on Cardigan Teraace. She referred to her next door neighbour: ‘On the left side, at number 11, was Henner Hudspeth. He had a dance band and used to practise in the house – noise pollution! It wouldn’t be allowed nowadays!’

Henner Hudspeth practising his accordian

Bandsman

Jean’s memories prompted Heaton History Group member, Ian Clough, to do some further digging. Ian takes up the story:

‘No sooner had I read Jean’s recollections, than my memories were transported back in time, vividly picturing the painted sign above the front door of number nine Cardigan Terrace reading ‘PRETSWELL’S REMOVALS’, when I remembered my friend, Tricia Easby, once telling me that her father Henry Hudspeth was born at number 11. And sure enough he is found there, aged two, in the 1911 census, “But who was Henner Hudspeth?” , I hear you asking. Well, stick a lad in a group of others long enough and the chance is he’ll end up with a nickname and that’s what happened to Henry Hudspeth, the Victor Silvester of Heaton aka Henner Hudspeth. Here he is as a young man playing accordion in Al Moore’s Band at The Heaton in 1933:

Al Moore’s band at the Heaton, 1933

‘And here, with a little imagination we can read the banner as ‘HENNER HUDSPETH AND HIS BAND’ and the singer is apparently ‘Edna’, the name pencilled on the back of the photo but Edna who? Henner formed a dance band and played at the time when ballroom dancing was in its heyday. The band played at many venues but the principal ballrooms in Heaton at the time were ‘The Heaton’ and the ‘Grosvenor Ballroom’. The latter is still to be found on Chillingham Road.

Henner Hudspeth and his band

And below, the band is caught in full swing but had they literally gone to the dogs playing at Brough Park? The music stands would suggest so.

Henner Hudspeth’s band

The Hudspeth family

‘Henner had good taste, marrying a Heaton lass, Anne (Nancy) Sweeney from Plessey Terrace, at St Gabriel’s Parish Church in 1939.

Henner and Nancy Hudspeth on their wedding day

‘And here are other members of his family, as mentioned in the 1911 census’.

Henner Hudspeth with his mother and father

Frank Hudspeth with his mother and father

Emma Hudspeth

Arthur Hudspeth

The final photograph is of older brother, Arthur, who as previously mentioned in the article, ‘Cardigan Terrace: the memories live on’ was killed in WW1. He was a teacher at Westgate Hill School and is remembered on the Cuthbert Bainbridge Wesleyan War Memorial, now held in storage at St Cuthbert’s on Heaton Road.’

Can you help?

Lots of readers must have heard Henner Hudspeth and his band or danced at the venues mentioned. Please share information or your memories either by adding a comment to the site (by clicking on the link just below the article title) or emailing chris.jackson@heatonhistorygroup.org

Fred Blenkinsop Robinson: teenage soldier who died of flu

Notes for: For People Not Cows

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These are the notes for the article ‘For People Not Cows: Armstrong Park’s cattle run’ by Carlton Reid, published separately to aid readability. To locate references use the key words taken from the beginning of the relevant sentences.

The livestock, goes … Who built in ‘railway style’ in 1880s Newcastle? Robert Hodgson did, brother in law of Thomas Elliot Harrison, engineer in chief for the North Eastern Railway. Hodgson was engineer on the Byker Bridge over the Ouseburn, opened to foot traffic on 14 October, 1878.

Hodgson had ‘adopted the standard brick viaduct, of which ten or a dozen at least were built by … Thomas Harrison on the North Eastern Railway … without sign of a failure,’ says Proceedings of the Council of the Borough of Newcastle upon Tyne, 3 April, 1901.

Using archive materials …Thanks to coronavirus restrictions the research for this article was conducted without access to physical archives. Once archives reopen to the public I would like to see the correspondence between Frank W Rich and Lord Armstrong including ‘F W Rich, Newcastle; Concerning land at Lord Armstrong’s Heaton Estate, 1884.’ I would also like to find out what is said at ‘Concerning the purchase of cows’ of 1862, part of Lord Armstrong’s archives. Also worth exploring will be the Thomas Sopwith diaries and Newcastle Corporation records for ‘Bridges, 1772 – 1924,’ and ‘Water, Sewage and land improvement, c1860 – c1900’. ‘Ouseburn Drainage District, from Haddricks Mill to River Tyne’ of the late 1900s shows sewers and pipes. I would also like to see what was said in the council minutes for 7 October 1880 when the ‘cattle run’ was discussed. The minutes should nail down the building date of the feature and may also have other pertinent details.

The moss-covered panel … The panels were installed in 2010. The illustration was by Mark Oldroyd of Battle.

In the 19th Century this lozenge of land … Could the Bulman of Bulman’s Wood be Job Bulman (1746-1818) who built Coxlodge Hall in Gosforth? Bulman returned to Tyneside after a successful medical career in India. He <a rel=”noreferrer noopener” href=”http://<a href=”https://www.twsitelines.info/SMR/13396″ data-type=”URL” data-id=”bought land at Gosforth. The High Street became known as Bulman Village. He built Coxlodge Hall in 1796. His son Job James lost the family money and had to sell the land off for development.

Bulman’s village was the name for a group of houses just off today’s Gosforth High Street. Bulman was a ‘gentleman highly respected,’ stated the ‘Durham County Advertiser’ on 7 February 1818, reporting on Bulman’s death at the age of 74.

Wetherspoon’s named its pub in the former Post Office sorting office off Gosforth High Street, ‘The Job Bulman’.

There’s a linear east-west … The Deed of Gift map from 1879 uses the OS map of 1864.

