Below is Colin Hyde’s written history of his recollection of living in Egglescliffe. You can follow what he says in his oral history by simply by clicking above and sitting back and enjoying what he says.
Colin Hyde was interviewed by Ian Reynolds on 3rdOctober 2017.
I was born in November 1948 in 28 Britannia Street, Thornaby, which was my mam’s oldest sister’s house. I moved straight up here after I was born and lived in 1 Wells Cottages (or Pump Row, as people know it) then started the Village school when I was five. I had a sister who was born here but unfortunately she died when she was six months old. I grew up with four lads in the village, all around the same age and we all went to school together. They were David Hardy, Lesley Raper, Phillip Binch and Stuart Seymour. David Hardy stayed in the village because his mam got the Village Post Office off Sally Doughty and her sister, so Jean Hardy got that and ran it as the Post Office and the shop. We were great mates and he was my best man, David Hardy. Stuart Seymour and Lesley Raper moved to Preston when the council houses were built. Stuart died early this year, 68 year old, but I lost touch with him when I got married. Lesley Raper I still see because he married my cousin. We both served our time together as joiners at Hills in Norton Road, Stockton. Philip Binch’s uncle was Lenny Binch of Binch’s Nurseries. Philip worked as a fitter with my dad and was killed. We all played together in the fields, it was great. It was our playground, down the river.
The house was a one-up, one-down. It belonged to Mrs Smith. There was three of us in it – me, me mam and me dad. My father converted part of the upstairs into a small bedroom for me – put a small window in the T-fold. No bathroom, just a tin bath outside, which was a Saturday night job in front of the fire. Then he built a corrugated sheet lean-to on the back and put a bath in there and we got a gas boiler with a gas pipe that plugged in just near the stairs to boil the water. It was very cold in the winter, obviously. The toilet was still outside, which was not much fun in the winter – you don’t want to go! It was a flushing toilet in a wooden box, lead lined. We had to put a car sump heater in there to keep the water from freezing. The coal house was out the back as well. At the side we had a chicken run and used to get the day-old chicks, some for eggs and some for fattening up for Christmas.
Upstairs there was a cubby hole over the top of the passageway where we kept all the junk. The gas cooker was at the bottom of the stairs and beside that there was a door to a little room, 6 by 3 mebbies, with a Belfast sink in and an Ascot wall heater on the wall for hot water, and a table and a cupboard to put the food in. We didn’t have no fridge or anything – there was a stone slab for putting the butter and stuff on and that was it. Then the front room with the fireplace me mother used to black-lead every morning before she lit it. Everybody had coal fires. Alec Bretherton was the coalman. The coal yard was up where the new Village school is. The old building was knocked down for the school.
My dad didn’t work on the farm, he worked for Tarmac until he retired, then he got a job doing the garden for Mrs Smith, part time. He had an allotment up the Village Farm, and the veg, ‘taties etc, used to keep us going all year. Me mam worked in the farmhouse doing the cleaning, washing up, what have you. I used to go round there after school when I was eight, ten year old, helping feed up. I liked doing that but there wasn’t any money in it. My Uncle Jim was a cowman on the farm and taught me to drive a tractor when I was ten. Luke Marshall was a ploughman and showed us how to do ploughing. Johnny was away at College mostly, cos he is an agricultural engineer. David was mostly on the farm so I helped him. We used to go to point-to-points, walk the horses around the parade ring. I went over at weekends to help out. I just liked doing it. Even taking cows to the slaughterhouse – it’s just what you do.
In number two or three Wells Cottages (depending how you work it out) Willy Raby and his wife lived, and they were ancient! His was also one-up, one-down. The stairs were like a ladder, really steep. You wouldn’t get past Building Regs now, no way! It had a lean-to kitchen on the back and he used to sit by the fire, smoking his pipe and telling us stories about when he was ploughing with horses when he was ten year old. He was eighty six or seven when he died in 1964 and that’s when we got the two houses knocked into one.
May Fenney lived in the end house and Ralphy Smith in the next one with his mother. Then there was Saddlers, two sisters, the old dears. We knew everybody in the Village. Rene Marshall lived out the back in the Avenue; she was the one that laid everybody out when they died. Down the corner was Dick Smith and his wife and Tommy Whittaker next door – they both worked at the Skin Yard down Yarm and when you walked past their house – whoo! It wasn’t that the house was dirty, it was on their clothes when they came home was all.
