Below is Arnold Marshall’s written history of his recollection of living in Egglescliffe. You can follow what he says in his oral history by simply clicking the above and sitting back and enjoying what he says.
Arnold Marshall was interviewed by Arlene Ellis on 25thJuly 2017.
I was born in 1936, in Egglescliffe in number 1, Pump Row, which is now called Wells Cottages. My parents were village people and I know my grannie was a village person. My granddad (my mother’s father) lived at Kirklevington and to tell you how hard it was in those years, he was a gamekeeper at what is now Judge’s and he cut his finger. He went to the Lord of the Manor and said he had cut himself and couldn’t work. The Lord said, ‘don’t bother, Tom, just get out of the house – if you can’t work you are no good to me’. He ended up living in an old army hut opposite the Crown Hotel in Kirklevington. A day out for me and my sisters and brothers was a walk from Egglescliffe Village to Kirklevington to see my granddad and grannie.
I was brought up with my other grannie (my dad’s mother) because four of us was a bit much for my mother to handle. My eldest brother used to stay with my mother’s father at Kirklevington and I used to run round to my grannie’s and spent a lot of time there, at number 7, The Green. My mother and father, later on, ended up living at number 8 The Green. The houses were two bedrooms. When my grannie’s son got married they lived there as well and I slept in the same room as grannie and granddad. There was no bath and you had to go outside for the toilet. Every winter the toilet would flood because the lead pipes would burst. My sister used to go to the farm with a jug to collect the milk. Grannie had one of those big old mangles to put the clothes through.
I went to the village school. I was four or five when I started there. There were no chemical toilets; they were ‘thunder boxes’! They were outside. In the winter they had fires in the classrooms and the teachers would sit with their backs to the fire. Sometimes I would go missing down the fields and they wouldn’t know – they wouldn’t record that I was missing. I would come back at dinner time. They told my brother to paint the fence and when he came home all his face was spots where the creosote burnt it. The school had an allotment and they knew I liked gardening and for a punishment they would say ‘get up to the garden, out of the way’. We grew all sorts of vegetables that we were allowed to take home. We never learnt anything. I don’t think I could tell the time until I was about nine!
At school we had the Maypole. I wouldn’t dance so they made me in charge of the gramophone, which I had to wind up. I used to be listening to the birds and they had to shout at me to give it a few turns to wind it back up. The school yard was separated – the girls played in one half and the boys in the other half. I can’t remember a fence being there, it was just a line. The girls used to play a skipping game ‘all in together, girls, never mind the weather, girls’ and they used to let some of the boys come in to play ‘if you think you can skip’. And they used to go faster and pepper your legs with the rope. And if you upset one of the girls they used to send Margaret Watts to see you off. ‘Right, you lot, get out back to your own half!’ She was a farm labourer’s daughter. I left school when I was fifteen. The age limit for leaving had been increased – my brother and sister left at fourteen.
During the War we had a steel shelter in the house because we were so young we couldn’t run to the air raid shelter, which was on the village green. It was brick. But we had what they called a ‘table’ shelter. I can remember opposite my grannie’s house, on the other side of the Green, a hole in the roof and the Vicar coming out with a dustbin lid with what were remnants of an aircraft shell, I presume; a piece of shrapnel. The air raid shelter for the school was where the new church yard is. All the girls were given a bracelet with their name and address on and the boys had something round their neck.
I spent a lot of time down the farm in the fields near the river, watching the soldiers training doing river crossings. Tying rope to the trees and practising crossing. I don’t know where they came from; there wasn’t a barracks nearby. The German Prisoners of War used to come to the village. My father was obviously in the War and one distinct memory I have after the War – my father discovered a puppet made by POWs that was given to my sister. My father wanted to know where it came from as we hadn’t many toys. When he discovered it came from German POWs he immediately took it out the back and smashed it to pieces. He never, ever, forgave the Germans and he never used to talk about the War, not hard times, just the happy times. But I found out later on, after the War when we lived at number 8. We used to be chased up to bed and there was a knot of wood in the floor and my brothers and I took turns to remove this piece of wood and listen to what they were saying below about ‘where were you, Jack?’ (That was my dad’s name). My Uncle Doug, my mother’s brother, was in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and they would exchange stories. My father was one of the few from the village who were in the Forces during the War. There was another guy called Cyril Bell, who lived in the corner of the Green. He was killed during the War.
When the War ended we had a big bonfire on the village green, with a Guy and everything. The farmer, Mr Johnny Smith, and his father Alan Smith before him, would be there. They were highly respected and held in high regard because they gave employment to the village. A lot of the guys in the village – Luke and Ben Marshall, Colin Butler, my own brother – worked on the farm. About eight or nine people working on the farm whereas now all there is is Simon and his dad. So when we had a bonfire, for example, there was strict discipline among the kids and it wasn’t lit. We wouldn’t dare light it, though as the evening wore on we were getting impatient. Then Mr Smith would come with his wife and he would light the fire and a big cheer would go up. He was quite skilful at breaking in horses and riding them at point to point. And I remember a little bus used to come and half the village used to go and support him when he rode in events. When I go round the farm now and see fourteen or fifteen year-old running havoc in the corn; we would never have done that. They have no respect for it anymore and it saddens me.
When the War ended I was about nine. I found some rings on the back of my mother’s wash house that were for playing quoits with. My grandad, apparently, had won a gold watch in a competition on the village green. So we used to play quoits and the pitch on the green was to the right of where the stone cross is near the top seat. It was clay and two big steel pegs in the clay. And the fellows after the War taught us how to play. They would come out of the pub on a Sunday and join in.