The feature was constructed not … A 1997 book states that the feature was built in 1880. Author Fiona Green didn’t state the linear feature was called the ‘cattle run‘ but she did state it was built by Lord Armstrong to herd cows. Like a 1942 OS map, she called the feature a ‘subway‘. She wrote: ‘A subway was under construction in 1880. This is likely to be the stone faced underpass which bisects [Armstrong Park] from east to west. The underpass is thought to have been constructed in order that cattle could be moved without causing a nuisance to Sir William Armstrong. However it was not built until the park belonged to Newcastle Council and the reason for the construction is not in the council minutes 7.10.1880.’ See: ‘Heaton and Armstrong Parks and Jesmond Vale’, F Green, Newcastle upon Tyne, 1997.

Armstrong may have handed … Extract from Sir William Armstrong’s Deed of Gift, 1878:

‘A Conveyance of the land tinted pink on the title plan dated 15 January 1879 made between (1) George Christian Wilkinson Atkinson and Others (2) Sir William George Armstrong (3) Benjamin Chapman Browne (4) Addison Potter and (5) The Mayor Aldermen And Burgesses Of The Borough Of Newcastle Upon Tyne contains the following covenants

There is reserved to the donor and his heirs and assigns power to make through and underneath the said hereditaments [a piece of property that can be left to someone after its owner has died] and from time to time to repair all such drains and sewers as he or they may consider necessary for the drainage of the donors other lands in the township of Heaton and of any buildings which may hereafter be erected thereon and to use for such drainage any drains or sewers made or to be made by the grantees in the said hereditaments the donor, his heirs or assigns doing as little damage as reasonable may be in the exercise of the said reserved powers.’

On several period Ordnance Survey maps … It is odd that the Ordnance Survey maps of the 1890s don’t label the ‘cattle run’ because Lord Armstrong made sure other features were labelled correctly, including St Mary’s Chapel. On the Ordnance Survey map of Newcastle and Gateshead 1896, for instance, ‘the Director General of the Ordnance Survey states it was so marked “on the authority of William Armstrong, Esq. (afterwards the first Lord Armstrong), and others.”‘

It’s likely that the masonry … ‘Newcastle Daily Chronicle‘ 21 August, 1884.

Five years after handing … Armstrong Park was created in 1878 when Colonel Addison Potter, Sir William Armstrong’s cousin, sold 23 acres to the Corporation of Newcastle. Soon afterwards Armstrong gave 29 acres of his land to form the park. Sir William Armstrong wrote to the Mayor: ‘It is my intention to make a gift to the town … for the purpose of enlarging the proposed public park in Heaton dene. The land which I offers consists of — first, the house and grounds now occupied by Mr Glover, as annual tenant, including Bulman’s wood, second, the hill on which the old windmill stands; third, the grass land and banks adjoining the burn; fourth, the plot of ground on which the ruin called King John’s Palace stands; and an additional portion of Heaton Wood, which, together with the close containing the ruin, I have agreed to purchase for the present purpose from Mr Potter.’ ‘Newcastle Courant’, 4 October, 1878.

At a meeting of the town council on 2 October, 1878, the Mayor called this a ‘very princely gift’ adding that ‘in the future the name of the East End Park be “the Armstrong Park.’”

According to an 18th Century field-name … Map by John Bell, 1800, copied from an original dated to between 1756 and 1763.

belonging to Low Heaton Farm … Plan of Heaton, undated and unsigned, but believed to be by Quaker printer Isaac Thompson, c 1800. North and South Cow Close seem to have had different names at different times. They were part of Low Heaton Farm in the 1760s according to Bell’s copy of an estate plan of that period, Castle Farm in the 1780s according to a Ridley account book, and Mr Lawson’s Farm according to an estate map of c 1800.

Benton Bridge Farm was …The 1881 census lists 62-year-old Robert Oliver as a ‘farmer’ but doesn’t mention what kind of farm. In the 1891 census, Benton Bridge Farm is listed as a ‘farm’ only but the 1901 census shows that the Ferguson family who ran it had by now moved to a dairy farm in Benwell so it’s likely they were already dairy farmers in 1891. The 1901 census lists 26-year-old George Dickinson as the tenant farmer and describes him as a ‘cow keeper.’ There are no other dairy workers mentioned. His wife Margaret lives with him along with two domestic servants. In the 1911 census a widowed 69-year-old Irish ‘cow keeper’ called Catherine McStay was head of the family, helped by her single 40-year-old son John Owen and also his single 30-year-old brother James who was described as a ‘milk deliver[er].’

There’s no path marked at this point ... It’s indistinct, but Oliver’s map also possibly shows the ‘J’ shaped turn in the water channel.

…before their seat was removed to Blagdon in Northumberland … Another thing removed, in 1933, was the Temple that once adorned Heaton Hall’s stately ground, the hill for which is at the top of Heaton Park, just down from the former Victoria Library. See photos on Flickr here and here.

.. family estate at Blagdon … The estate is still noted for its prize cattle, including the ancient breed of White Park cattle. The Ridley family emblem is a bull. Sir Matthew White Ridley ‘had a thorough liking for agricultural pursuits, and took a deep interest in all matters relating to the farm. As a breeder of cattle he was known throughout the whole of the North of England …‘ ‘Morpeth Herald‘, 29 September, 1877.

