The following pages are tales of my childhood and early adolescence, when living on a council estate in a Tyneside town during the 1950s and 1960s. They are fragments of my memories of those years but, quite possibly, they will also be part of the collective memory of other working class children of that era.
The tales are true in intent and false by mine and others' actions. In these tales I was determined from the outset to tell the truth. There are problems with this, however. First, my own memory of childhood and adolescent events, their order and importance may, in the intervening years, have played tricks on me. Also, some of the events have been re-told and re-interpreted by others and unconsciously absorbed over the years; this too may have created some unintentional falsehoods. Then, to protect both the innocent and the wicked from embarrassment, I have changed most people's names and, in re-naming them, perhaps (in some instances) I have strengthened and possibly exaggerated my memory of certain of their characteristics. I have, hopefully without too much distortion, tried to enhance the dramatic effect of a tale - but some untruths will inevitably have crept into the drama.
The ultimate test of the truth of these tales, as my own memory of my childhood, came years later, when I was a young man with a family of my own. However, I'm racing ahead here so, if you're sitting comfortably,
The tales are true in intent and false by mine and others' actions. In these tales I was determined from the outset to tell the truth. There are problems with this, however. First, my own memory of childhood and adolescent events, their order and importance may, in the intervening years, have played tricks on me. Also, some of the events have been re-told and re-interpreted by others and unconsciously absorbed over the years; this too may have created some unintentional falsehoods. Then, to protect both the innocent and the wicked from embarrassment, I have changed most people's names and, in re-naming them, perhaps (in some instances) I have strengthened and possibly exaggerated my memory of certain of their characteristics. I have, hopefully without too much distortion, tried to enhance the dramatic effect of a tale - but some untruths will inevitably have crept into the drama.
The ultimate test of the truth of these tales, as my own memory of my childhood, came years later, when I was a young man with a family of my own. However, I'm racing ahead here so, if you're sitting comfortably,
.....let us begin.....
From the early 1950s to 1970, I lived on the Cleadon Park council estate in South Shields. I could be geographically precise and give you the latitude and longitude co-ordinates of my house. This would be a waste of your time, however, because if you pinpointed its location and even considered a visit, it's long gone, demolished in 2008. Suffice to say that my house was in the middle of my street.
South Shields: A Quick History
There is some evidence to suggest that Celtic tribes and later the Brigantes may have lived in the vicinity (a fossilised stick of seaside candy rock with the Celtic place name ‘Caer Urfa’ stamped all the way through it is in the British Museum). However, the strategic importance of the area was recognised by the Romans, who built a fort and supply base, Arbeia, in AD 160 on the high ground, now called the Lawe Top, overlooking the mouth of the river, and later enlarged it to supply their troops along Hadrian’s Wall. Incidentally, the Celtic name ‘Caer Urfa’ accounts for the town’s vehicle registration plates being lettered ‘CU’, and the Celtic heritage is further reflected in the proliferation of customised number plates, such as 'CU J1 M1'.
Nothing much happened in the area for a few hundred years after the Romans left Britain, if you discount the Anglo Saxon invasion, Saints Aidan, Cuthbert and Bede, the Kingdom of Northumbria, Viking raiders and the Norman Conquest. The town of South Shields was founded in 1245 and developed as a fishing port. Another few hundred years elapsed before coal mining caused a population boom in the 1800s, rising from 12,000 in 1801 to 75,000 by the 1860s. Also, in the 1850s, shipbuilding became a major industry along the Tyne. The population growth caused sanitation problems in the town, which led to the building of the Cleadon water tower (or ‘Cleadon Chimney’ as it was locally known) and reservoir in the Victorian era. I guess that the sanitation problems, along with the effluent from the shipyards and heavy industry along the River Tyne, also severely prevented South Shields developing earlier as a popular seaside resort, and accounted for those odd pictures of parties of over-dressed Victorians paddling in the sea clad in wellington boots. 
Entrance to the River Tyne is gained between the north pier at Tynemouth and the south pier at South Shields. In between the two is a little pier and mini red lighthouse, the aptly named but quaintly spelt 'The Groyne' (you can see it in the seaside poster top right). 'The Groyne' marks where the south bank of the river ends and South Shields beach begins and its purpose is to protect the harbour beach, or the 'North Foreshore' as the locals call it, which I suppose is useful to holiday makers and seamen alike.
