Bringing back those childhood memories (From The Northern Echo)

Bringing back those childhood memories

12:13pm Wednesday 17th March 2010 in

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PETER SIMPSON was six in 1961 when our picture of the rear of Front Street, in Tudhoe, was taken.

The alsatian at No 1 belonged to Harry Roddam, whose friend owned the famous Ford Popular car in the picture.

At No 2, Mrs Gray had the only telephone in the street.

“When my brother, Paul, was born in 1963 my father got the news via the Grays’ phone,” says Peter, whose family lived at No 9.

“In winter we would sledge down the battery bank straight along the middle of the road, making Mrs Gray’s crossing to the toilet a little hazardous. She always spoilt our fun by spreading ashes across the ice.”

The children in the picture could be the Heathcotes from No 6, while Mrs Snowball watches at her gate at No 8.

“Every day I walked the length of the street to go to school, where I remember Mrs Black, who would sit at the front of the class marking our work while smoking a cigarette,” says Peter.

“The outside toilets in the picture were earth toilets, or middens. As children one of our favourite pastimes was to wait until someone went inside and then we’d launch stones at the cast iron cover at the back of the toilet.

“If you were sitting inside when a half brick hit the iron plate it scared the living daylights out of you.

“I’m surprised at the number of television aerials in the street. We got our first TV in 1961 and the first programme I saw was the One O’clock Show. Until then, we had to congregate at a neighbour’s house to watch The Lone Ranger.”

ALAN KAY was born in 1927 in No 151, Tudhoe Colliery.

“Looking at the 1961 photo, things hadn’t changed much,” he writes from Newton Aycliffe. “Maybe the absence of tin baths hanging on the back yard walls and egg cups in the pantry windows.”

DR MEL SMITH doubts the photo was taken from “the Battery”.

“As I remember,” he says, “‘the Battery’ was a deep railway cutting that led into and out of the railway tunnel under the Five Lane Ends. It was filled in during the Sixties.” But why was it called the Battery?

Whatever you do, don’t mention the car. Last week, we did, and we certainly didn’t get away with it.

We mixed our Populars with our Prefects. Again.

Sorry.

The Popular had two doors, the Prefect had four.

“A good way to spot a Popular from the rear was that it had three tail lights in a line – the indicator, the taillight- cum-brake light, and a reflector – whereas the Prefect had a slightly different arrangement,” says John Biggs, in Etherley Grange.

In September 1964, he became the proud owner of a two-year-old Popular Deluxe.

He paid £335 for it, put 16,000 miles on the clock and sold it for £240, 15 months later.

Len Campbell clears up another issue. “Regarding windscreen wipers,” he says.

“All early Fords had wipers which slowed down when going uphill, even the luxurious Zephyrs of the late Fifties, early Sixties.”