Also living in one of the farm’s houses … The dairy farm was not Edgar’s sole source of income, nor was it likely to be his main source. His contracting work included installing drains — in 1890, while still living at Heaton Town Farm, Edgar installed the drainage for the then new Byker and Heaton cemetery and a ‘large sewer down Benton Road … for £1,350.’ ‘Newcastle Daily Chronicle’, 11 April, 1890.

Clearly, there were cows in this part … In today’s transport terminology such separation of transport modes is known as ‘grade separation’. This is where roads or rail lines are carried at different heights, or grades, so that they do not disrupt the traffic flow on the other routes when they cross each other. A subway is a form of grade separation, keeping pedestrians apart from motor vehicles.

Armstrong, who was elevated … ‘The outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease at Benton.‘ ‘Morpeth Herald’, 17 November, 1883.

By 1916, Benton Bridge Farm … Cow keeper John Owen McStay was fined 20 shillings for ‘having omitted to supply sufficient food for three dairy cows — everything pointed to a long and continued period of starvation.’ The cows were two young shorthorns and ‘an aged cow, suffering from tuberculosis.’ ‘Newcastle Journal’, 21 April, 1916.

The “new park is rapidly progressing … ‘The Armstrong Park,’ ‘Newcastle Daily Chronicle’, 16 June, 1880.

For instance, across the valley underneath … The <a rel=”noreferrer noopener” href=”http://Devil’s Burn — also known as Mill Burn for the wheel it powered in Jesmond Vale — rises in former ponds close to the Kenton Road and Grandstand Road junction in Gosforth, and empties into the Ouseburn at Springbank Road in Jesmond Vale.

According to a report in the ‘Newcastle Daily Chronicle’ of October 1878 … ‘Newcastle Daily Chronicle’, 7 October, 1878:

‘The ground [in Bulman’s Wood] forms a natural basin and a spring rises just above it, and runs evenly the whole year through, it is soft and swampy. The water, which is now carried away to form a small cascade in Mr Potter’s grounds, is quite sufficient in quantity to replenish a lake, which might be made with a very small amount of labour, and would be in a splendid situation.’

This lake was proposed for the area which is now the Greenwater Pool allotments — it was never filled.

‘The Mr. Potter in question was …‘ There are two Addison Potter’s — Addison Langhorn Potter (1784-1853) was the father of Colonel Addison Potter (1821-1894). Addison Langhorn Potter was a ‘maltster’ who ran a brewery at Forth Banks from 1787 (HER 4895). The Melbourne Street Maltings were said to be the finest of its kind, housed in an imposing seven storey building.

He also owned a fire brick and cement factory at Willington Quay and was one of the leading partners in the Stella Coal Company.

Colonel Addison Potter inherited his father’s colliery interests, brickworks, cement works and brewing firm; he employed nearly 1,000 people. By the 1871 census, he had moved into Heaton Hall with his wife, four daughters, a nursery-maid and governess, five domestic servants, a butler and two cooks. In 1863, Colonel Potter became the first chairman of the local school board in Willington Quay — a school was later named after him.

The hall, marked as … ‘Castle on the Corner’, Keith Fisher, 2013.

Victorian Tyneside’s industrial and …

Armstrong Senior and Donkin were … Armstrong Senior’s father, John, was a Carlisle shoemaker who become a yeoman farmer in the nearby village of Wreay. The father of Sir William, also called William, born in 1778, came to Newcastle as a junior clerk in a corn merchant’s office, Losh, Lubbon & Co. He ended up owning the firm (it was then called William Armstrong & Co), married into a well established local family (the Potter’s of Walbottle Hall) and became a member of Newcastle Town Council. His brother-in-law Addison Langhorn Potter was Mayor, and in 1850, aged 74, he became the holder of that office. William George Armstrong was born in 1810 in a terraced house, 9 Pleasant Row, Shieldfield. This large house had a garden leading down to the scenic Pandon Dene and its stream.

… and thick as thieves … After the passing of the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835, Newcastle was governed by a council consisting of the mayor, the sheriff, 14 aldermen and 42 councillors.

In the 1820s and 1830s, the … While he had relations in Rothbury — members of the extensive and long-lived Donkin family were prominent in Rothbury and Great Tosson from the late 1600s — Armorer Donkin was born in North Shields in 1779, the son of a timber merchant, also with the unusual first name of Armorer. He was articled to William Harrison, of Dockwray Square, North Shields, and like William Armstrong Junior later, he moved to London. Donkin was a friend of corn merchant William Armstrong, corn merchant. In 1824 the pair were on a committee appointed to inquire whether a railway or a canal was the most desirable means of effecting communication between Newcastle and Carlisle. (Armstrong favoured a canal.) Donkin was elected a member of Newcastle’s Common Council in the mid-1834s. He was one of the twelve old members who were returned by the extended electorate, in 1836, to the new Town Council. He was later appointed an alderman. He was, like Armstrong Senior, a Liberal of the Whig school.

In 1826 Donkin bought a small property and over some years created a ‘spacious domain’ by erecting the mansion known as Jesmond Park.