Since 1974, South Shields has been part of the metropolitan borough of South Tyneside, which includes the riverside towns of Jarrow and Hebburn and the villages of Cleadon, Boldon (East and West), Boldon Colliery and Whitburn. However, it was not joined to these other areas when I was a kid, and the pinched nature of its geography meant that, as it historically developed, especially in the twentieth century, it could only really do so along its narrow eastern coastline and, more significantly, along its southern frontier, where the large ‘social housing’ estates at Marsden, Horsley Hill, Cleadon Park, Whiteleas, Biddick Hall, Simonside and Brockley Whins were built, from the 1920s through to the 1960s.
'Homes Fit for Heroes'
In response both to the widespread alarm caused by so many volunteers in the First World War being declared unfit to fight due to appalling living conditions and sanitation problems, and also to the social unrest, strikes, mutinies and the rise of the new Labour Party after the war, a campaign was launched to provide ‘Homes Fit for Heroes’. This resulted in the Housing & Town Planning Act of 1919, which for the first time placed a specific duty on local councils to provide homes for working class families.
In 1920, Cleadon Park Estate became the first planned, mainly social housing estate in South Shields. It consisted of 950 family homes, two thirds of which were owned by the council. It was built on farmland and, when I was a kid, a short walk would take me to the farmers’ fields, which stretched from the southern edge of the estate towards and beyond Cleadon Village on the road to Sunderland and eastwards from Cleadon Village to Whitburn Village, on the coast.
The estate was in two halves; the west side, on which I lived, and the east side.
Most of the streets were named after trees. The two halves were separated by the
road to Sunderland, cunningly named ‘Sunderland Road’.During the late 1960s and
1970s, when I was in my late teens, our side of the estate became notorious for
high crime rates, vandalism and what has latterly become known as ‘anti- social
behaviour’. This was almost wholly due to the council’s policy of ‘dumping’
problem families from around the town into our neighbourhood, particularly into
my street, thereby creating, over time, an unwanted crime ghetto.
Most of the streets were named after trees. The two halves were separated by the
road to Sunderland, cunningly named ‘Sunderland Road’.During the late 1960s and
1970s, when I was in my late teens, our side of the estate became notorious for
high crime rates, vandalism and what has latterly become known as ‘anti- social
behaviour’. This was almost wholly due to the council’s policy of ‘dumping’
problem families from around the town into our neighbourhood, particularly into
my street, thereby creating, over time, an unwanted crime ghetto.
Our House in the Middle of Our Street
The houses in my street were either semi-detached, that is in blocks of two, or, like
mine, in blocks of four. My house was an ‘end terrace’. It had a small front garden
and a larger back garden. It had three bedrooms upstairs. Mam’s bedroom was the
large one at the front; my brother, Tom, and I each had our own bedroom at the
rear. My bedroom and Mam’s had coal fireplaces, although these were
seldom used, except when Tom and I both caught (at different times) chickenpox
and measles. There was an airing cupboard outside my room and Mam’s and
Tom’s rooms had built-in clothes cupboards.
mine, in blocks of four. My house was an ‘end terrace’. It had a small front garden
and a larger back garden. It had three bedrooms upstairs. Mam’s bedroom was the
large one at the front; my brother, Tom, and I each had our own bedroom at the
rear. My bedroom and Mam’s had coal fireplaces, although these were
seldom used, except when Tom and I both caught (at different times) chickenpox
and measles. There was an airing cupboard outside my room and Mam’s and
Tom’s rooms had built-in clothes cupboards.
Downstairs were the ‘front room’ (the living room), the kitchen and the combined bathroom and toilet. This was a new and welcome innovation in the design of working class homes, where a trip to the outside toilet (or voyage privé as the smart set now call it) had hitherto been the chilling norm. There was an under stairs space where we kept the ‘poss tub’ and the dirty laundry to be washed. The house was built with a fire, back boiler and a black cooking range in the living room, but the range was taken out when I was small and replaced by a beige, tiled fireplace. The fire was always made up and lit every morning, as it was the way we could heat up the back boiler for our hot water, until we had an immersion heater installed when I was in my teens. We had no central heating.
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| The Coalmen |
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| The Palladium Picture House, The Nook |
The kitchen had a huge and deep stone sink underneath the window, with an always-scrubbed wooden work surface. We had a black, long, low galley stove which heated the room but which belched out smoke and soot and blackened the walls and ceiling. Eventually, during my childhood, Mam had it removed. We didn’t have a fridge but a door from the kitchen led to the pantry, which was usefully cold and where our food was stored. Another door from the kitchen, adjacent to the pantry door was, rather unhygienically, the coalhouse door. The coal was loaded into the coalhouse hatch from outside the house and wooden boards held it in place from tumbling into the kitchen. Even more unhygienically, the coalhouse door was left open at night time to double up as the cat’s toilet. We always had to be careful of what we shovelled onto the fire and into the stove!
