Memories Of Thornley

A Memory of Thornley.

Having read Kenneth Ortons' memories, it brought back visions in my mind of the good times growing up in the loveliest little village I know. When I was born in 1947 my mam and dad lived with my grandma at 60 Thornlaw North so there is a chance that me and Ken may have grown up playing football and cricket in the street together. I do remember the mountain glide to this day I have never seen one as high as the one in Thornley, I wonder if it is still there, or have the Health and Safety idiots taken it down! We lived with my nan for about two years I think, then we moved into one of the new steel house that had just been built in Hillside Crescent, we moved into number 19 and it's garden backed onto my nan's old house. All the kids used to roam the fields, nobody would chase you off because you never damaged anything, we all respected property when we were kids. I do remember the long summer Sunday afternoons playing in the old pit shunting yards, can't do that now, and sometimes all the families would meet in the field at the top of the village and play cricket, there were dozens of people there.
My uncle Gordon used to drive the buses for G & B (the cream and brown buses) if he was driving the day I went out I would get a free ride up to Wheatley Hill to visit my other nan then meet up with some pals and try and sneak into the matinee to watch 'Robin Hood'. I also recall the big posh red pedal car owned and driven by the doctor's son in Thornley, he was the envy of every lad that saw him, I wonder how many people remember that. A few of us would go off over the line to the gassie gutter and fish for tiddlers never got any but did catch lots of frogs and newts, Mam would shout at me when I took them home in my jam jar. I passed through the village about three years ago on my way to visit my Aunty at Peterlee and I almost wept because of the way they are pulling the village apart, I think they call it progress. I must stop and look to see if the dog track is still there, down by the Halfway House, my grandad helped build that track many moons ago.

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