We had a big family connection to Pearey House.
We have had a big family connection with Pearey House. My father and my mother in 1963 had a lot of interest in local charities and they got connected with Pearey House that year. My father became chairman, and my mother joined the committee. There had been talk of building flats and my father, through his charitable trust donated the money for the building of them in 1963.
My mum died in 2009 and I think up to 2 or 3 years before that she was attending. She was 99 when she died. If you look at her memory stone down at the church it says born 1909 died 2009. I’m not sure if she was actually taken off the committee’s rote, but she was there from 1963 to 2004-5.
It was my mother and father’s sort of thing you know, my mother was also on the committee for the lifeboats, and I think my dad was involved in two or three other things as well.
I was 5 when I moved here, we came from Manchester. My father came up because he worked for Universal Stores which used to be one of the big mail order companies. My father ended up being the manager of a small factory in London and they built a new one in Manchester which is why he moved to Manchester But, then they built a new factory on Norham Road trading estate. You know Tesco, well that chimney was part of where, as well as heating the factory, they dried the wood and that was Tyne Furniture Works which was Great Universal Stores and that closed in nineteen seventy something. He also got involved in Tyne Brand and he was the chairman of Tyne Brand.
The Tyneside Furniture Works was a public company, Argos was part of it a lot of it was mail order. They used to have 3 or 4 named shops where they used to have the tallyman selling stuff around the doors which is where mail order came from. But gradually it all closed down. We had a couple of family businesses and my brother had managed to do some kind of deal and had some small furniture place down in Chichester and also the Vauxhall dealership which I got involved in in Tynemouth which for my sins was running for 34 years or whatever. So, there was all kinds of local interests.
Peter was interviewed as part of the Pearey House 150th Anniversary Project.