Part 11

A Memory of Middle Rainton.

And had an inter-house sports day annually that was highly contested. The school was divided into four houses, St Columbus, St Aiden, and St Patrick and St Cuthbert’s.
Church attendances were very high, poor Fr. Tuohey had to give three masses every Sunday to enable everyone to attend. These were given at 9am, 10am and 11am and were always full (St Michaels is not a small church either).
Just a little more. The Anglican church of St May, in West Rainton, has a piece of stone from the Great Pyramid of Giza, on display and as children we were told that the capping stone on the spire came from the same Pyramid.

THE DEMOLITION

There is not a lot I can say about this, the first stage was carried out in about 1939, just before I was born, but not all the houses that were emptied were demolished. All the doors and timber from the floors were removed, as was the water tap taken out (no electricity installed) and the cast iron ranges used for heating and cooking. This just left an empty shell with a roof in place. Perhaps this was done to prevent re-occupation. These houses were left for about 8 year like this before being finally pulled down; the debris left was not removed but stayed in heaps showing where the streets had been.
As children, these empty buildings made a great playground. Anyone who wanted could just take the roof tiles or timbers or the yellowish stone the houses were made of without any comeback.
The people who lost these homes in 1939 were re-housed in a new council estate a quarter of a mile down the road in East Rainton. There was not enough council houses built to take all the inhabitants of Middle Rainton and many of the properties were condemned as not fit for habitation, but still left occupied.
Front Street was left to stand, as were parts of Back Row. The rest of the villagers were moved to the new estate, whether you wanted to or not. But it must be remembered that the houses they were leaving had no electricity or flushing toilets. The toilets were all outside, and you put the ashes from the fire and all your other rubbish in the same place. This was cleaned out by hand, weekly, by Hatton Council. (What a grand job.) Some people did not even have individual toilets, but used a “midden” a row of about, say, 12 toilets. All joined up, with a communal rubbish pit behind. And there was no hot water, only one tap of cold mains supply, and many houses had communal outside taps from where water was brought. Of course there were no baths, just a tin bath hung outside. Water was heated on the cooking range for this, and everyone used the same bath. (You were unlucky if you were last.)
The rest of the village was demolished after I left in 1958, to make way for the new A690 highway project from Durham to Sunderland, as much of what was left of the village was on the new route. This was not all in carried out one go. The work started at the top end of Front Street; about 5 families were re-housed and their homes pulled down, after this another 5 houses and so on until completed. The bricks and rubble were all used in the highway construction, as was the rubble left over from the first stage demolished in 1939; it had stayed as an eyesore since then.

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