Redcar, Cleveland

Remembering Marske By The Sea

We came to Marske in August 1948 having just demobbed from the Army 9 weeks earlier, we purchased a shop at 221 High St selling groceries, rations, ice cream etc. Our daughter was just 5 weeks old and was baptized in St Germain Church, our son Peter went to school in the Old Tithe Barn, Mrs Buttery was the teacher. Mr Skippon ran the Pictures with 5 changes a week, each show had 2 features, a cartoon & news reel, he also ran the taxi business. Mrs Sanders worked hard for the British Legion [women's section]. Jack Lynch did a lot of work for us, he replaced the garden in front of the shop and made a concrete pad in front, & cement-faced the front wall, and also removed a wall inside the shop to make it bigger. Frank Carter was a very good friend to us, also Jean his daughter. Frank helped me a lot a & nothing was too much for him, we had pigs at the bottom of the garden and Frank would come & feed them while we were at the wholesalers, we had a cottage at the back of the shop and he helped me take out the wall under the window and  pour a foundation under it and rebuild the wall, then we dug out the floor in the living room & poured a concrete floor. Jack Lynch rebuilt the chimney in the cottage. We had wonderful customers and enjoyed meeting them each day. The fishermen, the Lynches, Andersons & the Coopes along with Mr Downs [who was the owner of the Ship inn] all had boats down by the beach, and often brought their crab catch and put them down on our shop front where people bought them for about 9 pence  each.
We moved to Domanstown in 1955 when my wife had a nervous breakdown, we sold the  shop to my mother and she sold it in 1956 when she moved back to Lancashire. We really enjoyed living and working in Marske and often reminise the good old days we lived there.
We have been back to England many times over the years and been back to Marske a few times and have seen many changes.
Trevor Williams.

This is my Grandma's house

The house on the left with the four attics was my Grandma's house.  I have lots of fond memories of this house. I even had my own bedroom! Mine was the second attic from the left and it enjoyed a beautiful view of the gardens below. Grandma used to run a bed and breakfast, with also some long term boarders. I can remember helping to get the breakfast ready and putting it in the dumb waiter and running up the stairs and putting it by the door!! It was my job too to set the big dining table and call the guests for breakfast or tea.  In the late afternoon we would retire to the cosy room and sit by the fire with the cuckoo clock ticking away the cold winter days!! I was just a girl then and this was my favorite place to come and was always coming in through the front door. I'd do anything to be there even if it meant helping my Gran with the chores. It was the last place I stayed in before we left England and came to Australia. Grandma kept the house for many years until it became too much for her. She turned it into two flats, one above and one below and sold the bottom one and moved to Spain Hill just down the road into a smaller house.