Our half of the estate was laid out so that there were a number of large, rectangular grassed areas between the back gardens of the surrounding streets, with at least one means of common entry and exit. Most of these ‘back fields’ were badly maintained and used as dumping grounds, mostly for garden refuse. Ours was too, but less so than the others and, as the council only cut the grass once a year, we could play all sorts of games by hiding in the long grass. The older teenagers played their games here too, but not the sort we did. In the 1970s, after we had moved from the estate, the council tarmaced over these areas, I was told, and built garages.
Park Avenue marked the mid-point of our side of the estate. At one end was our school, Cleadon Park Junior Mixed & Infants. Also, the only public telephone box on our side of the estate and, for some reason (other than the obvious one), an underground ladies and gents toilet. At the other end of Park Avenue was the parade of shops that catered for most families’ immediate needs: hairdresser, wool and knitwear, newsagent, grocer, greengrocer, general dealer, butcher, fish and chips, cobbler and sweet shop. The largest local shopping area was (and still is) at Harton Nook (‘The Nook’), which stretched along the whole northern length of both the east and west sides of the estate, along Prince Edward Road. This was where ‘The Palladium’ picture house was situated
and also the location of the Cleadon Park Branch Library and our doctor’s surgery. It was also where there was a newsagent where I bought my sweets when, in 1963, I started at the Grammar School. My favourites were sports mixture, four for an old penny. Sometimes I liked to buy a bag of chocolate éclairs but these gave me bellyache if I ate too many or ‘pain au chocolat’ as our astute Gallic cousins would say.
On the western border of our estate were the Temple Park playing fields. These were used extensively at weekends by local football leagues, and they had two ancient, crumbling wooden P.O.W. type huts for the teams to change in. In between times, we kids used to play football and cricket here undisturbed. At the farthest end of the playing fields, where the pitches met waste ground, was a marshy area noted for frogs, frogs’ spawn and tadpoles. We simply called it ‘The Bog’.
At one end of Temple Park was the wooden structure of St Cuthbert’s Church (the second, more substantial building which replaced it was built at the top of Quarry Lane on the eastern side of the estate). Nearby, and related to the church, was the scout hut, which also housed the cubs. I pestered Mam for ages to buy me the uniform so that I could join the cubs. She saved assiduously for this but, soon after I gratefully received this and joined the ‘Wolf Pack’, I was doubly disappointed. First, because the green jumper itched like hell, even through my shirt (these things bothered me!). Secondly, within weeks of my joining, the scout hut burned down, the Pack was disbanded and, well… cast to the wolves. The only two activities I can remember participating in were a game of 'rounders' and painting eggs for Easter. I was useless at both.
At the other end of Temple Park, or more correctly underneath a large part of it including the decrepit changing huts, was an underground nuclear shelter. Allegedly equipped with kitchens, meeting rooms, accommodation and so on, it was supposed to allow the town’s worthies, other VIPs and, no doubt, the military, to sit out a nuclear attack (and the subsequent fallout) and emerge – to what? Besides the obvious questions such as ‘What about the rest of us?’ and ‘Who gets to populate the town afterwards?’ the civil defence planners missed the main point that, in the event of a four minute warning of a nuclear attack, hardly any of the intended people earmarked for saving would have time to reach the shelter on the outskirts of the town.
It was a scourge of another sort that overtook the residents of my estate, however. During my later childhood, the local council created a massive rubbish tip on top of Temple Park playing fields and adjoining land. For many years, as the estate deteriorated socially, it quite literally began to stink from the flyblown and seagull infested acres of many thousands of tons of rotting household waste, especially in the summer when the warm winds came from the west. I can’t recall whether they preserved the nuclear shelter beneath the rubbish tip or not but, if they did and we had come to the brink of a nuclear war, I bet there would have been some coin flipping by the town’s chosen elite about whether to face Armageddon or be buried under the tip.
Finally, in the way of scene setting, my childhood world was completed by Cleadon Park (an actual park), Cleadon Hills and the trek to the seaside at Marsden Bay. All these could be reached by a long trudge up the steep bank of Quarry Lane. Unfortunately, Mam forbade me from making this trip unsupervised and I must have been the only kid in the street not to have gone galloping off there during the summer holidays. However, once I graduated from the junior school, I practically lived up there, as you will see in due course.
