Childhood Memories

A Memory of Hamsterley.

I was born at 27 Langdale Terrace in 1963 at my lovely grandma and granda's house, Vera and Harry Kirtley. Granda worked at Westwood pit then Hamstley colliery and when that shut he worked at Eden. I remember standing near the old post office on the main road when the pit ponies came by, I was only small then but all the village turned out to see them pass. I don't know what year it was but what a great memory. I didn't really understand what it meant but the loyalty of all those people has stayed with me all my years. I remember sliding down the back of the hill behind the new war memorial on the first winter with 2 feet of snow with the Scotts, Halls, Davisons, Bridgewaters,Gibson kids etc. What a childhood I had, I can't explain to my kids what it means playing footy between the two streets, 40/50 kids, between dustbins at each end of Langdale/Enerdale with not a car in sight, kicking lumps out of each other, pure innocent bliss. And the bonfires we used to build at the end with Boxer and protecting them from other gangs setting them alight before the 5th of November and my grandad going mad when he couldn't get 3 gallons of petrol for less than a £1 when it went up at Billy Graham's garage! Also when he drove the funeral hearse for Billy's garage and used to pick us up in between funerals to run us to Consett baths and try to pick my grandma up from the bus stop outside Shotley Bridge Hospital where she worked on the maternity ward, then on the way home in the hearse with a queue of people laughing as she's trying to ignore my grandad beeping his horn to get her attention! Happy days, best childhood in the world, we had nothing, like everyone else, my hot water bottle was a heated brick wrapped up in a towrl and we loved the winter because we could write our names in the ice (inside our bedroom windows) and slide on a dustbin lid all the way down the side of the sweetshop down to the Derwent bank past the butchers, what a life.

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