WHEN I WAS YOUNG IN A PIT VILLAGE.

By: Isabella Alice Embleton (nee Seymour).

Foreword.

I remember the Embletons who lived on Broadway Avenue in Trimdon Village. Their daughter Helen attended the Trimdon Parochial School at the same time as my younger brother Paul. Mrs. Embleton (Isabella) taught for a while at the Village school, her husband John was the Prudential Assurance Agent in the area.

Isabella was 78 years old when she wrote this story in 1986, I believe she died in 2002. The most famous member of her family was her brother Stan Seymour, former Newcastle United; footballer, manager and director of the club.

John was very well known and liked in the community, visiting most houses to collect insurance premiums. He changed his career in the 1950’s after going blind. I enjoyed chatting with him on the bus from Hartlepool on our way back from work.

The story came to me from the estate of my late brother Billy as a booklet inscribed as “A bit of social history.” I thought it worth reproducing to preserve the past.

John Robinson.

WHEN I WAS YOUNG IN A PIT VILLAGE.

Edward VII died in 1910, so the first bunting I would see, and which I remember, would be 1911 to celebrate the crowning of the new king, George V. I was 3, born 11th. October, 1908 on a Sunday so my mother said. She was 46 and so was my father; Ellen, very rarely Nelly, Mather,

never Matthew. I had 3 brothers, Jim 21, Stanley 16 and Tom 9. As was the custom, I was named after the 2 grandmothers, Isabella, father's mother and Alice, mother's mother. As a child, I was called Bell-Alice which I hated and which I changed to Isabel when in my teens. My two

eldest brothers never lived at home with me because they had gone elsewhere to work, Jim at Newcastle and Stan to play football at Bradford, Greenock Morton and Newcastle.

My father collected rates and twice a year he had to go to Durham Court to get the 'Rate Books' signed by the magistrates, I imagine. We had a pony called Minny and a very nice trap so my father went to Durham by pony and trap, not only to court, but to Bailes's to get the books etc. needed for his job. That is where I must have been, when 3, and saw the bunting at Shincliffe, but not at Kelloe where I lived. That is my very earliest recollection of anything.

The pit was called East Hetton Colliery and was a mile away from the village, so we were away from pit noise and smell. The area is not flat, not hilly but sloping. Kelloe faced north and there was a slope to climb up or run down. It was a village built last century when the mine was sunk, 1850. It was built for the miners who lived in cottages or houses made of lime and stone, mostly. There were few brick houses in the streets. Only the main road had a proper surface. The rest of the paths were 'undeveloped' and so very rough. We lived in Green Street in a house that

had been raised with bricks so it must have been mud, stone and lime before that. Water was laid on in my childhood and so was electricity.

My mother's parents, James and Alice Scott, had a grocery shop, and I remember the currents, sultanas and raisins being 'washed'. All the weighing machines were different and those made of brass were cleaned each week as all brass was. I cannot remember paper bags, but I can see my grandfather folding paper perfectly over butter and cheese, which was always ‘cut', lard etc. Some goods were tins and very nice ones too. Most bags were blue.

The house and shop seemed big to me. When 6 or 7 they both died. My mother had a brother, uncle Jos (eph) and a widowed sister Margaret Jane who lived near the shop in a miner's cottage and who had had a big family. I can member a fuss about a 'will', meaningless to me of course. My mother used to go to see her parents about 4.00 p.m. every Sunday afternoon, and one day she looked through the window, through the "shield" (brass curtain) and saw her parents and my aunt making a will. She came home very upset and told my father who, with the village headmaster, was an executor of a will already made. When my grandparents died, some months later, there had been new a will made, but incorrectly, so there was a great fuss. Father went to see Ferance a solicitor.in Durham and my aunt should have got nothing because her name was wrong, but my mother and her brother swore they knew her! Each grandchild got £50.00. I was the youngest. I still have some silver etc. that my mother bought when everything had to be sold and bought because of the muddle of the second will.

The 1st World War started in 1914 and at once my father became a special constable to see windows were in the dark every night. It was German zeppelins that were feared then. Past our Chapel and right at the top of the bank a search light was placed and so we often saw the soldiers in the village. I can remember when Hartlepool as bombarded in 1915. I also remember a zeppelin being hit and brought down over the sea. Tom and I stood in the bedroom facing east and saw the great rockets going up, the lights on the zeppelin, one was from our own searchlight, and the whole great machine lit up. 'Then the zeppelin broke into two and scattered into the sea.

