Caroline Street

A Memory of Hetton-Le-Hole.

My grandma was a Bell before she married Harry Davison and eventually went to live in South Market Street. She, her parents and siblings had lived at 32 Caroline Street, until they all married. Lizzie Maddison (my great-aunt and grandma's sister), her husband Lindsay and her brother Alex then lived there after the death of their parents in the 1930s. One of my duties in the 1950s was to take flowers to put on my great-grandparents' graves in Hetton cemetery each Sunday. The flowers were grown on Uncle Alex's allotment, along with the vegetables we had with Sunday dinner. Uncle Lindsay and Alex would arrive on Sunday mornings with the vegetables covered in soil and wrapped in newspaper, put them on the oilcloth-covered kitchen table and make their way to the Big Club for a beer (or two!) until the dinner was cooked. Aunt Lizzie was a heavy lady, clad in a wrap-around floral pinny, her hair in a net; sweating profusely, she would skilfully assemble ingredients to cook a delicious meal. A rice or apple suet  or apple pie with custard would follow. She cooked on a huge black-leaded range and was like an engineer with her knowledge of dampers, flues etc. The fire was allowed to go out once a week, when it would be thoroughly cleaned and the flues swept out with a special brush. I would sit at the table on my father's special chair (he had been killed in 1944 during the war), feeling the heat of the fire on my back, whilst Aunt Lizzie bustled about making sure the dinner was perfect. The uncles would arrive back from the Big Club, smelling of beer and pipe smoke, quite cheerful and inclined to play tricks on Aunt Lizzie. Uncle Lindsay would shake the cutlery box behind her and shout, 'I'll meet you on the clock when the bridge strikes!', which would infuriate Lizzie, who would give him a push and say, 'Give ower man Lindsay!', but she would smile as she said it and a twinkle would appear in her large brown eyes. Lizzie never appeared to sit down to eat until after everyone else had been served. Unlike home, I was not required to help with the household chores, except to go for messages, so after dinner I would set off for the cemetery whilst poor Lizzie cleared away the remains of the meal and did the dishes. As there was no hot water tap, water would be boiled in the big kettle on the fire and an enamel bowl set on the oilcloth on the table, a dash of Quix would be added and the dishes would be dried as they were handed over by the one washing the dishes. Men were not supposed to help in the house, this was seen as women's work, but Lindsay did. No sooner had Lizzie settled down in a chair by the fire for a nice doze when I was back from the cemetery, begging to go to Sunderland on the bus to go to the pictures! How they put up with me I do not know!

32 Caroline Street has been demolished, but the memories of the interior of the house and the really happy times I spent there will live with me always. I remember I had a cousin called Jean Wilkinson who lived at Hetton Downs, I would really like to contact her as I am compiling a family tree. My e./mail address is helenkeith@uwclub.net. I was Helen Davison then and am now a Davies.

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