TAKING A NEW YEAR STROLL AROUND TOWN
Rowing on the Wansbeck in 1936 |
This outing, usually taking me to Newminster Abbey and back, has become something of an annual pilgrimage.
When I first came to Morpeth in 1954 my first port of call after leaving home would be the Red House Dairy in Newgate Street where I would pay the bill for my milk, delivered in those days by horse and cart. If it was a Sunday I would drop in further up the road at Smiths for the papers.
On the way I would pass the Drill Hall (long gone, but still in service then) and the buildings of the Morpeth Co-operative Society which in those days had a tailor’s department where I recall having an Otterburn Tweed coat made — when finished it came not with the ‘Tweed’ label but one proclaiming ‘Society Wear’!
I was attracted to Lansdown House and the buildings of the Girls High School, but arriving at Smiths shop was a bit of a shock — I doubt that it had received paint or attention since the end of the First World War and had long been in need of re-pointing.
Smiths and the next door building were built of stone, dating back to the 18th century, but a neighbouring property was of brick. Later, when the buildings were demolished to make way for Dawson Place, I found that the bricks were a shell for a stone building with walls 3ft thick. The beams of the first floor had been covered with reeds and the floor was made of dark concrete.
The stone walls were full of mice or rat runs with remains of oats, and birds — pigeons, starlings, sparrows and jackdaws had long tenanted the buildings, which stretched along the burgages towards the Cotting Burn, where there had been tanneries.
Returning to Mrs Smith’s shop, which sold newspapers, groceries and other items, it was a spartan place, and one day I found a fellow customer to be the late Archie Armstrong who, as well as buying a newspaper, had brought a jacket to be cleaned.
He searched the pockets, finding a few half pennies. Mrs Smith looked envious, but Archie, being ‘penny wise not pound foolish’, kept them.
By then Archie was becoming a wealthy man. He ran Coast Builders at Monkseaton where I had bought an all night burning fire. At night you put the ashes from the bottom on the top of the fire, closing the bottom so that the fire ‘slept’ for the night and could be stirred next morning with a poker. The ashes were later riddled in the garden to get rid of the dust and re-used. In these days of instant heat, how many readers would return to this laborious process?
My walk up Newgate Street, the upper part of which was once called Silver Street, took me past the Fire Station and the Greyhound Inn (both long gone). Over the road was Hampton Court (demolished to make a car park for the neighbouring Beeswing but in recent years replaced with a new building).
The Beeswing, with its rounded street corner and blind windows, had been a hostelry named after the famous racehorse, but later became an antique shop, then gift shop. Nowadays it’s a private house.
The horse after which the building was named had been stabled here overnight on her way home to Nunnykirk and retirement, having won 51 of her 64 races.
The journey now took me to Bullers Green, or Bowls Green, an area about which there are all sorts of stories. One was that bulls were baited here, though the Market Place was the more likely location for this practice. If it was Bowls Green, was it bowls or quoits?
In any event, Bullers Green was outside of the old Borough of Morpeth and on the Newminster Estate, once owned by the Ords of Whitfield, their town house being Grange House on Mitford Road.
The history of this area is well documented in a recently published and highly recommended book by Fred Moffatt, who used to live here. He knew all the shops, families, habits and customs from the days when there was no Newminster or Chantry School or, in fact, houses beyond Wansbeck House.
The houses on Bullers Green itself are interesting — one where the famous missionary ‘Chinese’ Morrison was born.
On my early journeys I saw Mrs Wilson’s shop, today another antique shop, which has kept the same windows but is now without the enamelled advertisement signs for soap and the like.
Nearby was the interesting Coach House, with its exit onto Dogger Bank, which still stands. On the opposite side of the road back in 1955 there were five 17th century houses, with blocked windows. The Window Tax, under which only five windows were tax free, was introduced in 1697.
These five houses were demolished to make way for one big house, Wansbeck House. Another Wansbeck House stands at the end of a terrace on the North side road, is dated 1867 and was once the Cottage Hospital.
The taller houses of the terrace date back to the 18th century and still have an old fire mark. I was told that hereabouts at the back was an old steam mill or ‘bone factory’ for making glue, which might account for the name of the nearby Skinnery Bridge. At the end of the bridge stands Dyers Cottage.
At one time the Wansbeck was much deeper and boats could carry cargo from the quay by the Chantry bridge to the mills on Mitford Road.
Further along the High Stanners are the town’s last remaining stepping stones, the Bakehouse Steps.
It used to be said that there were three qualifications to be a true Morpethian — one was to have fallen from the stepping stones and to have thus been baptised; a second was to have ‘scrumped’ apples from the Rectory; the third was to be marked on what was called ‘chalky back night’, a custom apparently dating back to the time of the hirings and which continued in subsequent years as a joke.
Crossing over the stepping stones through an alleyway and back to Newgate Street took me on a route taken in olden days by the beast kept at home overnight by cowkeepers who took them down to the river to drink and then on to the Common under the watchful eye of the herdsman.
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