Food was short. The store, Coxhoe Co-operative Society, had bought the Scott's shop, and we became members, but not very good ones. My father's cousin, Uncle Matt Hope, had a very good shop too and we bought there. I remember bags of flour and potatoes being hoarded in the cupboard under the stairs. There was plenty of milk brought from Lee's farm. Everybody went for the milk about one third of a mile away. My father used to shake the cream in a big jar to get butter and very nice it was too. If he shook it too long it became cheese, but still very good. I have liked cheese all my life because there was always Cheshire and cream cheese in the pantry. During the war there was much meat too, because if the butcher had "little" someone was always killing a pig for sausages etc., and some were given away. The bacon was perfect, no salt like it is now. Looking back, flour was very scarce as the war dragged on, because so much was imported and the British Navy was having a bad time because of the German submarines.

Many men were "called up"; there was no exemption and many never came back. They wrote to their f'amilies often and sent us children lovely mother-of'-pearl beads which were really Rosary Beads since most of the

soldiers were in Catholic countries. Alice Jackson's uncle was in the navy. Near the end of the war we got our R.F.C. in action and Tom was called up when 18, and soon became a 2nd Leiutenant. I remember a silk scarf he wore round his neck to keep him warm and my mother kept that for years. We sent parcels to him with Dainty Dinar Toffees, made in Chester-le-Street, kept for him and sent with other choice bits. Every parcel had to be covered with cloth and sewn on. Lovely silk cards came from France, especially there were so many that we never kept them and now they are worth money. My Brother Jim was living in Newcastle, not married, and was helping to make tanks at Armstrong Whitworth's great works. I believe these tanks really surprised the Germans. Stan was at Greenock. T'om really wanted to be a doctor, but there were few grants in those days, so when he came home he became a teacher and went to St. Bede's College, Durham. Until the year began, he taught at Kelloe school, all one age group then, 7-14, and I was a pupil. He never seemed to notice little me! The staff seemed to have great fun in that staff room.

My parents were members of the Primitive Methodist Chapel right at the top of the village. It must have been an old building that was rebuilt by a builder, Regan, from Trimdon Village. I 'laid' a stone when 4. My father played the little harmoneum until we got a real organ which Tom learned to play. My father was always at Chapel in the evenings, and three times on Sunday. I always went to Sunday School and there were big groups or classes of children. We learned a 'golden text' each week and we said it in order of classes. We sang from the Sunday School Hymn Book and at the end of the service one teacher spoke to ns all. My father had a paper for each week about the lessons. We really read a great deal from the bible and it was always the Old 'I'estament that I liked. The teachers' meeting was often on a Sunday morning after service and my mother used to be angry if my father was late. It made the Yorkshire puddings hard! On Thursdays we went to a meeting in the vestry if 'we were in the choir.

The Sunday School Anniversary was held on the first two Sundays in Junc. My father and then Tom, together got special hymns for us to learn too, and we were given poems to learn too. Some girls learned very long ones, each having a story. We all got two new frocks and no-one told any other girl what her mother had bought her. There were some lovely dresses especially from Miss Roberts who had a shop and post office and a very nice house. I learned afterwards that she got the clothes from Bainbridges at Newcastle. The hats were lovely too. Of course, the material was good, silk, satin, wool and cotton and the colours were beautiful. I remember a black satin summer coat trimmed with a lovely blue, and one winter I had a red wool coat and hat and black gloves and a fur muff. We all had long hair, often in plaits with ribbons to keep it tidy. Every girl had her hair ‘searched' each week! I was fair and my hair had a curly finish.

Shoes were all leather, in fact we wore more boots than shoes and long laced boots in the winter. All our clothes lasted a long time, so a new dress had to have a hem.

On Anniversary mornings we sang round the streets the songs we had learned. The first Sunday we went to Garmondsway because there was a tiny village there and we knew all the families. Then we went to sing to the Canon after his morning service. My father always knew him and was told the time to go to the Vicarage. I think the Chapel held 200 people and it was always full with extra seats on the 'flat'. We had games on the 'flat' at party time until we had the money to have Communion Table and chairs and a wood surround.

The Wesleyan Chapel had its Anniversary on the third and fourth Sundays in June. On the third Sunday my mother, father and I spent the whole day at Wingate. There were grocers there called Harrison and before I was born they had had a shop at Kelloe. My parents had become friendly with them and used to have the wine etc., brought from Wingate at Christmas. I loved to go to Wingate on this special Sunday. We had dinner and then we went to see the cows and get the milk, for Harrisons had some land not far from the house and a big shop. Sometimes the daughter at home, called Tizzy, would take me to evening Chapel with her. I liked her and used to hope Tom would marry her. We went into the shop to fetch goods back that my mother wanted. Mr. and Mrs. Harrison were more like farmers, I thought. It was a lovely day for a child.

