Smudgeinthebudge

It was serious violence, People talk about the kids now but a normal Friday night at the Clayton, if it happened now, would probably make the national news and the fully armoured riot police would be using tasers, baton rounds, cs gas and water cannon to sort it all out. There would be a few hundred asbos handed out and the venue would be immediately shut down. Oh for the good old days when we knew how to enjoy ourselves.

I've remembered one from my childhood that went like this;- Av got a gud Ganny, a very gud Ganny, A very gud Ganny is she. Shi rubs me belly wif a haf a brick, and skelps me bum wif a rhubarb stick. Another one (sung to the tune of Rule Britannia) Rule Britannia mother's mekkin jam, three bangers behind her bum, Bang! Bang! Bang! A think these show a healthy irreverence the kids had then. AB

Yes, it's definitely the top budge. I remember the plaque. I recognise Wilf Halliday who used to come to my Grandads a lot when I was a bairn. My dad used to design sashes for some of the picnic queens including the main one. He used to paint the lettering and badges and his aunt, Maggie Baxter, who was a seamstress, used to sow them but I think the ones in the picture might have been earlier than when he started doing them. There are some of his in Woodhorn. Do you know how budges got their name. Quite a few of them had the initials of the council, Bedingtonshire Urban District Council "BUDC" on top. At some stage someone put a line across the C and added an E. Hence BUDGE. AB

The top budge. The most luxurious of all the budges.

The Netherton Coop burnt down as far as I remember in the late fifties or early sixties. The Managers name was Storey and as a kid I played with his son in the yard of the house. I remember the store burning down and later I can remember a barn owl nesting in the burnt out ruin. What a life that pair of owls must have had. The village and surrounding countryside was totally overrun by young birdnesters. I can't remember when exactly the new prefab one was built across the road from my house but I think the Manager was called George and his assistant was called Agnes. I don't know when Ester took it over. I think I must have joined the army by that time. I also new Bob Rochester who worked on bank at the pit. They had a house up at Nedderton Village. AB

The camps were originally army camps during the second world war. The Gordon Highlanders were stationed there before D-day. In 1969 I served with an old scotsman called Jimmy in Bielefeld in Germany. When we first met he asked me where I came from. When I answered near Bedlington he answered "Is the Red lion still there"? Then he asked me where near Bedlington I said Netherton and he told me he used to go to dances in the Tute. I did not ask him if he knew my mother. After the war there was a severe shortage of housing as men were coming home from the war and a lot of young couples were getting married after the war, hence the baby boom. One of the solutions in Bedlingtonshire was converting the disused nissan huts into houses as well as building prefabs and a massive council house building programme. Some streets were named after councillors at the time, such as Elenbel avenue and Tomlea Avenue. I don't think the Oval was a councillor's name. My grandad refused to have a street named after himself or there would have been an Adammair lane or something in the shire. My Mam and Dad got married and after living in for a while went to live at one of the camps. They moved to first street in the colliery where they were living when I was born. We moved to Elenbel avenue when I was one and a half. I've mentioned in another post, in the photo above my Grandad is the little man seated in the middle of the front row. Hope this helps a bit. AB

Being in the B stream at the Grammar I never did latin either, the only latin I ever learnt was school and army badges and the non carborundum illegitimus was army slang that may have latin or outer Mongolian as far as I'm concerned. It is supposed to be latin. It's supposed to mean "don't let the b------s grind you down". The line "to the hills we lift our eyes" was the second line of the grammar school hymn written by Miss Humphries who was quite old then, She taught my mother when she was there. AB

The little man sitting in the middle of the front row is my Grandad Adam Mair who was councillor for Netherton ward at the time which I think Hartford came under at the time. AB

"To the hills we lift our eyes" Nah. It was more De Profundis for meI or Non carborundum illegitimus! AB

It was also good fun to to roll up a news paper, light it and drop it down the shaft and see how far it dropped before the light went out, some lads actually squeezed through the rails (one rail was bent just far enough to let thin lads through) and bird nested in the shaft itself. (The only concession to safety was a clothes line tied around their waists) I never did that. I did a risk assessment and decided it was too dangerous. Very faint memories of the caravan. We didn't move back to Netherton until 1958 but before that I spent loads of time there visiting both sets of Grandparents which is how I remember the tower. My Dad told me that when they were lads they used to climb to the top of the tower and work the big stones loose and push them down the shaft. But of course in those days they had even less H&S than we had as kids. My Dad also said that at the Choppington end of the lonnen a ragman known as Rammy had some land which is where the expression "it's like Rammy's ranch in here" comes from.

