it’s just such a special place and I think anyone who’s from here feels that
I feel I’ve got a deep-rooted connection to North Shields as well because my family on both sides goes way back in North Shields. I was talking to a relative and one side of the family had the family tree researched back into the sixteen hundreds or something and it’s all just Fish Quay. They all worked in the rope factories, on the decks of ships and my great grandfather was the captain, a skipper, of a fishing trawler on the Fish Quay. Both sets of grandparents worked on the Fish Quay and both sets of grandparents brought up in North Shields. My maternal grandparents on The Ridges and they met in the Tyne Brand Factory working there, had loads of stories about there. I’ve been here all my life apart from when I went to university and lived one year abroad and then I came back to North Shields because it’s just such a special place and I think anyone who’s from here feels that. But even people I know who have just recently made it their home feel the same way. So, I don’t think you have to have that particular history, but I have and I’ve just got so many unique memories of the place.
My parents always went to all of the pubs in North Shields. There used to be an abundance of pubs which there aren’t as many now, but other things are popping up now again. My mam, in her 40s, became involved with the Amber Collective who took over a pub in North Shields and they invited people to sing-alongs and she went along and that was the start of a late singing career for her. And she became a singer in all of the local pubs and clubs for the rest of her life, almost every night. So I was dragged around all of that and obviously saw the life of the working men’s clubs, the social clubs, all the different places. So everywhere in North Shields has a special place in my heart.
My mam also wrote, she was the local correspondent for the Evening Chronicle for New York and Percy Main, so I was just involved in the life of the town all my life. And personally, I’ve grown up here, been to all the schools and everything. When I was a teacher, I taught in a school in the Meadowell for 10 years, so feel I’ve got to know so many families and recognise people everywhere. There’s all sorts of connections I’ve got, but I just love North Shields and everything about it really, I always have done.
My mam recorded everything on cassette tape and I’m in the process of going through all these recordings now, 18 years after she died. I’ve found, she’s doing all of the pubs, the local pubs in the area, singer’s conversations, musicians, all sorts, it’s fascinating. But the Amber Collective, they had these specific sing-alongs so they could make their film set in the pub. Different films were set there, Shields Stories, a North Shields soap opera that was made with Robson Green in. There was a German film company came over, they did a collaboration with them. Rostock Marx, from Marks & Spencer to Marx and Engels, my mam’s captured the whole night when the German company were in the pub on cassette tape. It was just a fascinating time and I think that sort of time there was a lot of creativity going on. The Fish Quay Festival was huge, you know tens of thousands, if not more, people visiting that. And I think that sort of creativity and people coming together is happening again now in the town and I think there’s always been that there. There’s always been a good scene of music and creative people of character because of the shared history and heritage and I think it’s all sort of becoming a stronger community now because of all of that.
I was born in Preston Hospital and I was brought up on Spring Terrace in North Shields and that’s where my dad still lives and I live just a few houses away on Lovaine Terrace. Basically, the same street where I grew up and it’s a lovely street because, well back when my grandparents and parents grew up, they had whole families living on the same street. My mum and her sister and cousins all grew up on Prospect Terrace which is now an industrial estate, near the Wilkinson Pop Factory Air-raid Shelter.
So everyone grew up on the same street, but my dad’s street, Spring Terrace, still has that. It’s always had a few houses owned by the same family and it’s stayed in the same generations of people kept living there for years, so it’s a lovely area. So yeah, my mam grew up on Prospect Terrace and my granddad grew up on Prince’s Street in a tiny flat, all of his siblings were in the same bed. Then on my grandma’s side on the Meadowell, there were loads of them, they had about 9 siblings or something. I’ve just met a long-lost cousin who’s been going to my yoga classes, I just knew him as the man who goes to yoga ‘cos hardly many men go. He came up at the end of the class and said, “Was your mum Veronica?” and I said, “Yes, how do you know?” and he said “You just look like her.” And he said, “I’m your cousin,” and I just couldn’t believe it. And through him we’ve made connections with that side of the family again. We’ve been to a family funeral together. It’s just amazing that that’s what North Shields is like, everybody knows everybody. Everyone that you meet will know someone that you know in North Shields.
I’m aware of the huge changes that are happening now, you know, the people call it gentrification, but it’s not really happening like that, there’s just interesting things going on. And businesses are still struggling, the High Street is struggling as well, but that’s a nationwide problem isn’t it? There’s a lot of nostalgia, especially in North Shields, for the old ways and the old fishing communities and the old way of life, but times change.