‘Being a bachelor, he was able to exercise a generous hospitality without derangement of his domestic affairs, and the entertainments which he gave to members of his social circle every Saturday were appreciated far and wide. Few strangers of eminence came to Newcastle without partaking of the hospitalities of Jesmond Park. Among them was that burly politician, William Cobbett, who in his ‘Tour in Scotland and the Four Northern Counties of England in the Autumn of the Year 1832‘, penned a characteristic note of what he saw: —

‘This morning [October 4th, 1832] I left North Shields in a post-chaise in order to come hither through Newcastle and Gateshead, this affording me the only opportunity that I was likely to have of seeing a plantation of Armorer Donkin, close in the neighbourhood of Newcastle; which plantation had been made according to the method prescribed in my book called the ‘Woodlands’, and to see which plantation I previously communicated a wish to Mr. Donkin. The plantation is most advantageously circumstanced to furnish proof of the excellence of my instructions as to planting. The predecessor of Mr. Donkin also made plantations upon the same spot; and consisting precisely of the same sort of trees. Those of the predecessor have been made six-and-twenty years; those of Mr. Donkin six years; and incredible as it may appear, the trees in the latter are full as lofty as those in the former, and besides the equal loftiness, are vastly superior in point of shape, and, which is very curious, retain all their freshness at this season of the year, while the old plantations are brownish, and have many of the leaves falling off the trees, though the sort of trees is precisely the same.’

Donkin retired in 1847, and died on 14 October, 1851. He was buried in Jesmond Cemetery, and six years later he was joined, in a similar looking next-door tomb, by his friend William Armstrong Senior.’

From: ‘Men of Mark Twixt Tyne and Tweed’ Richard Welford, Walter Scott Ltd. 1895.

Young William developed a …Armstrong bought some moorland near Rothbury in Northumberland in 1863. He transformed it into a beautiful park and gothic house, Cragside. He created a hydraulic system that pumped all the estate’s water and drove its farm machinery. The house — now a National Trust property — had hydro-electric light, and even a hydraulic kitchen spit.

From a young age, he … ‘Lord Armstrong,’ A. Cochrane, ‘Northern Counties Magazine’, Vol. 1. 1900 – 1901

After leaving school, Armstrong took … The law firm of Donkin, Stable and Armstrong was headquartered in offices in the a Royal Arcade on Pilgrim Street. Designed by John Dobson and built between June 1831 and May 1832 by Richard Grainger the classical building was demolished in 1963 to make way for the Central Motorway and Swan House.

Portions of some of the columns from the Royal Arcade can be found scattered throughout Armstrong and Heaton Parks, including by the Shoe Tree. The numbered pieces were stored at Warwick Street until the 1970s.

Still, his real vocation was … In an 1893 magazine interview, Lord Armstrong said: ‘The law was not, of course, of my choosing; my vocation was chosen for me, and for a good many years I stuck to the law, while all my leisure was given to mechanics. But the circumstances were peculiar. A great friend of my family’s, Mr Donkin, had a very prosperous attorney’s business. He was childless. When I entered his office, I was practically adopted by him; I was to be his heir. Such an opening in life was, of course, most attractive; here, it seemed, was a career ready made for me. As it turned out, of course, it meant the waste of some ten or eleven of the best years of my life – and yet not an entire waste, perhaps, for my legal training and knowledge have been of help to me in many ways in business. And at the time, although I had no idea of abandoning the law and regularly attended to my professional duties, I was an amateur scientist, constantly experimenting and studying in my leisure time.’

From ‘Notable Men and Their Work. Lord Armstrong, C.B., and Newcastle upon Tyne,‘ F. Dolman, ‘Ludgate Monthly’, October 1893.

William Armstrong founded W.G. Armstrong and Company in January 1847. Among the board members and investors in this new business were his mentor Armorer Donkin and his uncle Addison Langhorn Potter. Both had earlier been board members of the Whittle Dean Water Company for which Armstrong was a co-founder and secretary.

While Armstrong started his manufacturing career by fabricating the clever hydraulic cranes he had invented, it was the manufacture of weapons of war which secured the greater part of his fame and, of course, his fabulous wealth. Armstrong was said to have sold guns to both sides of the American Civil War. He was mocked in 1862 by the satirical magazine Punch as ‘Lord Bomb.’

Jesmond Park was famous among … In the parlance of the time, an ‘ordinary’ was a portion of food available for a fixed price and later became the place — such as a tavern or an inn — where such meals were served.

For more on Donkin see, ‘William Armstrong: Magician of the North‘, Henrietta Heald, Northumbria Press, 2010.

Jesmond Park was famous among … Brunel was likely invited by Thomas Sopwith, a land-surveyor and engineer, seven years older than Armstrong. Sopwith and Armstrong were friends and business associates. As a surveyor, Sopwith was involved with the planning for the reservoirs of the Whittle Dean Water Company. He left in 1845 to become chief manager of the Beaumont lead mines at Allenheads in the North Pennines. Sopwith corresponded with or otherwise knew many of the leading engineers and scientists of the day, including George and Robert Stephenson, Michael Faraday, and Charles Babbage.

Starting in 1822 and continuing until his death 57 years later, Sopwith kept a journal written in copperplate, which survives today as 168 leather-bound volumes. These contain his sketches, details of his personal life and note of the activities of his friends and neighbours, including Sir William Armstrong and his wife, Margaret.

There’s a linear feature … OS first edition 31 August 1864<. OS Six-inch Northumberland XCVII Surveyed: 1858. Published: 1864

… little stream which runs … ‘Newcastle Daily Chronicle’, 21 August, 1884.

Could the channel on Donkin’s land … Armstrong’s first hydraulic device — which converted a column of water into motive power by means of an automatic hydraulic wheel acted upon by discs made to enter a curved tube — was first tested in Skinner’s Burn next to the brewery of Armstrong’s uncle, Addison Langhorn Potter.

