When I walked in I says to William my husband, I says, I’m never moving again.
Emma (right) with daughter Angela Goodwin
I lived in what they called the Ridges. I had a lovely upbringing, I mean you could leave your doors open and everything, I had a brilliant childhood.
I left the Ridges because my mother went to Biddlestone Crescent, up by The Pineapple pub, when I was eleven and I lived there until I got married. My first house was Rudyard Street and then my mother had a stroke. I went in with her to look after her and me mother died then I looked after me father and me sister and then when we left there we went to my husband’s mother’s then from there we went to Stevenage.
The Ridges late 1950s
We liked it, but I wasn’t too keen I was dying to get back home, so we saved up a deposit and we come back home and lived in Stormont Street. The favourite place was the Ridges when I was a kid. It’s not like that now like but I thought it was lovely, we had a lovely childhood, good mates and all sorts. In fact, I’ve got two mates we are all the same age, 90, and we are all widows and we’ve known each other since we were eleven. I went to the big school, so that’s a long time.
I love the house I’m in now I wouldn’t shift from there. In fact, when I walked into it it’s exactly like me mother’s, exact gardens, everything and when I walked in I says to William my husband, I says, “I’m never moving again,” and it was like his mother’s only the opposite way on. I says, “So don’t ask me to move again ‘cos I’m not moving,” ‘cos I felt at home. But yes, I can honestly say where I am now, I’m content where I am now.
When I was a teenager, we used to go along Saville Street, there was shops on either side, and good shops you know. You had Maynards with all the sweets and everything, you had the coffee shop, you had the Home and Colonial they used to pat your butter, different things, you don’t get now like. I mean, all the towns are going the same I think but oh it was lovely and we used to walk along just window shopping and we’d go along to Summers and buy a skirt or a dress or anything for the dance on the Saturday because you wouldn’t go dressed on the same thing and in the afternoon we’d go there, get our shopping. Then we used to go to Iness’s and get a sarsaparilla, I mean they were good old days.
Emma was interviewed as part of the North Shields 800 project