We in the colliery used to think that it must have been named after a canny old couple that used to live there but that was totally wrong. It was originally called something like the Bobbin Gin pit as the winding gear was horse powered in a gin gang (at least I think that is what the building was called.) they used to have them on farms for threshing and you can still find them dotted around the countryside. There were probably more lonnens around Netherton than in Newcastle (silver lonnen, two ball lonnen). We had the Lonnen, or Choppington Lonnen, the clarty lonnen, the club lonnen or black lonnen, the farm lonnen and the miner's gate lonnen. Does anyone remember the two footpaths to Bedlington - The high fields and the low fields?

I remember the explosives store, in fact, I've been in it. Someone used to take us down there in groups to show the Lads it when they started the Pit. The Green letch has always been half dried up since they built the houses at Westlea and opencasted the field upstream between Netherton and Northridge. My mother always told us how much deeper it was and how the kids in her day used to catch sticklebacks and minnows in it. It ran through a culvert under the lonnen just before the explosives store and we thought it was a great adventure to go through it. upstream you could nearly walk in, but the rounded roof got lower and lower so that you had to wriggle on you belly to get out the other end. AB

I saw a couple of posts here that mention "Netherton lonnen" and I thought it would be worth opening it as a topic in it's own right. When I was little the Francis pit shaft tower, built of stone was at the top end of the lonnen as you approached the bottom end of the colliery rows. When we moved back to the colliery when I was 8 the Francis pit shaft was surrounded by a brick wall with railway lines cemented over the shaft. The lonnen I knew as just the lonnen but I was surprised to find Bedlington lads calling it the waggonway. When I was 15 and working as a mining apprentice I had to work for a fortnight in the colliery office where one of the clerks (I think there were only two at that time) showed me a bill of sale showing that Netherton coal had been shipped from Blyth to London in 1714. After a bit of research I think my memory might be wrong and it must have been 1814. But this man also told me that they had found cut stone railway sleepers in the field across the main road at the bottom end. That's in the dip between Bedlington and where Choppington station used to be. I've now got a map which shows the Netherton waggonway following the course of the lonnen to join Barrington waggonway to the east side of the field which went to The Bedlington ironworks. Bells ranch was at the top of the lonnen on the right hand side as you approached the houses. Mr and Mrs Bell lived next door to my grandma and granda in third street. I hope this is of interest AB.

I only spent a short time at Westridge, a term or two, after refusing to go back to the Grammar school which I hated at the time. I must say it was probably one of my happiest times at school. I was rarely bored in the lessons and really took to subjects I'd never taken before, like metal work and technical drawing. Most of the teachers seemed enthusiastic and I had my mates around me. A lot of fun and I look back and sometimes wish I'd never passed the eleven plus, but hindsight is pretty useless really. I left at the end of the summer term in 1965. Although I was in 4r the lure of money made me want to leave so I did without a single qualification to my name. Great fun reading the posts on here.

I cannot remember much about the cinemas in Blyth but I do remember going for an interview for an apprentice projectionist job at the Wallaw when I left school. They told me that I would have had the job except for the travelling difficulties getting back to Netherton after the last show. I can't for the life of me think where the box office was. I do remember going to the matinees at the Prince of Wales on a Saturday. It seemed a pea-shooter was the weapon of choice for most of the lads during the "soppy" bits (romance scenes) during the film. The Wallaw at Bedlington Station was the picture house I frequented the most. When I was little my mam used to take me there to see films she thought were good for me like Ben Hur, Gone with the Wind, the Robe and the African Queen, but I prefered westerns and war films like Shane and In which we serve. AB