The transient produce of useless … Newcastle’s Literary and Philosophical Society was founded in 1793 to promote a wider interest in literary and scientific subjects. William Armstrong Senior joined the Society in 1799, and took an active part in its management, while his son, whose membership dated from 1836, was its President for almost 40 years, succeeding Robert Stephenson. The Lit and Phil’s present building dates from 1825.

permanent source of mechanical power. William Armstrong experimented with improvements to overshot waterwheels from about 1835 and had a paper on the subject published in ‘Mechanics’ Magazine’, December, 1838.

A report of the meeting in …‘Newcastle Daily Chronicle‘, 4 December, 1845.

‘Suppose,” posited Armstrong to … ‘On the employment of a column of water as a motive power for propelling machinery,’ by W.G. Armstrong read before the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne, 3 December 1845, reported in ‘Newcastle Daily Chronicle’, 4 December, 1845.

‘I do not mean to contend that in a locality like this, where the expense of fuel and consequently of steam power are, relatively speaking, extremely small, that it would be expedient so to deal with the stream I have mentioned,’ continued Armstrong at the Lit & Phil meeting, ‘but there are multitudes of situations where streams are to be found possessing far greater capabilities than the Ouseburn, and where, if I mistake not, important manufacturing towns will eventually spring up, when the mechanical agency of water collected and supplied in the manner I have described shall be sufficiently appreciated.’

At the end of same year he gave this presentation he became one of the founding partners in a water company that would dam the Whittle Burn, a tributary of the Tyne, to construct high reservoirs 15 miles west of Newcastle beside the Military Road south of Matfen. The Whittle Dean Water Company supplied fresh drinking water to Newcastle (and later, and not coincidentally, water to power Armstrong’s hydraulic cranes on the Quayside). It became, in time, the Newcastle and Gateshead Water Company and is now Northumbrian Water.

‘The stream of water,’ reported the … ‘Newcastle Daily Chronicle’, 24 July, 1880.

‘Ingenious drainage [in Armstrong Park] has in …’ ‘Newcastle Daily Chronicle’,16 June 1880.

‘Smith o’ Deanston’s the man!’ exclaimed … Surtees was the second son of Anthony Surtees of Hamsterley Hall, Rowlands Gill. Much like William Armstrong in the following decade Surtees was articled in 1822 to a Newcastle solicitor. Hillingdon Hall is reminiscent of Hamsterley Hall.

‘Who ever ‘heard o’ drainin’ afore … The adventures of Jorrocks were first published in serial form in an early 1830s magazine and were the inspiration for publisher Chapman & Hall to commission illustrator Robert Seymour to produce a rival series — this became ‘The Pickwick Papers’.

After going ‘boldly at the Government loan’ another …Major Yammerton in ‘Ask Mama’ Robert Smith Surtees, 1858.

Between 1809 and 1879, 88 percent … ‘The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy’, David Cannadine, Pan, 1992.

Heaton landowners such as Colonel Addison Potter, Sir … In the 1880s and 1890s this was a different Sir Matthew White Ridley to the farming one. Since the White and Ridley families had joined together in marriage some generations earlier, the eldest sons were called Matthew — so, there are lots of Sir Matthew White Ridleys down the years! Today’s incarnation is the columnist and science writer.

‘The more he bestows, the … ‘The Monthly Chronicle’, January 1889.

In 1878, Armstrong instructed his … ‘It is in contemplation to lay out villa residences upon the land to the eastward of the park … ‘Newcastle Courant’, 4 October, 1878.

Rich — the designer of Armstrong Bridge — had … Frank West Rich designed St. Gabriels’ Church, Heaton; the pagoda-style Ouseburn School; the Real Tennis Court on Matthew Bank; and, in 1876, also designed some alterations to Millfield House. He frequently worked for Lord Armstrong and did so soon after he set up his office in Grainger Street in 1872.

Solution: “The water … is now ...’Newcastle Daily Chronicle’, 7 October, 1878.

perhaps to be used as hidden-from-view passageway for servants or tradespeople … There are several other examples of “servant tunnels” in the UK and Ireland. Usually they were built for large houses and stately homes and were to keep “family” members separate from servants. Cromarty House in Scotland has a 200-foot-long tunnel leading from the road to the house. It was built in the 19th Century. Other examples include a tunnel at Uppark House in West Sussex, also built in the 19th Century, and the so-called Snobs’ tunnel at Hanbury Hall in Worcestershire. In Ireland, there’s a tunnel at Emo Court in County Laois. In his 1942 novel set at Emo Court, Fr. M. Bodkin, a Jesuit priest, described the servants’ tunnel:

‘On the east side of the house there was a basement out of which an underground tunnel led to the gardens…though its first forty or fifty yards were completely covered, the roof then disappeared and the tunnel changed into a trench which grew shallower and shallower as it approached the garden…[I]ts purpose was simply to prevent the lawns and terraces of the gentry being polluted by the print of a peasant foot, or the eyes of real ladies from resting on the unpleasant sight of one of the tradespeople who supplied their needs. As the family and their guests sat upon the marble benches under the yews or walked down the paths that led to the pleasure grounds or stepped into their carriage at the front door they were blissfully unconscious of the helots who, laden with fruit and flowers, the fish and game for their table, entered their house through the arched tunnel, groping in the narrow darkness like animals in a burrow.’ Borrowed Days, Fr. M. Bodkin, Browne and Nolan, 1942.

‘Other parts of the would-be development lay fallow …’ These are the houses clustered around the Peoples’ Theatre on Broxholm Road, Ivymount Road, Beatrice Road, Holderness Road and Crompton Road. When he died in 1900, Lord Armstrong’s fortune was inherited not by his nephew John William Watson (1827-1909) who did not want either the estates or the responsibilities of Lord Armstrong but by his son, William Henry Fitzpatrick Watson, who had adopted the name Watson-Armstrong in 1889.

