Still friends to this day with nearly all the kids that we grew up with
Terry McDermott on the Fish Quay © Hazel Plater
Born and bred in North Shields 72 years ago. I live in Wallsend now because that’s where me wife came from, but proud to be a Shields lad.
I do still have memories of living in Maple Crescent with the Smiths and the Crammonds who lived downstairs and across from us. Moving up to Redesdale Grove from Maple Crescent, I always remember me dad saying, “It was like winning the lottery son when me and your mam got the keys to go in the brand new houses with central heating and a front garden and a back garden”. So, loads of lovely memories living in The Grove, still friends to this day with nearly all the kids that we grew up with, living in that Grove was a great community builder. It was like one big family, mams and dads were out in the streets always talking and chatting and we were always playing out in the street playing football and cricket and tennis and hide and seek, knocky door neighbour and all the things. So, it was a great upbringing in Redesdale Grove.
Lots of memories about Collingwood, the first teacher, I remember going into her classroom, I can see her now in me mind’s eye and then working all me way through Collingwood school from the infants right through to the juniors and then off to Linskill. Linskill at that time was separated, boys end and the girls end and there was a red line on that corridor and you did not cross that line.
[What is your favourite place in North Shields and why?]
Low Lights Tavern – Newcastle Libraries
Obviously the Fish Quay. Being a fisherman, I spent a lot of years working out of North Shields. I still drink in the Low Lights tavern to this day, which I think is an amazing public house. Danny and Cameron, the landlords, really try to cross the divide of the old and the new. Like the older generation who have been down there working and living most of our lives and the new generation that are moving in. Everybody is still welcome no matter what, everybody’s the same. I still love the fish quay and I’ve done so much work down there with me project the North Shields Fisherman’s Heritage Project.
We’re never going to see a big thriving fishing fleet, we’re not going to see any shipyards on the river anymore. Sadly, all those industries have gone and those big industries when they were there and working, they fed the town with money. The men made the money; they took the money up into the town and they spent it with all the local traders. Then, your big supermarkets came in, everybody went out into the supermarkets, and the town started to die down a little bit.
So, even though the big heavy industries have gone now, there’s new industries developing down there and that’s arts, culture, food, entertainment. Those industries still have to be funded by somebody, so wherever the money comes from with the new industries I hope to see North Shields in 15 years’ time still a thriving community. But it will be a different community, it will not be the hard-working class communities that I came from, it’ll be a more modern version of that. I’d love to see some of the architecture still in place along Saville Street, down Bedford Street and places like that. I’d like to see it still as a living and thriving community.
Book of Remembrance © NSFHP
As co-founder and Chairman of the project part of my legacy, or the Fisherman’s Heritage Project’s legacy, are going to be the two magnificent statues that we’re responsible for, The Fisherman on Fiddler’s Green and the Herring Girl along on the Western quay. To add to that we’ve got a Book of Remembrance in North Shields central library, in the history section, where fishermen, when they pass their names go into this Book of Remembrance. It’s all hand-written by Tim Sokell at Sokell Design. My name will be in there eventually and that’s a living history of the men who worked out of Shields. So, that can be used as a teaching aid for generations to come. They can go into the library and they can look back on that and they can see the names of all the men who built North Shields because North Shields was built on the back of the fishing industry.
So, I think my legacy will be the work that I’ve done as Chairman and co-founder of the North Shields Fisherman’s Heritage Project. We’ve been going ten years now and we’ve raised over £135,000. We’ve got a programme of free school trips to Grimsby, where the project funds the trips completely. The mams and dads pay nothing, the schools pay nothing, and we’ve got letters from children saying they’ve never been out of North Shields. So, that to me, is my legacy. I’ve got a letter from a 9-year-old boy saying that it was the best day in his life.
Yes, that’s it.
Terry was interviewed as part of the North Shields 800 Voices Project