We always got told to clean the bath out because other families had to use it.
Burton
I was born in 1951 in Crow Street, born in the house. We had a sitting room, a bedroom and maybe there was another bedroom. The cooker was on the landing. There was a yard which the toilet was in the backyard, so sometimes you had to queue for the toilet, you know, but I was eight, eight or nine when we moved up to Johnson’s Court, because that was built in 1958. And we had a tin bath that we always kept in the backyard and I think the family shared that as well. We used to pull it in the house, sit in front of the fire and take turns. We always got told to clean the bath out because other families had to use it. When we moved out, I think they started knocking bits of our street down, because the top of our street was a dead end and Vaux used to have a garage there where they fixed the carts. We used to go in there and sometimes just play in there and stuff like that. Out the back of the house, you went straight across, there was an alleyway, went straight across over to Fenwick Street, and the alley carried on over to Green Terrace School.
Well, we were lucky because I think Johnson’s Court had 87 houses. So, I think everybody who lived in the town wanted to be at Johnson’s Court of course, you know, so we were lucky to get one I suppose. When you moved in there, it was like moving into Buckingham Palace. Yeah, you had central heating, toilet, bath, you know, a bedroom for me and my brother, it was great.
This memory is part of the Bishopwearmouth Townscape Heritage Scheme collection.