I can’t particularly think of a better place to be based.
Hilary
I have been involved in Girlguiding since I was a girl. Had so much fun, forgot to leave so that means I’ve been here involved in Guiding in North Tyneside for over 50 years. So, I do remember having Trefoil House acquired and I can remember a time before that and probably now I am one of the few members that has been here the whole time. I had a lot of roles within Girlguiding, locally and nationally but within North Tyneside I have been an advisor for various things such as the outdoors and international and an Assistant County Commissioner and probably most importantly I think, throughout that time I have been working with girls as a Ranger Leader. That’s the group of girls between 14 and 18 currently and the actual girl group I work with is in Monkseaton.
Jean
I became involved in Guiding in the mid 1980s just as a helper and then I took over a unit for a while. I stopped being a Guider, it must have been in the 90s and then for about 4 years in the early 90s I was asked to be arts advisor for North Tyneside and I used to hold craft sessions in Trefoil House. There was a shop that I took over from the previous arts advisor, Margaret Bell, which had card and various other craft items that guiders might need for sessions they might do with the Brownies or Guides. I sold those on a Tuesday night it was twice a month and I’m now just one of the Trefoil Guild Members. Retired Guiders meet once a month in Trefoil House and we have people to talk, and we go on trips.
Hilary
Trefoil House, Howard Street
So currently, Trefoil House is our county headquarters and it’s sort of the focus for organising activities for the membership. The county, I refer to is Tynemouth, Whitley Bay, Wallsend, Benton, Monkseaton and usually is around about 2,000 people although obviously we have been affected by covid. So as a base this house can be used for an office and we employ an office worker now to help to look after the county in an administrative sense. One of her roles is that we have another property out in the country, so she takes bookings for that. We also still have the shop that Jean started except its expanded now into a guide shop and is open three times a week and provides all the resources that leaders would need. Girlguiding now publishes a huge amount of resources that people buy and uniforms and badges. Badges are very popular, in my view a slightly controversial topic but that’s, because some people love them and some people don’t. So, it’s good to have a focus in a county. We’re lucky in the sense of being geographically small and people who come in here and use that shop, use the office facilities but as well as that we’ve got two main training rooms. We’ve got the small main training room which is a sort of more comfortable lounge really and we’ve extended out the back of the building from its original format to take in the yard and provide a bigger training base. So, it’s really important that all of our leaders have access to good training. Now obviously since covid a lot of that has gone on-line and the building might be being used less now than it was in the past and we have to see how that works out in the future.
The background was that north of the Tyne there was one county, Northumberland. It was split then into three counties because it was very big geographically obviously from Berwick all of Tyneside right out to the west and all of the population tend to be along the river, so it was decided to take that one big county and split it into three, Newcastle, North Tyneside and Northumberland which is how it remains now.
Now when they split it, they obviously had to split the interests and assets of the old Northumberland County. The money that came from that split, our county commissioner at the time was a fairly astute banker lady who looked after the money very well and they decided that they would invest that money in two ways. One was to have an in-town base, this one, Trefoil House or 31 Howard Street as it was called when we bought it and still is its postal address. And then we’d also used some of the money to invest out of our geographical county but in the countryside, so girls had access to residentials. We’ve got a residential centre and we’ve got this centre here and over the years we’ve obviously been able to invest in it because I do, obviously remember it when we got it and it was still in the format that we bought it in when Jean came into this. It was a terrace house with a downstairs, a quite difficult room to work in because it was essentially a lounge and dining room that had been knocked into one room with little bits of wall sticking out and things, but even then, it was used a lot for training.
Jean
The kitchen was very basic as well. It was probably 1950s 60s sink and a draining board and, what did we use to heat the water, was there a boiler?
Hilary
Actually, the kitchen, yes, I guess it was at the back wasn’t it, probably under your old arts room. So, it would be that sort of size and it would be an off shoot off the back, and it was probably single brick or something it was probably cold and damp I would guess. It’s been relocated, the whole thing downstairs has been realigned to make a better more modern business type property with a designated shop room which you didn’t really have that luxury, nice kitchen, nice training area, a decent office up here.