At school (which is the Village Hall now) there was about 50 in the class and only three classrooms. Mr Jackson was the Headmaster and his wife was a teacher and somebody else that I can’t remember. The Vicar was Reverend Nelson and I went to school with his son, David. When we left school after the 11 plus he went to Ecclesiastical School. But I failed the 11 plus and ended up at Preston instead of Stockton Grammar. Then I ended up at Egglescliffe Secondary Modern when they built that in 1964. Lesley Raper went to school with me right from the beginning. Philip Binchy went to the Catholic School. Stuart passed the 11 plus and went to Grangefield Grammar.
Bonfire Night was awesome! We used to collect all the stuff for the bonfire. People left it out and we picked it up, branches, trees, a piano, anything. My Auntie Mary used to do the toffee apples. It was always crowded. We used to go sledging at Stoney Bank, which made it awkward for people walking up, I suppose! Or Swailsey’s field next to it, where the Pillbox is, we went sledging in there. And we used to go orchard-raiding. I could get fruit anytime – Smith’s didn’t mind and I could go anywhere on the farm. But it’s not the same if you’re not pinching them! Behind the silage pit was Wilson’s orchard full of goosegog bushes and fruit trees so we used to go and pinch them.
There were just a few cars in the Village. They used to deliver the milk with a horse and cart. Ethel the milk girl. She’d come with a milk churn and we used to get it in a jug. There are probably still some milk bottles at the farm with A.S. Smith on. My Uncle Jim used to do the milking. He and Auntie Mary lived in Old Hall. Jimmy Wallinger was his name. Aunty Mary was my mam’s cousin. She was a Gardener. They moved out of Old Hall up into Village Farm. May Harmond used to live in Village Farm before that. My Auntie Mary used to take lodgers in and there were loads of bedrooms in Village Farm so she had about five paying lodgers in there. People who stopped there all the time. She made that much money out of it they bought the cottage on Rose Terrace (number 2) when he retired and knocked the back down to put an extension on the back with another bedroom, a kitchen and a toilet in, cos their toilet was at the bottom of the yard.
Somebody called Tommy moved into Old Hall with his family, about eight of them. Then when he retired they moved out and it was empty until we moved in in 1964 while we got our two cottages knocked into one. We were the last people living there. It was a big, cold place with walls that thick. There was two rooms downstairs with only a small front door to get in. Passageway, stairs, room to your left and a massive room in front of you with a fire in. A larder at the back with a big, stone slab, marble or whatever, which was the fridge. Then out the back, attached to the byre, was the kitchen and the bath was right at the back of the kitchen and the toilet was in the corner. In the kitchen! And the bath doubled-up with a board on the top as the kitchen table! The milking parlour was behind that but they’ve knocked all the stalls down and we have horses in there now. Because the cow byre was behind the house I think it was classed as inhabitable for this day and age. The field at the back was called the Garth and the orchard was next to it.
Sally Doughty had the Post Office and shop when I first moved here. It was the second one in on West Row. When Jean packed the Post office in someone else took it over and moved it to the first big white house after the cottages. Then it just stopped.
Lenny Binch and his wife lived in the house on the corner. Binch’s Nurseries. My friend Philip’s dad was Lenny’s brother or nephew. They lived in the two cottages. Redfern married Binchy’s daughter and ran it when Lenny and his wife retired. They lived in the two houses down the side of Village Farm. All the land there was greenhouses. We used to go down there to buy our veg. There was a little shop on it, and one in Yarm and one in Stockton.
Jacky Marshall had an allotment with pigs on towards the Pot & Glass. He used to come round everybody’s house getting all the leftovers for pigswill.
Mrs Harrison lived out the back here in Eastbourne Avenue and her son, Neil, used to sit on the toilet playing his bagpipes!
My wife loves the Village. The first time she stopped here was when we were courting. My mam used to open every window at half past seven, winter or summer. Of course the muck heap was where they have the silage now and my wife said ‘how do you stand that? It stinks!’. It never bothered us, we were used to it. A simple, farmyard-y thing. We would have bought a house in the Village if we could afford it but there was no way, not on £28 a week.