Alan Edgar (Eggy1948)

@JosephineFunderburk - do you mean you would like to contact Lewis Barker who posted the photo of the John D Dindall silver plate? If so then you would have so search Facebook, where the photo was posted and 'Shared' from and see how many Lewis barker's there are and see if you can identify the one that posted the photo. The only clue we have is that this Lewis Barker could live in Ashington - but nobody, that I am aware of, has searched for him.☺️

Yep - Simon posted it on the Bygone Bedlington group as 'Bedlington & Cheviots ( I added the text to his photo.) Simon is always taking photos of the town - he lives on Church Lane, across from St Cuthberts. You will have seen a couple of these before - compilation of just a few of Simon's photos that he has shared with the Bygone Bedlington members. The one in the middle was taken from outside the Red Lion - the green bus shelter on the left is the one on Front Street West at the Top End and the building underneath the tree on the right is the chemists on the corner opposite the Northumberland Arms and behind the trunk of the tree on the left is the Howard Arms.

👍

So after -40c a day sitting on a stool, on ice, with your rod dangling into a cold lake must be feel quite warm🙃 Is this on a massive frozen lake with lots of people Vic?

1. Which range of hills stands on the border between England and Scotland? Answer = Cheviots 2. If you ordered pollo in an Italian restaurant what would you get? Answer = 3. Which team game has the positions first defence, in home and second attack? Answer = 4. In the castle of which West Yorkshire market town was Richard II murdered? Answer = 5. Who wrote The Forsyte Saga? Answer = 6. A musket ball fired from the French ship Redoubtable killed which famous Englishman? Answer = 7. What type of monkey is used as an organ grinder’s monkey? Answer = 8. What was Hilary Clinton’s job prior to entering politics? Answer = congressional legal counsel 9. Which former player tried to buy Celtic football club in 1998? Answer = 10. What is the name of the earth’s outer layer? Answer = 11. In Cockney rhyming slang what is meant by ‘dickory dock’? Answer = 12. What does the acronym UNESCO stand for? Answer = I’ll bet you didn’t know …. Two million pigs are used in the manufacture of Spam each year. Answer = I didn’t – that’s a

CL - looks like the Top End library was just a small branch of the Station Library had had a limited selection. Some of the comments from the Bygone Bedlington Facebook group where I posted the postcard :-

Gather in The Mushrooms - Benny Hill - 1961 (?) = "There's snow upon the roof but there's a fire in the cellar!"

I was told that there was a board on the wall inside the Cowell's butchers where anyone could pin old photos. Next time your passing @Jammy - pop in and see if they still have their Gallery of old photos.

And me - you can see the Shop Row gardens in the aerial photo of the pit. I've seen a photo, on Facebook group, of the Cowell family playing on the track between the row and the gardens - but I can't find it

Ooops meant to post this one along with the photo showing the entrance to the 'A' pit. This one shows the back lane of South Row in 1966. You can see the house are stone built. across the back lane are the 'netties' and the crees = coal sheds/bunkers and the entrance to the gardens. This is the front of South Row with the brick walls so I assume the rows were originally stone and then whatever extension work was carried out to the row bricks were used to face the building - but that's just me guessing :-

The Rose and Crown gets a mention in a local historian's books on Bedlington. The Martin fafily = Stephen B. Martin and Evan Martin have this info in a couple of their books :- I made this image to show approximately where the Rose and Crown was :-

The Rose and Crown was between the two bridges on the river Blyth . The Furnace bridge and the railway bridge. The Furnace bridge, at the bottom of the Furnace bank , was a small road bridge :- The railway bridge was originally a wooden structure and the replaced by the existing iron bridge :-

My memory of the two parts to South Row is that the row of houses to the West of the pit were demolished in the mid to late 1950's. I only have a very vague memory of that row as during my junior school days = Barrington CP, that can be seen on the aerial shot of the pit, we were taught to walk down the back lane of Pioneer Terrace (opposite side of the road to the South Row) and then cross the road to the entrance to the pit and the other houses of South Row would be on our right- East. We would walk throu the pit up to Shop Row, turn right and walk the length of Shop Row to the railway crossing onto the Barrington Road and turn left onto that road along to school. This is the entrance to the 'A' pit that we used :- Where the men are standing on the right of the photo is where the pit bus to take them home would arrive and the brick wall one of them is leaning against is the boundry wall for the last house in South Row.

@Diana - I will add each posting as a separate comment and if you have any questions then you can select the 'Quote' at the bottom left corner of each posting and that action will include the previous comment you are asking about. This image of the 'A' pit will be late 1940's as the street named Waverley Drive (like many other council houses in this area) were built after the end of the II world war.