On The Farm

A Memory of Newburn.

This is a memory of about 1960. I had left the pit and started work on Lowrisons farm in Westerhope, there were two houses, one was at the bottom of West Avenue next to the park. This is where John Lowrison lived with his sister Betty, she was a Personel Officer with Clark Chapman. Betty never married, nor did John. He ran the farm with his other sister Sylvia who was married to Roger Contel who owned Contels fruit shops and they lived in a big house at the top of Beaumont Terrace next to the Bridal Path. They had a son also called Roger who was a few years younger than me and we became great friends, he's sadly not with us any more, neither are his parents. The farm grew vegetables, cabbages, cauliflower and limited lettuce, and it covered a lot of area right down to where Jollyes pet shop is, then the other way was down to Hotch Puddin farm in West Denton. I loved every minute of it but the pay was very poor. At 21 your weeks wage was 9.19.6d. I got this at 18 because I was the apple of Sylvia's eye. I was invited to share lunch with them when working weekends and tea at 5pm when I worked late, which was all the time in summer. I would start at 7.30am and not finish until 10pm on weekdays then Saturday 7.30am till 12 noon was compulsory, but I worked till 5pm on Saturday and Sunday. There was never an overtime rate at all.
I learned to drive the tractors and quickly picked up every task. I remember balmy summer days and nights alone in the field with rabbits, hares, pheasants and the occasional deer and badger. One day I was ploughing a field and watching the plough behind me, you always turned up broken clay pipes and crockery, then an odd shaped object turned up. I pressed in the clutch which brought me to a dead stop, climbed down and this object was covered in mud and clay, anyway I kept it on the tractor till lunchtime and showed it to John, he gave me some fluid to soak it in then left it for a couple of days, and when I went back to my amazement a gold colour showed through. Naa! it was brass, the object turned out to be a model of the ship the 'Victory'. It stood 5 inches high x 5 inches wide, this was riveted on to a flat stand which portrayed the harbour with a hole in it. It was a pen and ink stand and the waves formed a cradle for the pen to sit in. I took the rivets out so as to clean it. I lived with Ma and Da then at Millfield and as the years went by I had forgotten about this little treasure I had found. I left home, and my parents moved to Throckley opposite the stores, then they moved to Pegswood as me Da got transferred with the pits up there. 35 years later I was doing some odd jobs for them and in the shed there was my little ship, I couldn't believe my luck, but alas, the harbour was missing. I still have this and it takes pride of place on a beam over the inglenook fireplace.
There were lots of women working on the farm, they cut the veg and put them in boxes. Whatever the weather, they were out there, as we all were, even if the sun was up early you still got a soaking as the dew from the leaves crept up your legs. The planting time was good fun at the end of each row, time the tractor was turning Sylvia would egg the young lads on to grab the women and wrestle them to the ground and give them a dose of cascara which was a laxative(which she supplied). Then the women would turn on us and give us the same medicine. You would be thrown in jail if you did that now. Sylvia was a bit of a character and could be quite forceful with the staff, she was a chain smoker, she smoked 100 John Players cigs a day, lighting one off the one she was about to throw away and yet she never inhaled a one. Even at the dinner table she had one burning in the ash tray. Her holidays in them days was Jamaica, we had just discovered Butlins. She used to bring back white rum which we had never seen and it was aflow at the parties I got invited to at the big house.
John was a different kettle of fish, he lived with his dogs, Alsatians, Pekinese and Border Terriers which were my favourites, Sylvester and Mildred. He had a Ford Prefect car in mint condition because he never went anywhere except to town where he was a season ticket holder, and the Orion picture house once a week. He once said to me "There's nowt I like better than to go into the country with my fishing rod and a big bag of liquorice".
One night I was working on the tractor beside the smallholdings top of Dewley Road with young Roger sitting on the mudguard. We stopped to have a fag, which Roger always had and they were always John Players. Anyway, these two young girls came and asked for a fag which we gave to them, they were probably about 14 at the time. This came to the fore about 20 years later when Vicky, my wife, and me were having a reminisce about old times and I found out that it was her and her friend we had given the cigs to!

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