Gosforth, High Street 1956

Growing up in Gosforth 1960-1980

I am young enough to remember Gosforth as a thriving High Street and as a boy buying models from Boydells and my first singles from Woolworths, getting the 45 back and forth with my older brother to go to school too - we were 7 and 8. Witnessing the carnage as traffic volumes and lack of parking killed off many of the shops which became building societies, estate agents and shops full of bric-a-brac. After two decades of traffic congestion I believe the High Street is once again becoming a focal point for the community. At the top of this shot in the rain I shunted my mum's brown Mini into the back of a VW Beetle on my first 'accident.' I'd been driving for less than a year. At the age of 8 or so I narrowly escaped being flattend by a white Rover whilst cycling across a junction after the lights had changed. I'm still here!

St Vincents orphanage - re Henry Ritchies memory

My father (same name) was there between 1933-41 and also has many memories. Talk to him if you are able to start his memory cells. e mail:     norman.phillipson@talktalk.net

ON BEING A CINEMA MANAGER!!

Having written the last article on Children’s Matinees so many memories flitted through my brain, so I had to write them down! And no doubt I shall add to them over the weeks.

Going back to the old Corona at Felling, I just remembered that I was very young fresh out of the Navy and full of my own importance! And didn’t know anything! My first day there was hard to forget, I went into the stalls and walked down towards the stage and this cleaner called Annie came out of the toilet she had been cleaning and shouted at me to get off her still wet mopped floor down the isle she came running at me waving her dirty wet mop at me and I shouted “But I am the manager!” “So what?” she shouted back. So I got out of there quickly back to my tatty little office and hid till she had gone! Good start to my first day! That evening standing on the front of house steps with the doorman (who was an ex policeman and very big with it!!) in the late evening sun I told him that I wanted the house lights to come up when the intervals were on. So off he went muttering to himself, and from then on for over two weeks the audience dropped of to a trickle.

One night I was bemoaning the fact that there was no one in the hall and he said “Well you silly b-----r! It’s all your fault!” “Why?” I asked “Well no b-----r comes here with his own wife! And they don’t want to be lit up by you!! So put the lights out!” and I did and within a week we were back to packed houses!

I was told to put the ‘house full’ and ‘queue here’ signs out on the pavement if we were empty inside and we would get a good second house!

I was told to always put the heating up high 20 minutes before the ice cream girls went out to sell, now that could double your sales!!! The other thing was that if it was a children’s show you put lollies and cheep choc bars on the trays. The same applied to sweets! Children wanted gob stoppers and wine gums and so on If it was a posh show or film then it would be exotic tubs and Parfaits.

OFF TO SCHOOL I GO!!

It’s so strange that you can remember so many things from early childhood, all those years ago! And it still feels clear as if it was yesterday and they bubble up into your brain after lying there undisturbed in the pits of time with no effort from you..,such as finding a jar of Pond’s Vanishing Cream on the dressing table in Mother's bedroom and thinking, ok I will try it out! Stripping off and spreading it all over my little body and going downstairs and opened the door to the lounge very quietly and going in, Mother and her friends were playing Bridge and me being invisible I knew they could not see me, so why are they laughing? After being frog marched out of the room, smacked and scrubbed down, I was told that it was NOT that sought of cream! Was I really that silly?
When I was five Mother burnt my Teddy Bear on the fire and packed me and my trunk off to boarding school. It must have been something to do with me wanting to go off into the Royal Navy and fight the Germans! I only went home twice in all those years ...

Dad owned 36 cinemas and 5 theatres in the north of England, he was also head of Forces entertainment in the war years, a body called ENSA. My God Mother was Gracie Fields, I am told that I peed on her lap when a baby (what a start to life!!, if you read my blog you will see how I got started in Pantomime! (like father like son). Mother was a very strange person, she used to wash all her money and hang it up to dry in the bathroom! And she carried with her always a little scent spray bottle BUT it was filled with Dettol! And she would spray the seat in the car before she would get into it and also did that with the tram or train seats! And God could she drink sherry! That's why I never came home at holiday time, as I must have got in the way of her drinking habit. Dad left her quite early on. They had met on the stage in Sir Charles Froman's production of 'Are You A Mason', he had the main part of Amos Bloodgood and she was in the chorus and thier eyes locked as he went one way across the bridge as she and the chorus went across the other way. Very strange to say but she liked to lock me in the coal shed! So boarding school became a way of life! But thats another story...

THE PASSING OF A GRAND OLD THEATRE

The old Grand Theatre at Byker, Newcastle upon Tyne was one of well over 65 theatres and cinemas in the city in the heyday of entertainment.

Kenneth More in repertory, Winifred Atwell playing her first date in England, Bobby Thompson and the Merry Magpies, The Tattler Girls, many many Pantomimes, Revues and Variety Shows, Musical Comedy, the list could go on for ever of those who tread the boards of the Grand!

I grew up in the place! I was often told that I caused many BAD moments as a child! (Read my blog!) My dad ran the place and I was there at the end of its days as a very young House Manager together with my cousin Steve and Babs Davidson with Patrick Dowling’s Repertory Company's production of ‘Night Must Fall’.

Having signed a great many ‘last tickets’ the evening came to an end and we stood at the footlights and said farewell to the audience of 62 old folk, three of them having helped to build the theatre all those years ago. Smoky the theatre cat came down to the footlights and gazed up at the rows of dark empty seats for the last time ... as Patrick Dowling said to the audience “As night must fall on our play so it must also fall on this wonderful old theatre” and looking at Smoky sitting on a footlight and gazing at the rows of seats he muttered that “Even the cat knows it is the end”. By now there was not a dry eye in the house and it had to be the worst night of my life. If you have never had to close a living theatre you could never imagine how it hurts. The following morning I stood on the empty stage with only the cleaner’s lights on and watched the seats being stripped out to go to yet another Bingo Hall. I stayed for a long time just listening to the ghosts stirring in the cold shadows.

NB. As there was the Viaduct Pub over the road and a fishcake factory behind the theatre I would like to think that Smoky lived well after we had all gone. (No, she was not prepared to be caught, try as we did!).

Has anyone got a good photo of the theatre?