Summerhill Blaydon

A Memory of Blaydon.

I was born in Gas Lane, Blaydon in a house on the banks of the Tyne, next to the Black Bull Pub. I spent the first five years of my life on our small-holding on Summerhill, where we had chickens, horses and pigs. I have happy memories of playing by the burn and climbing through the derelict Summerhouse tower. I remember the miners passing the back of our house in the early hours of the morning. I have a distant memory of once seeing 'little people' down by the mill. They were quite oddly dressed and I was frightened. I remember a large house over the back of us, owned by the Robinsons. I recall an uncle was killed up at the sand pits when a pit collapsed in on him. The view from the top of the hill accross the Tyne was literally all countryside -no industry and no houses. In 1936, my father moved to London for work, taking me and my elder sister and brother with him - it was quite a shock. My mother stayed at the small-holding with my younger brothers, but did eventually move down with us. We returned to Blaydon because of the blitz, but then returned to London as that was where the work was. Our house on Summerhill fell in to disrepair and over the years the bricks gradually disappeared. I returned 20 years ago and a sub station had been built on our land. I returned again in 2012, the substation had gone and the dip where our animals once lived is wildly overgrown but the whole area has become a nature reserve.

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