Contributor Leaderboard

@Nicola RileyHi Nicola, welcome to the forum. Sorry to hear about your mam's death. If I'm thinking of the right person then I went to school with Joyce - Westridge Secondary Modern 1959 - 1962. A very nice girl. She wasn't in my class but in the same class as my best friend so we hung about together during our breaks. You'll find a couple of school photos of that Joyce in the Gallery, Westridge album. Might be worth a look. I think you may have found the topic related to Fountain Yard where your nanna's brothers are mentioned. I don't think Fountain Yard comes up in any other topics. Dr Pit is up for discussion frequently. Type "Dr Pit" (inverted commas are important) in the search box, top right and you'll get a list of where it appears.

AQO-btHNkKoT6LmrsTXymrVwAkQ1sXM9Hgk3062YqDwI6T6miiCKbvtCj9SWv6g3_814_KxZipyq4BQ_3Ep9rmq8wEzcJmlN78Wi6vo.mp4

Found this little gem while rummaging for information on the whereabouts of the Bedlington Post Office, mid 19th century. It is a "Report to the General Board of Health for Morpeth re Cholera, dated 1849. It certainly makes me grateful and thankful for how Bedlington is today.

No recollection whatsoever of reading it earlier! Clearly another of my 'senior moments'.

@Nicola Riley welcome to the forum. Seeing your post made me check the album, Doctor Pit and Rows, we have in the gallery section and I see we don't have the old maps showing the rows so I have added a compilation from the old maps showing the siting of the rows. This 1896 map shows the location of the Dr Pit and rows within the town :-

Sorry about that! Going further back, I found John Urwin in another trade directory, History, Topography, and Directory of Northumberland 1855 p. 897 and see that even then he was Bedlington’s Postmaster while at the same time running his chemist and druggist business. The question arises – did Urwin live in the same place? I looked him up in the 1851 census. The 1851 census doesn’t reveal so many household addresses. A couple of prominent buildings are named: Fountain Hall and the Vicarage. Apart from Sun Inn and the Red Lion Inn no pubs are named on Front Street. That doesn’t mean to say that pubs did not exist. The number of “Innkeepers”, “Beer-house keepers” and “Publicans registered in the town says otherwise. However, I could not find John Urwin living next door to any of them, suggesting that he may not always have lived next door to the Grapes Inn. Following the enumerator’s route from the Market Place towards the Red Lion I find at schedule nrs. 215 and 214 a “retired innkeeper” and an “innkeeper” next door to each other. Though not named as such, their proximity to the Market Place and the fact that they are neighbours leads me to believe that they are the Masons Arms and the Grapes Inn. Continuing westwards and 28 dwellings later (presumably located both on Front Street and in the various yards) I find John Urwin at schedule nr 203. Moving on, past another 16 dwellings I find the last dwelling of West End, on the corner of Glebe Row, at sch. Nr. 187. It seems to me therefore that John Urwin is living nearer the Red Lion than the Market Place and this location could therefore possibly be Baptist Yard. John Urwin was not a local lad, having been born in Lanchester, Durham. When he moved to Bedlington I can't say but as he was, with certainty, the postmaster, at least between 1855 and 1858 he must have held that position when the telegraph system was installed but I haven't been able to establish at which address. The OS map of 1860shows a Post Office situated between the Grapes Inn and the Mason’s Arms at the lower end of Front Street West. As maps require a few years of research and survey work prior to publication, it’s fair to assume that Urwin may have lived and worked here in 1858 in his capacity as Postmaster. If this is the case then the telegraph system could have been installed here, rather than in Baptist Yard. Its installation could well have been the reason for his move. A bit more work required yet.

The many comprehensive trade and residential directories are a great source of information covering such things as businesses, notable residents, tradespeople and local institutions - of which the Post Office is but one - so I spent yesterday (and a fair bit of today) rummaging through those I have access to and I thought a fair place to start would be the 1858 Post Office Directory of Northumberland (later called Kelly’s Directory). Part of the entry for Bedlington, p. 26, looks like this: Bottom left I can see that Bedlington did indeed have a “Post Office”. The Postmaster was John Urwin and letters were received by him, from Morpeth, by mail cart. Middle right we can see that John Urwin was a man of many talents when, under the businesses section, he appears as chemist, druggist and postmaster. I thought that was odd but further rummaging through the GPO and Post Office Museum sites shows that it was more than common to combine the role of ‘Postmaster’ with another profession. It seems that by the 1850s the postal system was so well developed that “no village, however insignificant” was “without its receiving-house”. By 1855 there was a network of almost 10, 500 post offices across the country “(made up of 920 Head Post Offices and 9,578 Sub-Post Offices and Receiving Offices)”. There were, in other words, several types of ‘Post Office’, whereof the receiving house had least responsibility. For them, it sufficed to receive letters from the Head Post Office and display them in a window so that anyone passing could see if they had mail to collect. The Postal Museum (online) describes the role of the Postmaster as “a salaried male official in charge of PO operations and staff within a specific area defined by its Post Town”. The term Postmaster, they add “was often used colloquially to refer to a Sub-Postmaster. Most Sub Postmasters and Sub Postmistresses were not employed by the Post Office. They had a main business, like a shop, which offered Post Office services”. Those who took on this role were often considered central, trusted figures in their community. That explains a lot! To me it seems that John Urwin was a sub-postmaster and, looking quickly through several other small towns in the directories, the terms ‘Postmaster’ and ‘Post Office’ are used fleetingly for what appear to be Sub-Postmasters and Sub-Post Offices – having mail delivered to them once a day from a Head Post Office by whatever means available. In 1830 mail was distributed by train for the first time and when Morpeth got its station, in 1847 (on the London to Edinburgh line), it appears to have become the location of the Head Post Office for quite a large area, including Bedlington, to which it distributed mail for further distribution or, more commonly, for collection. Next, I looked at the nearest census returns (1861) to see where John Urwin lived: There he is, schedule nr 36, right next door to the Grapes Inn. His neighbour on the other side, at schedule nr 35, is the Masons Arms: That all fits in nicely with what we can see on the 1860 OS map below. I can also mention here that the Post Office can be seen to have opened in the Market Place (Sch.nr 17). It is occupied by Robert Dobson who gives his occupation as “Ass’t. Overseer” rather than any sort of Post Office worker. Perhaps this dwelling is above the Post Office. I'll take a break here as one of the grandchildren has just arrived. I'll try to post the rest later.

A bit late,marra,but we dinna live in a free speech country any mair!! See my new topic titled "Banned"! Cheers Folks! HPW.