Thorpe Road Cemetery.

A Memory of Horden.

my dad fred hunter was the 1st cemetery suprintendant of horden cemetery ,my mam eva was a sherburn hill lass until marrying my dad and moving into the cemetery house ,I can recall my mam saying as we looked out of the house window ,youre dad barrowed every lot of top soil by hand to make this area he planted every tree by hand he worked hard ,day in day out .i have 2 brothers john and david then i came along .we were all i think born up the road at thorp hospital .i remember my dad made a ride on lawn mower and as i was a daddys girl at the age of about 4 i believe it was my job to run along the rows of graves moving the glass vases out of the way whilst he cut the grass ,every 2 weeks it was mams job to keep the chapel of rest nice and tidy and clean i remember it was magical polishing the pews ,sounds strange now but i knew no different ,i was brought up around it all .my childhood was amazing when i look back on it ,we had the dene to play in and all that space in the cemetery ,i learnt to roller skate going round and round the chapel of rest ,plenty of grazed knees though ,mam would never ever peg washing out on a funeral day she always said you had to be respectable to the dead ,,i used to have a pet rabbit who i kept round the side of the house and mr dellanoy the undertaker always used to threaten to make a rabbit pie .i wasn't keen on him for that .my favourite undertaker and friend to this day is barry lee ,a gentleman then and a gentle man now ,i remember his brother Ronnie was also an undertaker and he had a passion for morris minors he live3d at Easington .my dad used to have a passion for seafood and used to go to seaham harbour and get stones of crabs and he would boil them down in the greenhouse and then him and me would sit and clean them all in the office at the cemetery and he wold sell little tubs of crab meat to the girls at the Dewhirst factory over the road .tudor crisp factory was facing my bedroom window and you could always tell what flavour was getting made that day if we opened our windows ,premier lamps jerrimai amblers saluki fur factory charnos ,to name but a few ,we made our own entertainment in them days we used to go blackberry picking ,go down to horden hall farm walk to the end of the trak to the chicken farm and follow the trak and pick and pick and then follow till you come out at forbes farm at littlethorp ..when it was planting out time for the graves my dad used to walk with his barrow up to Easington to monks garden centre get the plants and barrow it all back down,.when you think about it nowadays he had it hard ,no machines to dig the graves all dun by hand no health and safety then .our nearest shop was the royal arms ,liptons and the coop Dewhirst the butcher also ,i used to love going to the little offlicence side door that was attached to the royal arms pub the smell was just amazing waiting to get my crisps ,when i started school i went to eden hall infants and then juniors .but i wasn't allowed to go to dene house as it was too far for me so i had to go to acre rig secondery ,no buses to ferry us we had to walk ,i remember coming home from school at the juniors and if my am wasn't there at the security box at jerrimiaamblers .i had to wait with old George till she got there as she would never allow me to cross the road to get over to the cemetery mam used to say once i started walking to school on my own if youre ever in trouble theres old George in the box or theres mrs robinson at the top of yoden road ,mrs robinson was a funny wife ran her family with military precision she had to as she has 1 girl and the rest boys ,lovely woman ,.i still see her son lancey .happy days looking back ,my friends were fascinated as to how i could live in a cemetery freaky Freda i got called but to me it was normal .my mam used to say it the living that hurt you not the dead ,when my dad had to retire it was the worst day of my life ,we got a house at yoden road peterlee ,it was weird living in a street and hearing noises on a night it took a lot of adapting to ,i got a job at the local liptons ,sadly my mam eva died and then not long after my dad suffered a huge stroke but with the care from us his children he live a gud many years after and he got a bungalow near my brother john at pennine drive .i often poip back to the cemetery as the parish council put a plaque on the seat infront of the chapel of rest with my dads name on ,im incredibly proud when i look around the cemetery and think my dad made this all them years ago ,,i love remembering the fun i had as a child andi wouldn't change any of it for the world ,