Cultureshock

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Video transcript

Whenever I go to Beamish I always make a beeline for the miner’s cottages in the pit village. I peep in at the door at the black-leaded range and the big old table with the chenille cover on. I wander around to the back yard and peep in at the scullery window with its little row of bonny egg cups and it’s like being transported back in time. Not to the 20’s or 30’s but to the early 60’s believe it or not, to 11 Thornton’s Close, Beamish and my nana and granda Armstrong’s house.

It was in a long row of pit houses with an outside nettie across the street and an allotment behind. They had lived there ever since my mam was little and had brought up 3 children there right through the war. I spent so many happy times there when I was little. I used to sleep in the little back bedroom that you got to through the big bedroom. It hung like an overshot at the back of the house and you could see Beamish woods down below out of the tiny back window. There was only one door at the front of the houses and every step was kept painted a brilliant white no-one ever had a mucky step! The house still had its black leaded range and nana used to do all the cooking and heat all the water on it. If it was wash day (always a Monday!) and it was wet the only living room would be full of clothes horses and wet hanging clothes. If it was dry the women used to string the washing lines across the street and from top to bottom it would be full of flapping sheets. We kids used to love to play hide and seek among them and every so often either nana or one of the other women would shout you kids keep your mucky paws off me clean sheets or else! The big kitchen table, the old horse-hair chairs that used to make the back of your legs itch, the tiny scullery with its row of egg cups, all my memories of the 60’s along with the Beatles and hoola hoops and roller skates believe it or not! The houses were demolished in 1965 and all the families were moved out to new homes. The whole street was split up and my granda died only a few months later. I never went back, it was truly the end of an era for me.