Alan Edgar (Eggy1948)

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.

Only tins of peas - she does prefer fresh veg and eats quite a lot of veg.

@Diana - I suppose it's possible that the 4 rows of houses on the map, published 1866, you posted that the unnamed rows on the map were simply known as 'nxx Collier Row'. The names that we all new them by were , South Row (2 rows), North Row & Shop Row as named on the map published in 1924. You probably have looked already but this is the Bedlington - Station & Top End area now. This shows where the two pits were :- I checked on the DMM site just to see if Lewis had died in a mining accident but he dose not get a mention on the site. The DMM site lists the mines that were killed whilst working for the pit. The Info for the two Bedlington pits is listed under 'Bedlington Colliery' and ' D/Doctor Pit' but you will see that the info overlaps. http://www.dmm.org.uk/colliery/index_a.htm I will post the few images that I have of the 'A' pit rows this evening.

Morning Diana. If it had of been Bedlington 'A' colliery (previously known as Sleekburn Colliery) that your relative(s) worked at then I would be able to add some info for you this morning. However your info - ' .... 1st Colliery Row......, ' from the 1861 census makes me think it could be the other Bedlington pit we should be looking at. According to the Durham Mining Museum site (holds info on all the Durham & Northumberland collieries) The Bedlington 'A' pit was opened in 1838 and the other Bedlington colliery, The Doctor Pit, was opened in 1855. Bedlington is divided into two parts - Bedlington Station, where the 'A' pit was, and the Top End of Bedlington, where the Doctor pit was. When researching the area @Canny lass found 'Old Colliery Row' on an old map and that row was at the Top End. What I don't know is if there was a row name Colliery Row at Bedlington station. I will put together some old map images of the area containing the two collieries and post them into further comments. Just recently we created an album, in the gallery section, for The Doctor Pit and Rows and canny lass and @James added photo and info for Old Colliery Row. This is a link to the entry in the album :- @Canny lass - did we once find something referencing a Colliery Row around the Clayton area of Bed Stn?

@Diana - there are a few photos of the 'A' pit and houses but I can't remember seeing a photo of the gardens, you will have to rely on our memories for most of the info. Do you know what row your great grandmother lived in - South Row - North row or Shop Row? Closing down my PC for tonight - I will dig out some photos and post them for you tomorrow. This is a 1924 aerial shot of the area :-

@Symptoms - there was. A few members of the local Facebook group say it was where the Community Center is and @James , in 2016, posted this comment on this site :- ' The TSB was on the ground floor. The top floor was the 'chute' (the Dr Pit Mechanics Welfare Institute). It had 3 billiard tables, a small library and a caretaker who ran the 'chute' with a firm hand and was quick to throw you out if you were misbehaving in any way. Can anyone remember his name?' Not sure if I have the entrance to the library marked correctly .

@James - there is a 1963 photo of the Bedlington Co-op, after it had burnt out, at Netherton Colliery in the album 'Historic Bedlington>Netherton/Nedderton old photos' by @Carole. You could add your photo/scan + info, from the Bedlingtonshire Revisited booklet, within Carole's entry.

@Jammy - according to the wife we have a photo of her mam and another lass working at the Co-op sitting on the co-op butchers van outside the co-op. Unfortunately she doesn't know where it is. 🙃 A few years back I scanned every photo we had loose or in an album so I thought we now had everything on the PC's. Looks like she still has a shoe box stuffed away in one of the bedroom cupboards🙁

Unfortunately @Jammy - nobody left in mine or the wife's family left to ask. I wouldn't be surprised if the Cowell family butchers, across the road, from Cramlington Co-op, were in business/competition at the same time. Do you know any of the Cowell family? @Symptoms we Bedlington Station lads wouldn''t know about a library at the Top End. In Evan Martin's books he gives info on the West End Branch - Bedlington equitable Industrial Co-operative Society but that's a building I have no memory of. I definitely remember the Co-op presence on Front Street East. That's where we had to go to get school clothing for the BGS - it wasn't the real school clothing, just a similar colour green jacket. The real BGS gear was from Rutherfords (I think) in Newcastle. We had to get the school badge from Rutherfords to sew onto the jacket pocket of the Co-op green blazer. The East End Coop shops started at the Locke building and went down to nearly to the Dun Cow.

@Symptoms & @Jammy - I've been trying to find an old photo of the Co-op building on Station Street as I was going to add photo + info into the album on page 2 of Historic Bedlington>Old Photos of Bedlington 2. I can't find an old photo/postcard just showing the building so I will be posting an old postcard of Station Street + some google street view images of the Co-op building. Jammy - your right in that it was Cramlington Co-op on Station Street. My mother-in-law, from Nelson Village, Cramlington, used to work there in the late 1930's - early 1940's. I don't know when it ceased being Cramlington Co-op. I always remembered it as the Dole/Unemployment Office in the early 1960's. The Dole office was on the 1st floor (I can't remember the ground floor being in use in the 1960's - but it could have been 🙃) and that's where I first 'Signed On' in 1965 when first leaving school. The library building on the corner of Station Road & Jubilee Terrace, next to the Bedlington Co-op (or was it called the Blyth Co-op back in the 1960's) used to be the colliery school and there is info and photos in the album - Bedlington Station (Sleekburn) 1st School, started pre 1858. An old school mate - Janice Metcalf - gave me a photo of her mam at the school in c1938. By then the old colliery school had been extended. In the 1960's I knew the building as the library and the lace where the school meals were made.

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