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.

 

Page 7