Gainers Terrace

A Memory of Wallsend.

I lived in Gainers Terrace in the 60's with me ma, da, and brother Tom. I loved seeing the ships being built from my bedroom window, late at night the room would be all lit up with the light from the welders! My mother's cousin Thommasenna, known as 'Enna' lived downstairs to us with her husband and little'uns. It was a lovely little road to live in mind, the women did used to moan when they brought the washing in off the line and the sheets and things would be speckled with little black dots from the shipyards. Me ma would ask me to go to the shops before the workmen came out because otherwise you'd get caught up in a sea of men, going into, or coming out of, the yard. The Ship Inn was on the corner, and as a kid I'd run in there to get a packet of Woodbines for me ma, or a packet of Capstan for me da. We moved just across the road in Gainers Terrace and there was a lamp post at the end of the road, with a big high wall into the shipyard. I used to look out my bedroom window with it open just a little bit, and watch a man from the yard climb over and he'd nip into the Ship Inn for a pint or three. I'd watch for him coming out, the worse for drink and he would try for all he was worth to climb up this lamp post to get back in the yard. I would cry laughing he would look around to see where it was coming from, but he never did spot me! Me da would be shouting from his bedroom for me to pipe down saying some people have got work in the morning! All the local kids would get told stories about a man who was a docker and about the things he would nick and we'd all repeat these stories to each other. One kid said, "you'll never believe it he has only gone and nicked a shovel ...walked right past the bloke on the gate, with it under his coat!" But the next we all heard was he'd nicked a wheelbarrow! To this day I don't even know if they ever used wheel barrows in the shipyards! As kids, if adults told us muck was clay - we believed it! I can't remember the name of the bar on the other end of the terrace, but a lovely little old woman ran it and it only had a mans toilet in it, not one for women! As kids we'd ride the ferry from Wallsend to Heburn and then onto Walker as long as you didn't get off at Heburn then you didn't have to pay because there was nobody to take money on the other ferry landings! As kids we used to wonder why so many balloons used to float up the Tyne. Kids were kids in those days there was some things we just didn't need to know about. I moved to the south coast and things couldn't be more different, you can here a pin drop. It took a long time to get used to sleeping without the noise of ships being built. The best time of my life was living in Wallsend - I'd love to go back to them times, like a lot of other people it broke my heart when both the yards and the mines went. My uncles worked at the Rising Sun pit, but that's a whole new story.