I knew Lees' farm very well because that was where we got the milk, cream and butter. There were three brothers and three sisters and they each knew their own work. Looking back, it was a 'proper' farm for there were all the farm animals, a pond with trees, fields with good crops and with paths where parents and children walked round on Sunday nights in the summer. There were hedges with flowers and stiles we all could step over. Annie Lee came every Thursday with butter for us and for my grandfather's shop. I loved that butter on a new tea-cake on Thursdays. Once a year my parents and I spent the afternoon and evening at the farmhouse. The kitchen was big but we sat in the sitting room and ate in the dining room both full of Victorian furniture etc., etc. I was allowed in the dairy and really was petted. Their cream was lovely. There is none like it now in any shop. I do not know where the Lee family came from and I never saw any relatives. Their parents had been there because my mother used to say their mother had said she hoped none would marry and no one did. They were charming people and nowadays we would say they were very fetching! They looked the same age. No one looked older than another.

My father's parish was Coxhoe, and we often had farmers coming to pay their rates. They came as for a visit and were always given whisky. Coxhoe Mill Farm was in a charming area with trees, the pit stream and private fields in parts because of land belonging to John Wood of Coxhoe Hall. The land, trees, walls, hedges, footpaths and roads were all in excellent condition. My father had to go to the Hall. John Wood was not married nor were his sisters. I got to the Hall, but never in it. I sat in the trap. John Wood's house was lovely, a private residence. There was a farmhouse as one entered the estate at the Kelloe side and that was where the carved wall began. At the Coxhoe end, there was an entrance with a wall and a cottage. All this has gone thanks to the destruction of the Coal Board. Trees have gone too and the district looks a wreck. Elizabeth Barrett Browning was born at Coxhoe Hall.

I had just started school when I got scarlet fever, very prevalent then. It left me with a swollen gland and a swelling that used to burst and look awful because I had to wear a dressing round my neck. Some children went to Durham Hospital to have their necks 'treated' and an awful mess it made. My mother would not have me go and had faith in Scott the chemist's salve. It took several years, but it healed and left the scar I still have. In the middle of all this, I fell off a high see-saw and broke my left elbow badly. Again my mother would not let me go to hospital, so my father took me to Byers Green to have it 'stretched' by a bone setter he knew who had worked at Kelloe pit. He was a nice man and gave my father big tins of jelly to put on my arm and showed him how to get the elbow to bend. I still cannot touch my shoulder or neck, but I can manage everything else.

Our house was in Green Street at the end of one row. It had three bedrooms, a kitchen, a sitting room and a passage. At the other side of the yard, which was not big, was the W.C., the coal house and the wash house where all the cooking was done. We had an oven in the fireplace in the kitchen, but the whole place had been electro-plated and my mother would not have it used. On the mantelpiece there was much brass and all these candlesticks and other pieces were cleaned every week. In the sitting room the brass round the fireplace was elegant and so were the long pokers and shovels. We had a big pantry where there was always a big bowl of water, kept for the sink in the wash house. There was a big bowl for bread which my mother baked, and baked well, every Thursday. She made big loaves and little ones and fadges. Always a piece of bacon and ham hung from the top and my father cut it when needed.

There was plenty of furniture in the bedrooms. There were many drawers especially in one big elegant piece of mahogany, a wood greatly used and lovely to look at. In my parents' room there was a grandfather clock which

never stopped ticking and also a cupboard over the stairs where we hung coats and where my father had a safe. The sitting room was quite something with a good piano, a real suite of chairs and settee, a big piece of furniture in one corner with drawers and a china cabinet, and had we some china! At the other side were dozens of small ornaments and pairs of ornaments big and small, some of which, now, I can see were really nice. A gold clock with a glass cover, stuffed birds in a cage were there too. There was a what-not where the music was kept and there was a table of rose wood, heavily carved with three monkeys and round leaves. Helen has this now in her hall. Over the fireplace was a big mirror. It made three after my mother died and I have one now. My father collected rents for Mr. Robinson who had a big shop in Stockton, and we went there twice a year and this was where my mother saw all these goods that were then coming from the Far East, Japan possibly, and bought. When Tom went to college his trunk came from Robinson's and I had it afterwards.

