Our front door never had a lock on – you just opened the front door
Jennifer
We had in what was like the living room, you know, your big fire range. And there was a settee and a table, and then there was a little sort of like cupboard with a little cooker in, and you got your water from downstairs in the yard and carried it up, you know.
Interviewer
So it was just cold water outside in the yard?
Jennifer
Yeah, and one toilet. You know, I tell my children, like my grandchildren, who’ve got their own children now, that you know we never had like toilet paper, it was newspapers in a square and they go, oh like that, and I’ll go, do you know what, our toilet was nipping, nipping clean for all the tenants because we had to keep it clean, you know.
Barry (in the pram) and Jennifer in the 1950s
Interviewer
So how many people do you think lived in the house?
Jennifer
Eight.
Interviewer
And when did you and your family leave Church Lane?
Jennifer
I went to Cowan Terrace School, maybe when I was about 11, 10 or 11. There was only the three houses, you know, and I don’t know what they were doing with them. You know, obviously I was too young to ask questions about, you know, why we were moving. I just thought we just got a bigger house because obviously there was a lot, well five of us then. I know next door to us, they had the whole house to themselves. When you went in their house, they had stairs up from the sitting room and it had like a balcony. There was a couple of old ladies lived in the end home. Our front door never had a lock on. You just opened the front door, because that’s the way things were in them days. Our front door was open all the time. And when you opened the front door, there was a long passage, stone and I mean in the night time, going to the toilet, it was really like dark, you know. And all our coal houses were along this passage and then there was a gate at the end like a door which led into the yard and the toilet was in the corner. We all got on you know.
This memory is part of the Bishopwearmouth Heritage Scheme collection.