In 1903 Lord Armstrong’s great nephew was raised to the peerage as the First Lord Armstrong of Bamburgh and Cragside.

Watson-Armstrong’s second wife was Beatrice Elizabeth Cowx and she was perhaps the inspiration for Beatrice Road?

‘Heaton Park Estate never made the …’ ‘Newcastle Daily Chronicle’, 1 August, 1894. It’s likely that Rich was acting as a sales agent for Lord Armstrong.

‘When Lord Armstrong presented the beautiful …’ See: ‘The Enigmatic Architect’, John Penn FRIBA, ‘Archaeologia Aeliana’, Fifth Series, Volume XXXVIII, The Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne.

Mrs Sweeney Remembers Bygone Heaton

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Heaton History Group has been interviewing older Heatonians so that we can capture memories and personal photographs to complement more easily accessed published and archived material. Jeanie Molyneux recently met Joan Sweeney nee Potter, who was born in 1922, lived at 23 Sackville Road until 1951 and then in Rothbury Terrace for a further 8 years.

Young Joan, aged 4, in 1926

We are hoping that Mrs Sweeney’s recollections will interest other longstanding or former residents. Please add your memories to our collection either by leaving a comment on this website (by clicking on the link immediately below the article title) or by emailing chris.jackson@heatonhistorygroup.org .

Mrs Sweeney remembers

– the visit of King George V and Queen Mary to Tyneside for the opening of the Tyne Bridge on 10 October 1928. She recalls being taken to the approach Road at Armstrong Bridge by Jesmond Dene and being given a flag to wave and, later, a certificate. Where you there or perhaps at one of the Heaton Secondary Schools which they officially opened the same day?

– playing bat and ball against the wall of the house on the corner of Stanmore Road and Ravenswood Road. She also remembers that in the backyard of her home there was a container for ashes attached to the back wall with an aperture so that the ashes could be tipped into the bath which was brought around the back streets. What did you play in the back lanes? Do you remember ashes being collected?

Young Joan in her backyard with the ash box in the background c1932

– the blacksmith’s shop and Clarendon garage at the top of Chillingham Road (opposite Norwood Avenue). As a child, Mrs Sweeney was sent to the garage to collect batteries for the cat’s whisker (wireless / old radio). Were you sent on errands to local shops?

– the Scala on the corner of Chillingham Road and Tosson Terrace. The First Vets practice premises was Riddells, a photographers. Baobab Bakery was also a bakery in earlier years – the Tynedale Bakery. This photo of the bakery was taken by High Heaton photographer, Laszlo Torday. Thank you to Newcastle City Library for permission to use it.

Next door was the Teesdale Dairy. They also operated a horse and cart which would travel around the area selling milk, pouring the milk from a white container directly into a jug at local residents’ homes. Do Mrs Sweeney’s memories jog yours?

– other local shops, for example, on Rothbury Terrace from the corner of Spencer Street to Chillingham Road included Topliffe hardware store and Tulip’s chemists. She remembers a small general store on the corner of Sackville Road and Stanmore Road which sold food and she recalls helping to serve there on one occasion. Mrs Sweeney also remembers Ochletree’s, a newsagent on Addycombe Terrace on the corner of Tosson Terrace or Trewhitt Road – she is a little uncertain which. Can you help?

– Sainsbury’s on Benton Road was a sweet / toffee factory. Thank you to English Heritage for permission to reproduce the aerial photo below from its Britain from Above website.

A S Wilkins’ Cremona Toffee Works, 1938

Also in that area was the Sylvan Jam factory, with a big chimney with the name Sylvan on the side. Mrs Sweeney remembers being able to smell strawberries when jam was being made. What smells do you remember from your Heaton childhood?

– In the years before World War 2, the last tram along Heaton Road (about 11.00 pm) also had a post box on board. The last tram would drop the box off at the Post Office at the top of Heaton Road. She remembers occasions when she would see her father running up the road with a letter in order to catch the final tram.

She also remembers that a tram (open upstairs) travelled up to Gosforth Park (she thinks possibly only at weekends). She recalls travelling on the tram to Lamb’s Tea Gardens, next to the garden centre. Do you remember taking a trip to Lambs’ or taking a tram in Heaton?

Share your memories

We really appreciate Mrs Sweeney giving up her time and sharing her memories and photographs with us. If you remember ‘bygone’ Heaton, please get in touch. We can meet you for a chat if you still live locally. Or send your memories by email to chris.jackson@heatonhistorygroup.org

The Heaton Road Millionaires’ Row That Never Was

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In 1868, while Lord Armstrong was enthusiastically buying Ridley land in Heaton, he acquired a plot north of Heaton Hall as far as Benton Bank: it included areas then known as Bulman’s Wood and Low Heaton Farm (the farmhouse was by the junction of Benton Bank and the Ouseburn Road: see map) plus three abandoned coal mine sites – the Thistle, the Knob and the infamous Chance Pit up by the windmill. This entire plot was bordered along its western edge by the Ouseburn Road, its southern boundary by Jesmond Vale Lane and the eastern side by Heaton Lane (now Road). After giving Armstrong Park to the people of Heaton, two new roads were planned through the remainder of the land which had been divided up and offered for sale as thirteen residential plots of between two and four acres each. This extravagant development would be named The Heaton Park Villa Estate: millionaire mansions by the baker’s dozen. There goes the neighbourhood!

The following illustration shows the plots in relation to today’s developments.