I never had a bike. I had 'good' dolls that is, they looked like babies and wore nice clothes which someone in village made. Several women had sewing machines so there was much home dressmaking and very good it was. Many buttons were used and embroidery was done. Of course, quilts were made and every woman was in a quilting club. Fireside carpets were made too and there was much knitting and crotchet work. Men did stools, crockets and chairs in wood, but gardening was their great joy. There was much land for gardens, now called allotments. Vegetables were always plentiful and there were some fine greenhouses. Billy Cummings grew black grapes and so Tommy Fisher. Mr. Dowding, who was a man of many talents could play the big base drum and did so at Chapel where it stayed. Many families kept hens and a pig. My mother always had a few hens and she liked the fat brown ones. We never ate a hen, always a cock chicken. I had a lovely big swing in our garden and I sang all the wartime songs as I went as high as I could. The wood was of 'sleepers' from the pit. My grandfather's garden was special. I just got in once before he died. It had a flight of steps with a wind mill and I can remember no more.

The pony and trap were kept in buildings opposite the garden. My father did look after Minny! She was well fed and well groomed and in the summer went into Turnbull's fields. She was used a lot because my father worked for the post office by bringing their goods from Coxhoe Bridge

Station. Looking back, we used the railways as we use the roads now. As a child I was always going to Coxhoe Station to get to Ferryhill to get to Newcastle. We went to Newcastle often because Jim worked there and then Stanley went to play football there. When in training he used to walk from Newcastle, have a bath in the big tub in the yard and stay overnight. Trips went to Hart from Coxhoe and we walked through the "planton", by the mill, and then a field to the station. Odd times we might walk to Trimdon Station. Often the pony and trap took us to Blackhall Rocks, more interesting than Hart.

All my life we had a dog, and when I was a child a cat too, called Tibby. The dog I first remember was Rover and it went everywhere with my father when he had the pony and trap. Once he walked to Blackhall Rocks thinking we were there. My mother liked the cat. It liked to be warm and

would sit anywhere near the fire. It was patient with me and let me dress it with dolls clothes.

My mother had some help in the house especially on Thursdays and wash days on Tuesday each fortnight. Jenny Ramshaw helped first and then her sister Annie. The family were slightly related to us I think. Their father was a very skilled blacksmith and made fire pokers, door stops, knockers etc. Thursday was a busy day, for my mother baked then and all the brass was cleaned and all the knives, forks and spoons. We had long lace curtains at the windows and they took much ironing. The lace was lovely, real lace. Many shirts were washed and ironed. My father wore stiff collars and fronts and I always wore an apron, white cotton and very pleated. All little girls did. My other wore a waist apron over her skirt. Looking back she wore blouses and skirts and not dresses. She had very stiff wired corsets, shaped exactly to the body. My father wore a morning suit to Chapel and when going visiting. He had very smart waistcoats and always wore a top hat for best and any old hat for the garden or when out with the cart. Stan used to burn one now and then.

Men with carts and horses came round the streets with all kinds of goods. There were at least two butchers, one from Coxhoe and one from Quarrington Hill. Fish was brought on a Monday from Hartlepool and my mother used buy a basin of fresh herring. She dressed so many, and I say her do so, so often that it is the only thing I can clean! Billy Cummings had a big cart and he brought fruit and vegetables. We ate a lot of fruit which came from the Empire, I expect. A man brought oil, pots and pans and oil lamps and I think he came from one of the Trimdons.

Kelloe was shaped like a wide brush, the handle being the two streets called the New Rows. The houses in South Cross Row were nearly all owner occupiers. 'The path at the front was narrow and always clean and each house had a garden. We walked this path on our way to the plantation and we loved to look through the windows and see the very nice ornaments - a cow, a dog, a hen and eggs. One woman, Mrs. Wilkinson, made lovely ginger pop, the proper kind that went off with a bang if you were not careful. There were many relatives in these houses. I think this street was the best in the village. As we went round the corner to the rows there were two Chapels, the very small one was a Welsh Chapel and by the time I was 5 it had closed. The other one was the Wesleyan Methodist Chapel not as big as ours and I always thought much more comfortable. It had a very nice pipe organ played by Joe Parry and the main families were called Smart and Burns. There was a big school room and a vestry. I never seemed to get in that Chapel and yet everybody in the village were friendly.

