Canny lass

Thanks again Eggy. KTD I'm familiar with but I've never heard of the Parson & White Trade Directory. I'm rather intrigued by "rendering a rose yearly, if required". Can anybody explain what it means?

Thanks eggy! Philip already gave me this booklet. He's been a great, personal help with my family research.

Which booklet would that be, Eggy? I remeber Betty well! Give her my regards.

First, let's just bring some clarity into the names. There has never been a First-, Second- or a Third Row. While they were built as rows of terraced houses they all had the name Street. The houses in Netherton Colliery, prior to these being built shortly after 1905, were named Row, Howard-, Yard- and Clifton Row as well as the even earlier wooden dwellings in New Row (later renamed South Row.) Second, Evans is wrong when he states that 152 houses were created during the 1905 build. The building of 152 houses was approved in 1905 but all were not built. I believe there were 113-115 houses completed. Third Street had 25, Plessey- (as it later became known) had 27-28, Second- had 29-30 and First Street had, I believe, 32. These houses were built when the Howard Pit was brought back to life after 21 years of standing idle. The wooden dwellings of South Row were, by then, fit only for demolition but some of the later built stone dwellings in Howard-, Yard- and Clifton Row were able to be repaired. The next phase in development was the colliery housing as I remember it, the brick built First-, Second-, Plessey- (as it came to be called) and Third Street. The streets were quite simply named as they were built. First Street being the first of the four rows of houses. What had been South Row, became the 'street' by which the residents reached their front door. It later became a row of gardens but the pavement remained as long as the houses. Originally, as can be seen on the maps above, Second Street consisted of two rows of houses witha common access to their front doors via the 'street' that went between them. Their front doors faced each other and again the pavements remained. Third Street had it's front entrance to the west and that 'street', with pavement, later became a lawned area joining onto the gardens (a later addition). The street names, rather than being the name of the actual row of buildings, were in fact the names of the streets that ran outside the front door of the houses - exactly as they are printed on the map. Two rows of houses shared one back lane which the back door opened onto (albeit inside a yard): First Street and Second Street shared one while Third Street and the other half of Second Street shared the other. These can be quite clearly seen on the map. Where The name Plessey Street came from, I've no idea. I assume it's something to do with the Plessey family and it's dotted about all over the east Northumberland area. I can say, however, that one of the main Northumberland Coalfield seams, The Plessey, was worked at Netherton. When the name came, I can't say with certainty, only that it's always been Plessey Street throughout my lifetime (born 1947). I heard many years ago that the change of name was related to postal difficulties but I've never been able to find any evidence of this. Regarding Old Row, it didn't belong to the Colliery as I knew it. It was situated more towards Nedderton village, simply called 'Netherton' on this map from 1860.

Indeed they should be kept, but try telling that to the leek-growing miners who only saw their brilliant properties when wanting straight, white leeks.

Looking at it again, Third Street had only 24 houses with two houses sharing one chimney stack - 12. These can be counted on aerial photos. The above photo has at least 14 stacks and they seem to be in poor condition as most of the pots are missing. I think this might just be Howard Row before it was demolished. It was there in 1947 as the map shows but it was gone when I was a small child in the early fifties, presumably demolished.

Definitely not Third Street. Wrong type of windows (16 pane instead of four) and wrong number of upstairs windows. This picture shows two upstairs windows and one downstairs window per house. Third Street had one up and one down. Also, though I can't remember ever seeing Clifton Row from this 'front' side - this being reserved mostly for funerals -. this street seems rather long for Clifton Row and I always thought their gardens were across the street from the back door and behind the outside toilets. The old Howard Row or Yard Row springs to mind. Both were long running from the pit and to the social club. here's a map from 1947:

I recognise a few faces and names in the second picture! YMCA members.

Thanks eggy. I'll get in touch with them.

Thanks Eggy. Nice article. See if you can get your hands on the poppy knitting pattern for me.