We used to run races round the village green and we used to play football with a pig’s bladder – no rubber. There was a little shop in the village run by Rachel and Sally Doughty and there was a lad that lived in there – I don’t know what relation he was to the sisters. But they were the only people in the village that had money. He used to appear on the village green at football at half time with a bottle of lemonade. We used to have maybe a crust of bread to eat at half time and we’d be trying to drink this lemonade with bits of bread floating in it from other people drinking it!
My eldest brother was two or three years older than me and we’d be sitting on the village green and I’d ask ‘what are you looking at, Jack?’ and he said ‘never you mind’. But he was looking at the maid sitting in the top window in the maids’ quarters in the Hall. He married her!
Bertie Bell, who lived in the village and worked on Jewell’s Farm, he used to keep a pig and he used to come onto the green while we were playing. He had a piece of string on its back leg so it couldn’t run away. He used to say, ‘never mind the football, will you go down the fields and get us some acorns for the pig?’ There used to be some geese on there as well, I don’t know who owned those.
The old Hall; the cowman that worked on the farm he used to live in there. It was habitable then, it’s all fallen down now. There was stacks of corn in the farmyard and we used to go down there. I could see and hear the steam engine from my Grannies pulling the thrasher, which was then parked in the farmyard. The sheaves of corn would be put through the thrasher and we used to catch the mice and rats – the stacks would be full of them. The kids in the village would congregate with sticks because the rats would leave it to the last minute to run out so we used to chase them and the dogs would be there – it was great fun.
There was a great community spirit. On a summer night in harvest time everybody would be sitting on the steps and all the doors were open, no-body ever locked their doors. Anybody could go and borrow a cup of sugar or a couple of slices of bread. It was happy times. There was nothing really organised, we made our own entertainment. Just after the War I remember the first Ice Cream Man that came. On a bike with a freezer box on it. But the trouble was we had no money! Where the entrance to the Hall is, on the right-hand side, the Cordinglys lived there and at Christmas time we used to go and sing carols and get sixpence. They were the only people with money.
The local policeman, Sergeant Woodward, didn’t live in the village but did the rounds on his bike. I got caught by him once. I was near the entrance to the farm. There was a large hawthorn tree there and there was always starlings in that tree to get the hawthorn berries. Well I didn’t like starlings and I was always keen with a catapult and I was just taking aim at this starling when PC Woodward came round the corner on his bike and he caught me. He took my catapult and hit me round the ear! If my dad had been at home he’d have given me another one! Later on when I joined the Coldstream Guards and I was on a recruiting drive I bumped into his son. He said I’m so and so Woodward. I said your dad wasn’t the village bobby, was he? He said yes, and I said tell him I’m older now and he hit me round the ear!
Behind the farm was an ash tip and there was always rabbits in there. I was forever down there after rabbits, but the farmer used to chase me. There used to be a pond to the right of the ash tip and a little hillock called ‘Devil’s Hill’.
The village lads used to congregate on the Green. We met at the ‘top seat’ where there was a lamp post. I think there were only two or three gas lamps in the village in those days. I was forever climbing up them. My Aunt Lizzie hated it – she looked like Mother Riley with long black furs and a little hat and a black waistcoat and a knobbly stick. And next door to number 1 was an old guy called Billy Raby and he must have worked in the quarry at some time because part of his skull was delved in. He had an old black lead fireplace. Right opposite number 1 was a pump. And there was an old pear tree there that was always ready at Christmas time. And the village lads knew where all the fruit trees were. Down the bottom of the village, where the stack yard used to be, just beyond there was a big fruit orchard. Sadly, it’s all gone now. But that didn’t belong the farm, it belonged to a guy that lived in the first house as you come down Stoney Bank, at the bottom on the left-hand side. He was called Wilson and he used to have the coal business. He got his coal from the coal yard that was down Butts Lane and turn to go to Yarm. He’d come round the village on a horse and cart with bags of coal. He used to keep his horse just behind where the Parish Hall is now. Then his son took it over after the War.
We used to go down to the farm at harvest time and it was all horses and carts. It was the only time the farmer made us welcome because we would lead the horses, when they were loaded with corn, to the stack yard. It was all in stooks and one of the farmer’s labourers would put it onto the trailer and then you’d take the horse. But the horses used to know where they were going anyway. I knocked a gatepost down one time. We went straight through the gate but there wasn’t much room for error either side and I was a bit to one side and the cart hit the gate. But the horses, once they got speed up they didn’t want to stop. You had to be careful you didn’t get your feet under them. Harvest time was a long process for the farmer, but it was a happy time for us lads because it always seemed to be lovely weather. Red sunsets and lovely evenings down the farm, helping the farmers.
During the War years we used to go ‘tatie picking down the farm and I remember the farmer saying to me ‘look here, Marshall’ and he’d go along with his feet find one that was partly covered with earth ‘you’ve missed one – and one there!’. And he’d make you do it all again. It was paid, but not very much, maybe sixpence. He used to sit on the old trough and pay it out. I was green with envy trying to see what the adults got.
The village green hasn’t changed much but the circumference of the trees has greatly increased. It is lovely to see them so large. Gangs from Yarm would come up Stoney Bank and raid our Walnut tree. We were forever fighting them off. There is a house just where the road comes into the green, by the wall on the right as you go up towards the pub. I think it is one of the oldest houses in the village and there was tiled dome with a wee door and I only remember it open once and all these steps down into very wet and dark. It was a tale among us children that if you went down there you went under the river and came out at the Friarage on the other side! It’s not there now.
I don’t live in the village now, but I have an allotment here. My heart is still in the village. I have never left it really.