The men worked at the pit or at the quarry – Raisby Limestone Quarry. It was big then and we walked over it on a narrow path to get to Garmondsway. The path was safe but very steep and yet people walked it every day to school, to Church, Chapel and to the shops. The men who worked there from Kelloe were mostly Irish who had come from Southern Ireland. They were good Catholics who walked to their Church at West Cornforth, and drank much beer including some after coming from Church on Sundays. We had families who had come from Northern Ireland and they were miners and Protestants, mostly Chapel people. We had families with Welsh names. My father's family had come from Hetton and my mother's father from Northumberland. We seemed to have relatives in Berwick because of 'things' that had come from there, and my mother used to have salmon sent from there. Between the village and the pit was the old St. Helen's Church, built about 1150. As I got older, I went with others to the Church Sunday School in the afternoon. I had a very nice umbrella which was broken one afternoon and my mother was not pleased! As children we had very nice parasols in the summer.

I am often asked what impressed me most as a child, and it was the first car that came into the village, the big Ford Cheveralet belonging to Dr. Oliver. Our Doctor was called Brown, and it was some time before he got one.

There were seven public houses, each one at the end of a street or in the middle. The seven streets were shaped like a shovel with the New Row houses as the handle. There was a row of houses at the top near the Primitive Methodist Chapel and it was joined to the street going down. At the bottom was another row facing the street but not joined. On the east side was the main road into the village and there was a public house here and Mrs. Butler's very nice house and shop. We bought our sweets at the shop on the way to school which was on the main road too, and just below. I liked Fry's chocolate better than Cadbury's which was too sweet. Five Boys' chocolate with the picture of five boys was lovely. There were all kinds of sweets in bottles, jars and boxes and all had to be weighed. One half-penny was spent on the way to school. To get one penny was a fortune. A teacher, Miss Weir, Scottish, gave me a penny and it was still in the house, wrapped up well, when my, mother died in 1937.

My father had a very, very big book with good binding and this was the book he kept for the 'Box'. Every fourth Monday he went to the pub, the first one in the village, to get payments from the women for a sort of insurance. Last century there was little "death money" from insurance companies so many friendly societies were started locally and the 'Box' was the Kelloe one. Apparently, my father's uncle who had a drapery shop opposite the pub, started this one and when he died my father got the job since he I been brought up by the Hope family. When my father died my brother Tom had to take on the job. By then, all such friendly societies were government controlled. I remember £2.00 was given for the death of a child and £5.00 the death of a husband.

The managers of the public houses were really very much respected. To a child they seemed to be important men or women. Mrs. Arnold ran her house with perfection, very clean because of all the scrubbing that went on. She had much help as had all the others, and they all worked hard. Glasses were held up after being washed and dried. Mrs. Jennie Arnold's house was our nearest and I would be sent there for change. She often had money, and a lot, under the carpet. She sent her niece to a private school, and Violet indeed became a lady! (She was with me when I broke the umbrella). She had no 'common' friends in the village. Only the colliery manager's children were for her. Lamb's owned some of the pubs and so did a Newcastle brewery. Men drank a lot of beer so we were used to seeing beautiful horses and wagons bringing the great barrels of beer to the cellars of the pubs. The great well-made casks drifted clown the cellar steps. Looking after this beer was how a manager was judged. Mrs. Arnold was an expert, I have heard it said. There were only four shops, my grandfather Hope's, my uncle's (really a cousin of my father) big grocery shop, the post office, clothes, toys and some groceries. The owners along with the publicans were the elite of the village for we were all one class. We had few teachers, no collierv officials, ministers of the Churches etc. of any number in the village. The only teaching family were the Kirkpatricks. My father would have loved to have been ln business, but how could he with his relatives there? Anyhow, he made wills and wrote letters for other people, served at Chapel and at court, collected rates and rents etc. He loved to play the organ, harmonium and piano at home and at Chapel. He obviously could read music because he could sing all the new tunes we got each year for the Chapel anniversary.

We were safe to play all kinds of games and when it was 'block' the whole village was used. We all had hoops made at the pit and a sledge: also made at the pit. We used much chalk on the pavements for bays and everyone had a ‘tip-top’. We did skip and skip and the boys played marbles which were lovely pieces of glass. On a Saturday night we loved to walk past the houses to smell the lovely cooking on for supper. 'I'here would be basons of rabbit pie or meat pie. We did eat a lot of' meat, lamb, beef and pork and we had a fair amount of fish, f'resh. My father could very quickly take the skin off a rabbit or hare brought to the house under Mr. Allen’s coat. There were also mushrooms in the summer, again brought to the house. No-one ate a tame rabbit. We had little cake unless my aunt Margaret Jane sent some down. She was the cake maker. But my mother made fresh fruit pies and many were apple. We used a lot of milk for we were always, every day, having rice or tapioca puddings. Many eggs were used in cooking in sweet or savory dishes. Egg custards were very common. I like pastries better than cakes after all these years I can see why.

