The Dutchmen

A Memory of Newburn.

This is only an approximate year of 1954. There was the old hospital at Newburn by the Stanners and it was occupied by these Dutchmen who had came to dredge the Tyne. We would spend many an evening sitting chatting to them as they sat on the steps outside with their clogs on, wearing funny hats and smoking clay pipes. I suppose these were the first foreign people we had seen. The Stanners was the end of the Dewley Burn that collected in a concrete pool with a small iron bridge over it just before it ran into the Tyne through an underground tunnel, when the tide was out we would dare each other to walk through the tunnel which was about 200 yards long and we could see the river at the other end. By! There were some big rats in there, I don't know how I did it as I'm terrified of them things now. There were also two other tunnels, one ran from the winning and came out just past Samples yard, the other was much longer tunnel about a hundred yards downstream just beyond the little bridge. This went under Newburn Urban Tip and the Council yard and came out at the begging of Spencers works. When you looked through the tunnel you could just see the light at the end., I walked this quite a few times. Talking about Samples yard we were always there helping out. I remember one day Ralphie Sowerby (who was married to Martha Sample) was chopping wood, and with the axe held above the chopping block . (He was having a bit of fun with us younguns) said come on put the log on the block we refused but me pal Geordie Brown said he would put the log on the block with his fore finger on top down came the axe off came the finger, Geordie was screaming running down the winning with Ralphie chasing after him with the end of his finger. The medical profession has come a long way since then, hence he never got the finger back on, but he did get some bonnie fan tail pigeons off Ralphie.  

I remember when we had four seasons, the school holidays were really hot and we would be off exploring the countryside on our bikes with our bottles of water which never lasted. We would stop by any stream to quench our thirst, but you could only drink the water that was running quite rapid over the rocks as this was clean water, where we got that knowledge from I will never know but we seemed to be immune, compared to today where we would probably come down with typhoid or the likes. The summer months were a way of making pocket money, one way was collecting rose hips and taking them to a house in Berkley Terrace next to Newburn Manor School where they would weigh them and you exchanged them for money, but by, you had to gather some for a pittance. We tried the brick in the bag, along with every other devious method, but we couldn't fool these two old spinsters who lived there. This was also somewhere you took an injured animal or bird as they were part of the RSPCA.

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