In some ways, yes. I don't think it was written by my friend. I think it's just something that's doing the rounds in the states. ... and I do love a Starbucks so I'm sure it was meant to amuse me. This one's doing the rounds in Britain and can be purchased printed on a T-shirt from Redbubble.com (artist, Dru Marland)

Received today from a friend in The USA: The unthinkable happened and enough idiots and extremists voted into office a buffoon who couldn't be trusted with a Twitter account. America has lost any last shred of moral authority it might have had. The rest of the world now must go forward knowing it cannot count on America for anything, least of all leadership. The portents are alarming, tax cuts for the rich at the expense of cuts to healthcare, Social Security, women's health and welfare, social and religious persecution, persecution of minorities, black people, colored people, anybody who doesn't conform to the Trump vision of the American Master Race. Deregulation of everything, free rein for dirty energy, protected lands to be turned over to private industry etc., etc. Hate crimes are already surging. Those of you in the civilised world please do what you can to show the Trump administration your disapproval. At least stop eating hamburgers and going to Starbucks. The Resistance.

I watched a TV documentary about Cohen a couple of years ago. He lived as a monk for 5 years but left the order as during his time there he dicovered that he wasn't religious!

... because it's a drinking fountain, perhaps?

Lovely! If this is going to be a regular display i wouldn't mind knitting/crocheting/sewing a few poppies.

Spot on! Alan Stappard it was, but i can't recall him ever being called Harry. Lovely film, damian. Brought back many memories to a 'Third streeter'.

A man and a woman are sitting in a pub discussing their forthcoming marriage. They have been ‘saving themselves’ for each other and have never seen each other naked. The woman doesn’t want any unpleasant surprises – for either of them – on the wedding night so she says to her intended, “I’m as flat as a pancake up top”. “That’s OK”, he replies, “I’m equipped like a new born baby down below”. The wedding night arrives and both undress, somewhat nervously. The woman removes her bra and says, “See, I’m as flat as a pancake”. The man removes his underpants and the woman faints. After a couple of minutes she rallies round and says, “You swine! You told me you were equipped like a new born baby”. “Exactly”, says the man, “47 centimetres long, 3.865 gram”.

You must remember his maps. HPW! They were massive! Roman Empire behind his desk, to the left of the blackboard. WW2's Europe on the back wall together with one other - long since forgotten (may have been Viking Britain). They were real works of art. Did he insist that you wrote everything in italics? We had to.

HPW, now I'm confused. Are we talking about the same picture? I'm referring to the photo 11 posts before this one and labelled "WESTRIDGE - UPPER REMOVE - SUMMER 1960". That date, I think, is correct. It fits in perfectly with my time at Westridge and Robert Cross as head boy.

I just had a lovely mental picture of Mr. Abrahart doing just that! I wonder what he would have painted on his classroom wall? Can you remeber those lovely maps he had hand-painted around his classroom?

Could this be a group photo of the prefects together with the head boy and the head girl? That would account for the different ages. As for 'remove classes' I vaguely remember Mr. Hemming visiting Junior Remove, within the first few days of my starting at Westridge, and explaining to us that it was a class which - if they worked hard - would be allowed an extra year of study in which to obtain GCE O-levels. At that time, the standard, compulsory secondary education lead to the Northern Counties Certificate of Secondary Education. Like the public schools he wanted "good achievers" to have a second chance and be able to obtain - by way of an extra year's work - the same level of examination success (O-levels) as pupils in the Grammar school. I don't know if it was his idea or if it was something happening in all secondary schools at that time.

I thought nr 16 might be the head girl. I remember the head girl as always having a 'sash' like the one she's wearing. She's also wearing the school tie which makes me think she's a pupil rather than a teacher. Just a thought. Number 11 reminds me of George Mitcheson. Would that name ring a bell, HPW?

Thanks HPW. You don't get this in history books!

We are very lucky to have access to HPW and his knowledge. A veritable 'mine' of information.