Caroline overlooking Fish Quay © Hazel Plater
I love a particular view from the Bank Top when you’re walking along towards The High Light and you’re looking down onto The Gut with the fishing boats. And I know a lot of people would like that view because it’s a picturesque view, but it just conjures up so may memories for me because my mam worked in an office on the Fish Quay and we used to use it as a base for when the Tall Ships came past or when the Fish Quay Festival was on. And she loved that area as well and it was above Wight’s Shop and she used to always be in the shop chatting to people instead of being in the office and everyone knew her because of that. I was delighted when the shop sign was rescued from a skip and put in the Engine Room bar, and it’s in there now. But when I go along that Bank Top I look down and I remember the Fish Quay Festivals and I’ve got a picture of my mam standing in that exact place with her Fish Quay Festival Tee-Shirt on looking delighted ‘cos she loved all of that. And there’s also the park with Stan Laurel in it as well. My mam loved walking the dog round there so we always walked around there together and she was part of the Laurel and Hardy Society and that place just reminds me of all that. But then I think that when I’m so drawn to that place, whenever I go for a walk I just walk along the Bank Top and look down onto the Fish Quay there. Since I’ve discovered all these connections to the Fish Quay in my family’s history I think have I got some sort of draw to it because of that as well. And I read a book, it was called The Herring Girl, and it was written by the person in The High Light and it was all about that sort of area. The Bank, where they used to watch the fishermen going out and watch for them coming in, and it looked very different in those days. I just thought it was funny how that place was described where they used to sit all along that bank looking for the fishing boats coming in. So, yeah, that’s my special place.
The cultural scene is quite thriving now, lots of little art and music and writing activities going on a lot, but it’s the businesses that need to thrive a bit more in the town centre. There are a lot of empty premises, run down, so that’s why community groups like Project Nile Street have started trying to spruce the place up a bit, but these are all volunteers. I know that all the regeneration of the pedestrianisation of Bedford Street, it’s going to maybe look like Howard Street in the future, but for more to be made of that. So even Howard Street, the Cultural Quarter, seems that there’s not that much going on. I know we’ve got The Art Gallery, The Exchange, but maybe we could have something like along the lines of Tynemouth Market with independent stalls down there occasionally. I know we do with festivals in the Square, but a bit more support for independent business owners so that they can thrive. I don’t know whether that’s to do with rents I don’t know. But repurposing buildings so that they can have more relevant use and just to continue the community centres and groups. Linskill Centre does a lot of good work, there’s the Meadows at Meadowell. Just to continue those sort of community activities that are accessible to everyone that don’t cost anything. Continue to foster the sense of community so that there aren’t any ghettos where people are left out, so that everyone can be inclusive, the community in the town.
(Can I just talk to you about your role in ‘I Love North Shields’, because, that’s proving fantastically popular?)
I had no expectations at the start, I just responded to a call out by Simmie, the Editor, for stories for a magazine that she was intending to start and I thought, well I wanted to tell the story about my dad building a boat in his attic. He’s inherited his grandfather’s sea legs and he built this boat in his late eighties, through Covid and everything, and brought it downstairs and had a boatshed built, all his own design. So, I thought I wanted to tell that story and that was the only idea I had. So, I met with Simmie and a couple of other people who were interested in writing for the magazine as well. So, we all met and at this point it hadn’t started yet and it all just started from there. So we published an issue, gathered stories and people that wanted to be involved, a collection of volunteers and we’ve published 14 issues now and it’s just gone beyond all expectations really. We’ve got over 20,000 followers online in various groups and things and we’ve had so many interesting interviews. We’ve made so many connections, we’ve brought lots of people together who’ve formed friendships, found work through each other. It’s just turned into so much more than just a magazine that we started and it’s all entirely run by volunteers, you know we don’t really get funded. It’s just everyone just doing it because they want to and that in itself shows the sense of community that people have, they want to be involved.
We have so many enquiries, so many people all the time. There’s so much history, I mean 800 years! We don’t have enough time to investigate everything and I don’t think we’ll ever run out, no!
I feel like there’s so much going on now, we don’t have time to go to everything and to enjoy everything that’s happening, which is a good thing, but I keep thinking, “Oh wouldn’t it be nice to be retired so I can just go to everything that’s happening.” I wouldn’t be bored, I would never be bored in North Shields. There’s always someone to talk to, have a chat to, to bump into, even if you’re not going to a specific event. So, yeah just to continue being happy where we are and having time to meet our friends and health, obviously. Yes, so I’ve had a big change from working in education to working at home, so that I Love North Shields has allowed me to still have that connection to the community. So I would like to still remain connected and part of the community in whatever shape or form in the future.
Caroline was interviewed as part of the North Shields Voices Project.