My Visits To Dormanstown.

A Memory of Dormanstown.

My mother came from Dormanstown and my grandparents, Ellen and James Mitchell, lived at 67, Broadway West. This was a Dorman-Long house as my grandfather and an uncle worked for the Dorman-Long Steel Works. I spent many a school holiday there and remember walking to the steel works with my granddad's lunch and watching the molten steel pour out and the furnaces rage. Health and safety would not allow this today!
Industry at that time was the steel works and I.C.I, where two uncles worked.
My granddad had an allotment, which was more of a smallholding. He had a goat which he milked and a pig called Chrissie. I remember riding on her back. There were also chickens etc as well as vegetables.
I went shopping with my grandma, locally in Waitrose and sometimes in Stockton or Middlesborough. She always wore a hat with a hat-pin through it and was very much a lady. She originated in Littlehampton, Sussex so Yorkshire was a different way of life to her.
I loved the beautiful sands at Redcar and the little fun fair on the beach. My favourite was the swinging boats and I also liked to play the penny slot machines.
Once, when I was up there with my younger brother, we won a Woodbine! When our grandma went out we shared it in the garden shed. She never did know!
My mother, Evelyn, was the eldest of seven children who all lived in Redcar, Kirkleatham, Dormanstown. My family lived in Northolt, Middlesex so it was an adventure for me to visit 'up north'. I went to school there one year and learnt to knit - a pair of socks, one was much bigger than the other! My friend was Jean Pickard who I have lost touch with. Does anyone know of her? Every weekend I visited all my aunts and uncles who regularly gave me pocket money.
Lovely memories of 1950 - 1955 ish.