Last week saw the completion of our “Herring Girls” project with an event to launch the project pages on our website. Members of the North Shields Fishermen’s Heritage Group (NSFHG) and Remembering the Past (RtP) staff and volunteers met up at the Linskill Centre, with those who had contributed their memories and the project funder the R.W. Mann Trust.
Terry McDermott opens the event
It was great to all get together for the first time and put the faces to the voices and the stories that have been brought together in this collection. And the biscuits weren’t bad either. Terry McDermott (chair of NSFHP) opened proceedings with a welcome and a thankyou to all those involved, in his own inimitable style. There was a demo of the web pages and how to find them, before Alexandra Watson (manager of RtP) played excerpts from the various recordings, giving a flavour of the stories of the herring girls, descriptions of what the fish quay used to be like and a few stories of the fishermen, without whom none of this would have existed.
There was plenty of time to chat afterwards and it was good to hear that everyone had a great time taking part and felt that the collection succeeded in telling the amazing story behind “The Herring Girl” statue that sits proudly on the Western Quay.
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- John Hamilton and Terry McDermott
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- Herring Girls contributors
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- Time to talk
You can go to the project page and browse these memories here Herring Girls – Remembering the Past