My Dad, George (Geordie) Holmes inspired my interest in stories and quotes about the place I live. He would tell tales of Northbourne Street in Elswick. I could see it and practically relive it. Tales of Horse and Carts in the snowy winter months sliding down the Whinstone sett streets running steeply down to the Tyne, toward the Vicker’s factory and Scotswood Road. The horses with their leg splayed trying to resist the force of the cart gathering speed and sliding into an inevitable disaster when it met another form of transport crossing it’s path. The cart driver and kids running downhill after the runaway cart and horse. Tales of a large family and fox terriers’ – ‘ratters’ as my Dad would call them. Tales of hard men and harder Policeman (the local Bobby). His own brother Matty, a Barrow Boy, would keep his boxing kit under the barrow waiting for a call to fight at St James Hall. Once called up, left in the morning for a day’s travel to Bishop Auckland. It was a championship qualifier, but a contender had taken ill. Matty was drafted in to make up the bill. Needless to say, he went on to win the fight but of course not to go on to fight for the championship.
Nothing in the pdf document is my opinion, they are a collection of notes that have interested me during my study of local history and that I simply repeat.
Alan Holmes DipSurv, MRICS Chartered Building Surveyor. Novocastrian
