The centrepiece was the Hall, a grand building for indoor games, paid for by the miners.
Someone asked me recently where Castle Park is? It’s the place where I was born. Backworth golf course backs onto Castle Park. If you leave Shiremoor heading north you come to Backworth and then Castle Park, that’s on the way to Seghill. What confuses most people is Old Backworth electric train station was in Shiremoor (or Moorside to be exact), a distance of 2 miles from Backworth’s school, pits, golf course, or village.
The park in that area is huge and used to consist of small and large parks, the small with all the swings, teapot lids, the biggest slide I’ve ever seen in a park, shuggy boats, 2 football fields, and a place to sit out of the rain. The big park had a couple of footy pitches also for the senior lads, plus a cricket pitch, as well as bowling greens, tennis courts, all these were intermingled by walkways, which the greenkeeper kept beautifully edged with flowers.
The centrepiece was the Hall, a grand building for indoor games paid for by the miners. On the top floor was half a dozen full-size snooker tables, on the lower, were table tennis. Outside were all the sports fields covering acres of space all surrounded by meadows, and trees, with the golf course for a perimeter. It really should be called Castle Park golf course, however when the pits died the men with money took over and now golf is the number one thing, the great hall is for the golfers mostly.