I think every house had this on a wall: "Christ is the head of this house. 'Ihe unseen guest at every meal. The silent listener to every conversation". We did not have many pictures. One was of a great battle of last century and one of the 'Monarch of the Glen'. We also had a deer's head in the passage. My mother could read very well and had a first copy of the 'Northern Echo'. She used to say she went to school near the Welsh Chapel and there she learned her a, b, c's, and where she had to pay. I never knew her write a letter, but she could write. Her father had had a school at Trimdon Grange and had a lot of Scott's books, and my mother knew a lot of Scott's poems - and so did I. “The way was long, the wind was cold" etc. Lord Whinn’s daughter and so on. I don't remember when I learned to read because at 5 I got scarlet fever and when I got back to school there was an awful teacher with a wig, and a big one, and shoes with rubber heels. Every Friday she gave us page out of a book and we had to read it on Mondav. If it got dirty we had to give her a penny. My father went to see her about it! After being ill I went to the new infants school for 6 months then back to the old one, now 7-14 years only. At 18 plus I went back to the same school as a pupil teacher for a year before going on to St. Hild's College, Durham. It was the happiest year of my life.

Because East Hetton Colliery, the pit, was one mile from Kelloe, we were not really in touch with it. We saw the miners, and there were many, go to work with picks and their cans and bait tins with water and food to be eaten down the pit or at bank. Many men took bread and jam sandwiches. We heard the buzzers blow four times a day because there were four shifts. One started at 3.00 a.m. for coal workers and we heard the 'knocker' at the right doors. There was a slate with a time on these doors. The blacksmiths, mechanics, etc., who worked above the mine went work at 6.00 a.m. They were knocked up at 5.30 a.m.The man who did the knocking up was a caller'.

I know three kinds of col, nuts and roundies. Every miner with a house got free coal. We bought ours and good coal it was. 'I'he roundies were for the sitting room fireplace. Miners often sold their coal to folk like us. Isaac Pratt lead the coal as long as I could remember. The coal went from the pit to Coxhoe Bridge Station, about 2 miles. Many of the officials lived in rather nice houses near the pit and if I went there with my parents to visit friends we walked 'up the line'. I learned my 3 and 9 times table by adding up the numbers on each coal truck us they went past. We always had a Canon at Kelloe Church and he had a good salary because the coal went past Church land and so the Church was well paid for the privilege.

Bricks were made at the pit and many were used on the houses belonging to Sir Walter Scott who owned East Hetton and Trimdon Grange collieries. Lime seemed to be used to put the bricks together. There was always lime about somewhere. It was the plaster for everything. I)urham Big Meeting was a great event then. They marched past our street, Green Street, about 7.00 a.m. because they all had to go to Quarrirrgton Hill too and then walk to Durham for the meetings.

Between the wars when coal became nationalised down came the whole of the village and up went a council house village at the other side of the hill. Those in their own houses had to go to council houses too and in these they got bathrooms and toilets that we never had. We used big dishes and a miner washed at home every day. Looking back, it was the supply of water and electricity that were great events in our lives. My father was also clerk to the parish council and was much involved in all this modernisation'. Both parents died in the old pit village so I never got to a new council house.

It was indeed a pit village for there were few families who did not have men working there.

1) Tunstalls, father, policeman - 3 girls and 1 son and all became teachers.

2) The Public house families - 6.

3) The business families-- 4.

Aunt Emily Kirkpatrick's husband was John and he was headmaster of the school and their only child Billy became doctor. Of our family ,two trained at the pit, Jim who went to Newcastle to work at Armstrong's during the Great War and Stanley went off to play football while Tom and I became teachers. Another Kirkpatrick family, related, had teachers too. So my childhood was in a pit village that had no class distinction.

February 1986. I have lived through years of much change. Cars and aeroplanes are the mode of travel. The Americans have sent men to the moon. Secondary education is for all. Operations for new hearts and kidneys are common. Penicillin made all kinds of drugs possible. There have been two wars and in the second war “the bomb" was used and is here to stay. Radio and television almost rule our lives, re-entertainment. There many satallites and astronauts in the heavens. A great period.

Isabella Alice Embleton (nee Seymour).