Jean
I had the shop and it obviously had been the little bedroom of the house and there was a built-in cupboard with shelves and it was ideal for putting all my stuff that I was selling, card and wobbly eyes and pom-poms.
Hilary
The house was very cold, I remember that.
Jean
It was cold. When I did the craft sessions, we called it Coffee and Craft. We provided drinks for people because they were there for about 2 hours in the evening and I had some helpers and while I was helping people to do the various crafts that I was showing them they would be doing the drinks. I am trying to think how many I did. We definitely did a Christmas craft which would be round about October time, so they had time to work out if they wanted to use it. I definitely did an Easter craft and I must have done one more at least. I had helpers, each of the divisions had an arts person. We had meetings and decided shall we do a craft session involving trying to make musical instruments out of bits of cardboard and things like that and then trying to get the bits together to show the Guiders that came in how they could do that in the Brownies. It was mainly Brownies, not so many Guiding came, a lot of Brownie leaders came for ideas for the units.
[InterviewerJust to continue talking about the acquisition; do you have any idea why Howard Street and even why North Shields in particular was chosen?]
Hilary
County Commissioner Ms D Postle
Trefoil House Opening Ceremony 1973
I think it’s probably North Shields because as a communications hub it was reasonably central and I don’t think property would have been desperately expensive. Somewhere or other in the office, I can remember looking at the price, it was obviously ridiculous by todays standard but what a good investment. So, I think it was mostly, as many things are when you buy property, happen chance that this came on the market it was in a reasonably good position. Miss Postle who was the county commissioner, her executive at the time obviously put together buying this and I believe, either on this one or the other place they bought, which was at Kirkwhelpington, they actually took a mortgage which must have been quite a big step. It was very forward looking our county, because we are not big in numbers, but we’ve had some very wise financial leaders. So, I think that was probably the main driver, why not Howard Street rather than let’s go and look in Howard Street, it could have been any of the terraces around here.
I don’t think it changed for years really. Until the last year or two, my perception always was of a business street with a few homes still and there still are a couple of houses they’re homes. A lot of solicitor’s offices and things like that. But from our point of view one of the great benefits I think, until recently you could always park at the door in the evening and it’s well-lit so even women coming alone, coming in and out, we’ve always felt safe. There was a point in time when we were looking very, very seriously at do we improve or do we move. The people on the main committee at that time looked at a few other properties and they actually concluded in the end that this is a good place to be. It’s near the metro, it’s near the buses, it’s well-lit.
Jean
It was always easy to park, because running the shop a lot of the stock came to our house and of course, I had to transport it here. I had a key at the time, and I used to come in the afternoons sometimes to get it up into the shop.
Hilary
And it’s still a place actually that you feel safe in it in the daytime if you come on your own to do something it still feels safe. The office worker is technically a lone worker and the office workers have never felt unsafe because during the day there are people around in offices that are open. So, it’s a very good safe place for us to be. It looks very nice, but it hasn’t significantly changed my view of the place. Apart from the parking dilemma which means we have done some work at the back door to make it so we can access more on the level from the back and if people want to park there, they can.
Viki
I have just seen a document from the 50’s saying that there’s a North Shields Trefoil Guild. Obviously, they wouldn’t have met in this building, because we didn’t have the building.
Hilary
There’s Trefoil Guild in Tynemouth, in Whitley Bay, in Benton, I would think the North Shields Trefoil Guild would have existed since the 50s and it’s moved in here, I don’t know when. We would have encouraged people to use the building, we’ve got, it’s free and it’s heated, why not use it?
Jean
The other Trefoil Guilds, I think they meet in the afternoon, I think we are the only one that meets in the evening and I think it’s just a tradition. We’ve just got so used to it being in the evening and we still have people who are working during the day.