This last illustration indicates how little more than half of the estate was ever developed (more on this is to follow) while the remainder was given over to an allotment complex of two halves: the small northern section called St Gabriel’s Allotments and the larger southern portion known as the Armstrong Allotments.

Back at the ranch

A letter dated 1884 to Sir William from his Newcastle architect Frank W. Rich of Eldon Square (who was later to design St Gabriel’s Church) explains how the original 13 large plots have been abandoned in favour of 41 plots of between one-third and one acre-and-a-half. He indicates that these smaller sizes are what buyers are looking for and that anyone needing more may simply buy multiple plots. One such gentleman for example – Mr Thomas H. Henderson of Framlington Place (behind the Dental Hospital) – asks for a particular 1.5 acre plot at an offered rate of £500 per acre when Sir William is looking for £600. This tells us what a four acre plot would have actually cost and why there were obviously no takers for such sizes, especially when you consider that the largest residential plots anywhere in Newcastle were an acre and a half.

The layout for the forty-one plots was never lodged with the planning department and it seems likely that the outlined houses shown on the original thirteen plot plan were simply random or figurative, and that each house would have been designed (hopefully by Mr Rich) to the specifications of the buyer. There were certainly no house designs lodged with the planning department for either the thirteen plot estate or the forty-one plot version.

Mr Rich further explains to Sir William that the roads were run by necessity according to the gradient of the land. Looking at the terrain today indicates that the largest sites – those bordering the park – would have been on relatively flat ground down at low level, but with no prospect beyond their own boundaries; while the smaller Heaton Road sites would have occupied the high ground looking out across the park. I don’t think anyone buying a four acre plot down below would have been greatly enamoured of their neighbours in the cheap seats lording it over them; would you?

However, thirteen or forty-one soon became immaterial because it didn’t take long for surveys to reveal that much of this land was actually one giant sand-hill and totally unsuitable for house building purposes, unless it was to mix with cement. Mr Rich does inform Sir William at a later date that they now have sand, stone and brick immediately to hand on their land in Heaton (where was the stone quarry?) and that builders could buy it all directly on site. Oh, how the rich get richer! But…

Ever the benefactor to us hoi-polloi, Lord Armstrong’s will said that the entire area be reserved as allotments for those tenants of his Heaton development lacking gardens of their own – which was a lot of them. Sir William’s heir was forced to apply for an act of Parliament in order to overturn the will and develop such areas deemed suitable for construction – but not until the nineteen-twenties when housing shortages had become a government issue.

Keith Fisher, Heaton History Group

House Histories

If you own a house in Heaton and have the deeds and other documents and would like to know more about its history, get in touch via chris.jackson@heatonhistorygroup.org and we’ll try to help. If enough people are interested, we might be able to arrange a course in researching your house – and could even help with the research depending on demand.

Craigielea – history of a Heaton house

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‘Craigielea’ (276 Heaton Road) is an imposing early Edwardian brick villa situated on the corner of Heaton Road and Cartington Terrace opposite both St Gabriel’s church and the Heaton Medicals cricket and rugby ground. We were thrilled when just before recent owner Jimmy McAdam moved out, he invited us to look through the house’s deeds and other documents. What would they reveal? We suspected that some interesting people would have crossed its threshold and we weren’t disappointed.

The first question the documents answered was the age of the house. The first conveyance is dated 3 June 1902. It shows that William Watson Armstrong, who had inherited Lord Armstrong’s estate only eighteen months earlier, sold three adjoining plots of land, on what was termed the Heaton Park Villa Estate, to builder William Thompson of Simonside Terrace. The contract came with a myriad of strict provisos concerning the quality of the properties to be built on the site: only high quality materials were to be used; the roof and back offices were to be covered with Bangor or Duke of Westmoreland slate, yard fences were to be wire railings of approved design and four feet high; the front was to comprise a garden only; no trades were to be pursued from the properties etc. The high standard of design and workmanship is still evident today.

The architect’s family

William Thompson was the first owner of Craigielea but not its first resident. That honour seems to have gone to the Lish family. At least they are the first to be named in the annual trade directories. Joseph James Lish was born in Beamish, County Durham in 1841. By the time he moved to Heaton, he had been married for over 35 years to his wife, Nancy, a Londoner, and they had 5 children, the rather exotically named John Robertson, Kirkwood Hewat, Catherine Hozier Robertson, Bentley Beavons and Florence Meek. Sadly John, a Second Lieutenant in the Lincolnshire Regiment, was to die during the First World War. He is cited in De Ruvigny’s Roll of Honour which, in addition to giving details of his military service and heroic death, records that he was a shipbroker, coal exporter and all round sportsman.

His father, Joseph Lish, was an architect but he didn’t design the house or its two neighbouring properties. The original plans in Tyne and Wear Archive show that they were the work of the well-known Tyneside architects, William Hope and Joseph Charlton Maxwell.

Craigielea is shown on the left of this original design

Hope and Maxwell are remembered for their design of theatres, not only locally in Blyth and Newcastle, but as far afield as Glasgow, Margate and Southampton. Sadly the Hope and Maxwell theatres have all been demolished or been destroyed by fire. Another of their buildings does still stand, however, just up the road from Craigielea. It’s Heaton Methodist Church.

