My mum did all of her shopping on a bicycle, so the shopping would have been done on a daily basis
Anne in the garden
My name is Anne Leathem. I was born in Leybourne Avenue, Forest Hall in 1960. (The photo is an early one of me in the garden at Leybourne Avenue.)
The Co-op was one of the main shops in the area at that time. I can remember it having different departments. There was definitely a draper’s department – I think as you went in the door – and there was a butcher’s towards the back and I believe there was an abattoir behind the building and so the meat was freshly produced I suppose.
The other shops in Forest Hall I can remember – there was a small bakery which is still in existence and down the road at the side of that there was a wool shop owned by somebody called Mrs Brown and that had a terrifying gas fire in it. I think some of the interior of the fire had burnt away and flames used to come out. It was quite alarming as a small child; it was kind of on eye-level. The main road in Forest Hall, shops were only on one side of it at that point and there weren’t the Estate Agents and Takeaways that are there now. The first shop was a Cobblers, people had their shoes repaired rather bought new ones. And above the Cobblers was the Dentist which at that point was Pearson’s, it later became Reed’s. And I remember as a small child sitting in the waiting room at the Dentist’s being absolutely terrified, because the noise of the drill from the surgery mixed with the equipment down in the Cobbler’s shop and it was really loud and quite scary. Next door to the Cobbler’s there was Bell’s the Chemist. And then I believe there was a drapery shop called Percival’s, my mum used to go there sometimes. She did a lot of knitting and would buy wool from there or from Mrs Brown’s. All of our school cardigans, all of our clothes were hand made basically, mostly knitted jumpers and things. Even at high school I had hand knitted cardigans, but mum also used to make our skirts and so on. There was a Barclays bank which has just fairly recently closed down and I seem to remember it being in the same location for quite a long time just on one side of the first road that goes down towards the library in Forest Hall. I remember the Post Office being in various locations, that seem to move around quite a bit. There’s been a Boots the Chemist all the time I can remember and there was a Butcher’s shop which isn’t there now. The end shop which is now some sort of a convenience store was a Law’s stores when I remembered going shopping there and that would have been, apart from the Co-op, one of the places that mum would have gone shopping.
Anne’s mum at the front gate
My mum did all of her shopping on a bicycle. She never learned to drive a car, so the shopping would have been done on a daily basis. I mentioned the library, that was in the same position as it still is in Forest Hall, tucked away behind the shops and I can remember going in there with my mum, she used to read a lot. But going in as a young girl and asking for library tickets for myself so that I could take books out too and I read my way through quite a lot from there.
Later on, in Forest Hall, I can remember shops developing on the other side of the road and there was definitely either a Redifusion or Radio Rentals television shop where you would go in and pay for your rented television because nobody, well nobody that I knew, had a television of their own at that point. They were much too prone to blowing up or stopping working, so you rented them and paid a bit of money every week and if it went wrong somebody came out and fixed it or you got a new one. There was a Bookless’ fruit and veg shop at one point over there and I remember a café called The Coffee Pot, which was probably the first of the Takeaway places in Forest Hall. I don’t remember Greggs being there all the time, but I do remember getting cream cakes, so perhaps it was. Maybe it moved around a bit.
Apart from the static shops there were quite a lot of mobile shops that used to come around. Remembering that a lot of people didn’t have cars, that’s why they existed. There was definitely a Fish Shop van that came to Leybourne Avenue. Coal was delivered and we had a coalhouse at the end of the garden where the coal was delivered into then brought into the house by bucket. At that point we only had coal fires in two rooms downstairs. There was no central heating or anything upstairs. Oil and paraffin was delivered earlier on and there was definitely a fruit and veg horse and cart, that came around probably every week. That was run by somebody called Bobby King, who lived at the top of Killingworth Bank and that was certainly still going round until 1985. I know that because there was a photo taken on the day my sister got married of the horse and cart outside our house. There was also an egg man who came on a Sunday, usually when we were having lunch and he brought eggs in a bucket. Where he came from I have got no idea, very mysterious, but it was quite a useful delivery service. Prudential came around every week or fortnight, I don’t know how often, for life assurance I think. There was a pop man, although we never got fizzy pop, so we didn’t get anything delivered off that. And milk was delivered in glass bottles every day by the Co-op and you got tokens from the Co-op to get the milk.
Going back to the Co-op, I picked the bread up on my way home from school and it always used to get home with no crusts because I had eaten them on the way. Willow Dene was the other shop in the area. That was on the same side of Great Lime Road as the Co-op, but in the other direction. It was a fruit and veg shop and they also had some poultry at the end. That was in existence for quite a while, but there are houses there now. It was first of all run by somebody called Garbutt that I remember and then Monaghans took over later on. There was a Jet garage and petrol station on the corner of West Lane and Great Lime Road. That was owned by Coopers and the mechanic at the garage was called Alan Twist. They did servicing and so on as well as providing petrol. There was a tiny shop there as well, so if we did run out of milk we could go there. The Co-op was where Sambuca’s is now, on Great Lime Road and after it ceased trading as a Co-op it became a Job Centre for a while before it took on its new role as a restaurant.
This memory is part of a longer memory entitled “Forest Hall, Killingworth and West Moor in the 1960s-70s”.