Hilary
You don’t have to be inactive to be a Trefoil member. Technically they are two different organisations although people talk about them as the same. They’re both within Girlguiding but the Trefoil Guild is a separate organisation so there’s absolutely nothing to say that, you can’t be a leader and a Trefoil member. I’m not sure that was always the case. There was a point where you either left totally and you became the other but now you can be a leader and a Trefoil member.
Jean
While the work was going on we met for a while in the church at the top there [St Columba’s]. I can’t remember how many meetings we had there, but we definitely had a meeting in a little side room, because obviously we couldn’t come into the building while it was being renovated.
Hilary
That’s a good few years back now isn’t it that we changed. Do you ever remember there not being a room at the back?
Viki
Always been the big room when I joined in 2009.
Hilary
So, we’ve had the room at least 15 years. There’s been lots of material things like making it nice and warm and clean. It used to smell quite damp I recall when you came in. So, obviously over the years there’s been those sorts of nicely carpeted, nicely furnished, useable, somewhere friendly to come. But the layout downstairs is the most significant change because we’ve got this training room at the back which actually can take 30 people. Then the kitchen has moved somewhere else into the middle of the building and is modern and then we’ve got the shop which is a significant thing. We’ve also got underneath here which I had great ambitions for but doesn’t work out, it has got a cellar and it had a very narrow little corridor along into a little room which I’d hoped to turn into a camp store until I found out how wet it was because we are on the line of the stream along Howard Street which you may or may not have picked up.
The size of the room in the basement is approximately the size of the shop room so there’s a significant little room and a long narrow corridor towards it. We have had some work done over the years to try and cure that which it has, on the whole, the house doesn’t get damp now.
Jean
I’ve heard that it was a doctor’s surgery a while ago. A lot of these stories you know, people aren’t here now to talk about them.
Hilary
It’s very sad when you realise you’ve become the old person whose still alive to tell the tale.
Hilary
Oh yes, we do use it for sleep overs I’ve had a few nights here. The girls sleep on the floor in the back-room downstairs and the leaders can sleep up here.
Viki
And when you say sleep, if it’s Rangers, sleep, if it’s Guides, no.
Hilary
The Rangers usually go to sleep by about 1 o’ clock and then you have to drag them out of bed with the smell of a bacon butty in the morning.
Viki
If it’s the Guides you’re normally sat there at 3am doing the accounts going, “Shut up, for God’s sake,” because they think you can’t hear them whispering in this building.
Hilary
The thing to do really, I find if we’ve had a sleep over is we have a midnight movie where the spirit is willing to watch it, the body gives up. As I say in the morning with the Rangers, who are 14 plus, they think I’m ever so kind because I go round with a bacon sandwich and they can have it in bed and they go, “That’s really kind.” No, it’s the only way to make you wake up isn’t it. If I said, “Get up and make one,” you would get, “Oh no I’ll not bother.” But yes, it gives us an in-town versatility really, we’ve got this that people can use for an evening and overnight. Guides come in and have weekends here, might do a bit cooking and you usually find we do crafts as well in the back room.
Viki
Yes, we’ve used it as a base for international get to know each other activities and events, we were doing that last April before we went away. Where they went off and use this as their base, but it was great because as Hilary said You’ve got public transport and access to stuff and it’s pretty easy for them to find.
Hilary
Actually, now that we’ve got this and perhaps we can’t remember life before it, I can’t particularly think of a better place to be based for the county it’s very useful.
We have used it in the past maybe for say, the Danish group travelling through on their way to somewhere, come in on the boat and needed an overnight. Not often and not regularly, but if people have contacted us and said can you find somewhere for us to stay, we’ve got a group of 20 girls going to …., then it’s available. It’s difficult now to think of some of the things, because over the years we’ve done so many things really. We’ve got the plaque there that says we’ve got the Freedom of North Tyneside. We got Freedom of the Borough for the work we’ve done.
Viki
2023, this year, is the 50th anniversary of the county.
Hilary, Jean and Viki were interviewed as part of the North Tyneside Heritage Action Zone Project.