But back to Craigielea‘s first resident. There are a number of known Lish buildings around Tyneside, the most well known of which is the 1908 Dove Marine Laboratory, which still stands at Cullercoats. There is a book in Newcastle City Library in which Lish describes the design and build of the laboratory. He was an early advocate of reinforced concrete, using it in the Dove laboratory. What’s more, over a quarter of a century earlier, in 1874, he had exhibited his own invention, ‘Tilo-Concrete’. Lish was prominent in his profession both regionally and nationally. At one stage he was the President of the Society of Architects, whose Gold Medal he was awarded. He died in 1922 at the age of 80.

If you know more about Joseph Lish or any member of his family or have any photographs you are willing to share, we’d love to hear from you. Please get in touch either via the ‘Reply’ link just below the title of this article or by emailing chris.jackson@heatonhistorygroup.org

The marine engineer’s family

By 1911, the Lish family had left Heaton and marine engineer Robert Bales Armstrong and his wife, Margaret Emma, had moved in with their eight children and Robert’s sister, Sarah. Robert, from West Herrington in County Durham, was the son of a cartman/sheep farmer. His wife, from the same county, had worked as a Post Office assistant before she was married. By 1911, the two older boys, Frank Bales and Robert Hunter, were both apprentices in engineering and ship building respectively. The older girls, Sarah Jane and Daisy Bales ‘assisted with housework’; John, David Bales and Reginald Hugh were at school and Doris Hunter and Gladys May were under school age. The family also had a live-in servant, Annie Elizabeth Robinson. You can see why they needed a substantial house!

Robert and Margaret Armstrong with some of their family

Robert and Margaret are in the centre of this family group

We are indebted to researchers of the Armstrong family tree who have posted on the Ancestry website for the above photo and additional information about Robert who had begun his career as a draughtsman at Hawthorn Leslie, worked for a while at Day, Summers and Co in Southampton and returned to the North East and Hawthorn Leslie in 1905. While living in Heaton, he was Chief Assistant to the Engineering Director and then General Manager. The family left Craigielea just before the end of the First World War. Robert was awarded the OBE in 1918 for his part in keeping the shipyards open during the war. Later he invented a steam powered boiler, the ‘Hawthorn-Armstrong’. Robert died in 1931 only weeks after becoming Managing Director of R & W Hawthorn, Leslie and Co Ltd.

The draper’s family

Next to move in to Craigielea was Herbert Pledger and his family. Herbert Pledger was born in Cambridgeshire, the son of a ‘bootmaker and publican’. By 1891, at the age of 22, he was a draper’s assistant in Saffron Walden, Essex and lodging with his employer. Within a few years, he had moved North and entered into a business partnership on Shields Road (See below). Soon he was to have his own firm.

Herbert Pledger’s shop seen here in 1923 on the occasion of the Prince of Wales’ visit (Taken by Heaton butcher, Edgar Couzens)

We can track Herbert’s success by his various Heaton addresses. In 1895, he lodged at 29 Kingsley Place. By 1900 he was married, with a young son, and was householder at 105 Cardigan Terrace. In 1911, he, his Gateshead born wife, Annie and their children, Herbert Junior, William Cowley and Marjorie plus servant Isabella Caisley lived at 20 Simonside Terrace and for a couple of years from 1918, they lived at Craigielea before moving just up Heaton Road to Graceville.

Herbert Junior and William Cowley Pledger, c 1901 (Thank you to Simon Bainbridge for permission to publish on this website)

Herbert Pledger Senior died in 1929 with an estate worth over £80,000, a significant fortune then.

Owner-occupiers

After the Pledgers moved out, the house was owned and occupied briefly by William Thompson, builder. This was the first time it had been owner-occupied and at present, we can only surmise that this is the same William Thompson who had built the house 20 years or so earlier. He seems also to have had a house in Coquet Terrace (number 39). Sadly he died soon after. Isabella , his widow, sold Craigielea in 1931 to William Thompson Hall, a doctor who also had a surgery at 12 Heaton Road. There is a document in which the freeholder’s lawyers say that (despite the original clause forbidding trades being practised from the house) they had no objection to Dr Hall’s medical practice and, subject to the approval of Lord Armstrong’s architects, a side entrance could be made for the convenience of Dr Hall. The plans are held by Tyne and Wear Archive.

The original dining room and drawing room were converted into a waiting room and consulting room

Dr Hall died in 1934 at which point the house passed into the ownership of his widow, Edith, and an Isabel Dorothy Reed. From this point on, biographical information about the householders becomes a little harder to find but we do have the bare bones. From just before World War 2 until the late fifties, a Maurice Edward Robinson, manager, was in residence but didn’t own the property. In 1958 Vincent and Margaret Richards Fleet moved from 14 Coquet Terrace, paying Hall and ‘another’ £1,900. When Vincent Fleet died in 1977 the house was passed firstly to ‘Thomas and Spencer’ and then to the Taz Leisure group, which applied for, but was refused, permission to convert the house into the HQ of the Northumbrian branch of the Red Cross Society. It was then sold to Ronald and Philippa Oliver in 1985 (They had moved, as so many of the more recent owners had, from a nearby Heaton residence – in this case 18 Westwood Avenue.) The Olivers in turn sought planning permission, this time to use part of the ground floor for a tea room but this too was refused and the Olivers also soon sold the house. There were to be two further owners, ‘Maill and Grant’ and then Carol Simpson before Jimmy and Lesley McAdam of Tosson Terrace bought it in 1994 and lived there for over 20 years. Jimmy is a photographer and has a wealth of stories of his own to tell – but they’ll wait for another day!

Can you help?

If you know more about the history of Craigielea or any of the people mentioned, we’d love to hear from you. Please get in touch either via the ‘Reply’ link just below the title of this article or by emailing chris.jackson@heatonhistorygroup.org