..of course there was no electricity, so it was gas lights up above the fireplace in the front room.
Number 3 with white door frame
Steve
When I was born, I moved into 3 The Green. I lived there until I was about one, and then we moved, our family moved off out to Pennywell. But the thing is, my grandmother and my auntie continued to live there for, I don’t know what it was, another 10 or 12 years, until that row of houses was knocked down. So, you know, we were continually visiting that at least twice a week, and even like sleepovers and all the rest of it. So although I only like lived there a year when I was too young to remember, my memories go on until I was like 12 or 13, visiting my grandmother and auntie who lived there. There was my mam, my dad, my brother, who’s like three years older than me and me from being born. We were on the Minster side of the Green. So, as you looked out the window and looked out the front door, you were looking across the Bullring at Wetherells. As far as I remember it was a two-bedroom house. My grandmother had a bed like in the front room and then my auntie had a room upstairs and there was another bedroom upstairs where I guess the four of us were temporarily.
It must have been rented. My memories of it, you know, from that age, I really quite liked the house. Like, it never felt damp or anything, but of course there was no electricity, so it was gas lights up above the fireplace in the front room, like a fireplace with the polished fender around it, and quite a high mantelpiece, which to my memory, was actually quite attractive. It was coal, a coal fire.
When you went out of the front room into the back, there was a big, I suppose you’d call it, scullery kitchen. It had a massive black range, a huge great thing, which I suppose would have been originally used, you know, for heating the water, cooking, and all the rest of it. But my grandmother must have at some point got a gas stove inside the door, you know, that was the classic four-burner gas stove and she did all the cooking on there. In my time, I never saw anybody cooking on the range. As I remember it was one outside toilet, proper flushing toilet and that, and there was a tap next to it and that was the water for the house and there was a back door which, like, went out onto the lane that led down towards the church.
This memory is part of the Bishopwearmouth Townscape Heritage Scheme collection.