The War Years In Consett

A Memory of Consett.

I was born in Consett at 11 Newmarket Street in June 1933, though my parents were living in Norfolk and later on in Middlesex. I was sent back to live with aunts when the Blitz really got going.

I went to the CofE Primary School at the back of the church which I also had to attend as a choir boy.

Consett was full of noise in those days especially outside No.11. Buses started their long climb up from Shotley Bridge, nestling down in the Northumbrian Derwent Valley. Halting in Blackhill to get their breath back, before starting the last climb up the near vertical steep incline, they arrived at Vaux's Pub opposite my bedroom window, with engines panting, shuddering, and gasping with relief at having reached the summit. Then, with a final sigh they drove on again, on the last few hundred yards to the bus station, by the market square.

One of my best friends was Ronnie Maddison who tragically died in 1953 while serving in the RAF and having volunteered for the notorious Porton Down guinea pig scheme. Our adventures took us in many directions, out past Tempeltown where some of my cousins lived, or down the road towards Moorside and past the Works.

The Steel Works dominated Consett. With the Works, there was all the noise and clatter of steam engines shunting their precious loads of coal into the inferno. Larger and more powerful locomotives steamed out of the Town with Consett Steel. It seemed that there were engines everywhere, and we had to be careful on some roads that crossed the many rail lines.

On our way down Front Street, the smoke laden emission from a battery of tall chimneys darkened the view ahead, overpowering the white clouds of steam that rose from the great high and wide Cooling Towers. A touch of pungent yellow smoke from some unseen source often puffed its way into the toxic brew, adding a final touch to the perpetual deadly and devilish fumes.

Evidence of its lethal aftermath lay all around. There was little enough space anywhere within the Town's close compacted houses for the garden or vegetable plot, but wherever some hardy attempt had been made to grow grass, plants, shrubs, or edible produce, lay grey black dust encoated verdure, and stunted bushes. And yet, as much as the furnace's gaseous waste discoloured and poisoned their community, as much as the Works hardened and tempered the steel, so did they forge the people into a sturdy cheerful society, full of caring and respect for one another, and with a distinctive humour to match and carry them through their tough daily life.

One day a bunch of us lads spied an empty bren gun carrier in a side field on the way to the Vicarage. Having climbed inside, it was only moments before we got chased away by a soldier.

One year the snow falls were really bad and we couldn't get out of the back door into the yard and down to the dunny. The snow was like a solid wall behind the kitchen door. My cousin Ken had an idea. "Go down to the kitchen and get the shovel ",he told me, "I'll dig us out". Kenneth's plan was to open the window outside the stairs and dig down. Fortunately I was spotted and asked where I was going with the shovel. My aunt was up the stairs in a jiffy for Ken would have sunk in the snow and possibly suffocated had his plan gone through.

There were some wonderful days in the summer when we would go down to Allensford, Shotley Bridge or Ebchester. How I remember the swirling rocky waters of the Derwent just beyond Shotley. And then there was Rossi's.I got a shock years later when I found out that my favourite high backed wooden seats had all been removed to the museum at Beamish.

I loved the smell of newsprint and newly baked bread in the newsagency across the road. Such impressions are magnified when we are young.

The Blue Heaps and the Red Heaps must have been put there for us kids. I reckon we got more out of them in fun than our parents did in hunting for slaggy coal. Thinking of the Blue Heaps reminds me of evening strolls along the Prom. When the wagons at the works tipped the still orange glowing slag down the hillside away in the distance, it was a sight to remember.

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