Remembering shops in Forest Hall.
We thought it would be a challenge to try and remember the names of shops in a particular area so some of our volunteers in the Forest Hall area took it on. Some of the shops have been used by a few different shopkeepers over the years. Can you remember anything about the ones on these lists? We’ve gone down one side and up the other, starting below St Bartholomew’s Church.
Polly White – Linen & Baby clothes
Teddy Brown – Boxer’s house
Pork shop, then fruit & vegetable, now a sandwich shop
Taylor’s/Watson’s a butchers from 1937
Horner’s – a sweet shop before Smith’s
Norman Brown, a bakers that later moved to West View
Wade’s fish and chip shop, now a Chinese
Bute House Stores, previously a drapers
Wine shop
Hadrian Stores
Cramlington Co-op, now a carpet shop
The Fruit Emporium
Then: Christ Church, Park, Allotments, Field, Fly-over (now)
Pitt the butcher
Armstrong the fruit shop
Durey’s double shop
Whitfield’s confectioners, Hall’s
Snaith’s Post Office, before Miss Durey’s drapery
Then: Railway Crossing
On the opposite side of the road there was:-
Mrs Brown’s woolshop
Weightman’s Hairdresser and Decorator (the same family)
Off Licence
Mordue, the bakery, before Norman Brown
Scott the Cobbler
Bell’s Chemist
Jemison Electrics. Then Percival’s – drapers, shoes etc.
Stephenson, wallpaper and decorating shop, then an off licence
The Post Office
There was a house set back with a garden that extended onto the pavement. Mr & Mrs Targer and Cliff lived there.
Kiplings hairdresser and barber, then Albert Hewitt’s shop
A cycle shop, originally Victor Dole, then Henty Gibson (ex-RAF, usually known as Flying Officer Kite). The shop had a good range of toys and was always full of children.
Laws Stores, now Greggs
Pearl Assurance offices
Lamb’s the Chemist, now Boots
Huntley Wrightson, before Kirtley’s (Mrs Bousfield) – hardware
Carricks the Bakers
Post Office run by the Snaith family
Then: Open space where Laws Stores was built, then Lows, now Kular’s
Butcher, Mitchell Park, then G Heaviside who later moved across the road.
Tobacconist
Naylor the Taylor
Then: Houses until you reached Gargett’s Corner
Gargett’s Cycle shop
Green grocer (Mrs Barker and Audrey Gibson) before Hart’s Hardware
Greengrocer before/at the time of the picture house
Then: Houses
Baptist Church with pool underground, now a block of flats
Ritz Buildings, various shops including McDougal’s fruit shop, Taylor’s hairdressing
Labour Hut
Arthur Chapman, gents barber
Storey’s Garage
Brown’s Paper Shop in hut on corner of Clousden Hill
Next, Great Lime Road, Clousden Hill to Benton Square
“Clarke’s Hoose” at the corner of Great Lime Road and Killingworth Bank, a pub that became ‘The Clousden Hill’ for many years. Clark was the landlord. Hence “Clarke’s Hoose” and Clarke’s Lonnen.
Oakfield House at the top of Nicholson Terrace, a small busy general house run in the house by Mrs Murray
Lamb’s Farm, later Ord’s Nursery
Two hinds cottages
Railway line from Killingworth High Pit
Methodist Chapel, later sold to Salvation Army
‘Cement Houses’, three blocks of 20 houses. They had long front gardens reaching to the road. Straker’s fish and chips had a shop in one of the gardens for some time.
Nothing else but fields to benton Square.
Benton Hill to Clousden Hill
The Wheatsheaf pub
The Prosperous Pit, worked till 1966 as part of the Algernon Pit
A bridge over the railway line, now the Metro
School House, where Mr Humble, the Headmaster lived
Benton Square School
Rippon’s Fields, down to Co-operative terrace
Clarabad Terrace
Cramlington Co-operative Stores
Beatties shop and Firzgerald’s
Bamford Terrace, hairdresser and post office
Nothing else until Thorrington’s shop, grocery. Stan and June Hedley worked there. They bought the shop from Thorrington’s, it was previously Jobson’s.
Nothing else until recent times – the Musketeer pub, a garage, Forest Hall Club and a Shell garage (now demolished), then back to Clousden Hill corner.
ALL THOSE SHOPS IN ONE SMALL AREA!