Below is Brian Robinson’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.
Brian Robinson was interviewed by Arlene Ellis on 2ndFebruary 2017.
I was born in 1952 in Stockton, in the maternity home, but actually lived at Urlay Nook. My father worked at British Chrome and Chemicals, which was also Eaglescliffe Chemical Company, which ultimately became Allbright and Wilson. I lived there for a year, until 1953, then I moved into The Crescent, to a house which my mother and father had had built there. I lived in The Crescent until I got married in 1976. I have lived within two seconds walk of the village since I was a year old.
I went to the village school. I started in 1957 and was there until I was 11 years old. The village school was an interesting school, which is obviously now the Parish Hall. It was built to a similar shape to what it is now, but it didn’t have the extension on the back. It was basically three schoolrooms. The main hall, as it is now, was split into two and there was a fireplace in the middle, which was a proper, original coal fire. Next door to the fireplace, if I remember right, was a little office which was the headmaster’s office. When I was there the headmaster was a Mr Jackson. We had some great times at the school. We used to play out in the playground, which is now the car park.
On a night in the winter – we used to get cold winters then, not like now – we used to throw a bucket of water down every night before we went home. The purpose of the bucket of water was it would freeze overnight and when we went back to school the next day we would have a slide in the playground to play with until we went into school. At the back of the playground there was an old building/shack that was used, I believe, by Mr Bretherton, who was the local coal merchant. We used to play ‘aircraft carriers’ in that – run around like aeroplanes. Had many good days playing there. As you look at the Parish Hall now, on the right-hand side, where The Glen is, there was an old house there, long before any of those houses were built, and I think it was a Mrs Crisp used to have that. It was a derelict house, a bit like the Addams Family house, really weird, and we used to nip in and play in the garden there, because it was well overgrown and the house wasn’t particularly secure because there was nobody living in it. Then in the late ‘50s, early ‘60s, it was knocked down and then ultimately The Glen was built.
When I was at school we used to also do the Maypole, because we used to go to the village fete, which was then in the Old Rectory, which was the old building opposite the Parish Hall, set back and you can see it off the footpath that goes through the churchyard. As you walk through the churchyard towards the church now there’s an old bench and a lamppost, where there’s a little footpath that goes through, but the hedge stops the footpath. And that’s the entrance into what was the Rectory. Mr Nelson lived there when I used to go to school and every year on the Rectory garden they used to have the church fete. We used to get a day off school to go and do the Maypole dancing, which was good fun as the colours of the Maypole – reds, yellows, blues, greens – everybody had to have a colour that you would dance round the Maypole and weave the different ropes. The practices were good because boys being boys and girls being girls we used to always try to not do it right, so you’d get different knots in the rope.
Also, in the village when I went to school there was the village shop and the post office on the top of the Green. As you go into the village now and take the road right to where the pub is, if you go straight down into the Green, the houses that are set back on the top, the shop and post office were in there. One of the children that went to school with us, Hardy, had the shop and the post office, so we used to go there for sweets. From what I can remember it used to sell sweets and general bits and pieces but that’s been gone for many years and converted into a house.
I started the comprehensive school in ’63 and left there in 1968, then started as an apprentice with Northern Gas. I have always been involved in the village and village life because my parents always came to the village church, from Urlay Nook and when we moved into The Crescent, so I have been coming to the church since I was a little boy. I remember joining the choir when I was about 5 years old and they used to have – as they still do now- ten bells in the bell tower. Two bells that you would class a ‘normal’ bells and eight tubular bells in the tower as well. I started bellringing when I was 7 years old and I still do the bellringing now. That’s how I met my wife, Dawn, through the church, and I said I would teach her how to ring the bells. I don’t think I ever done that, yet! But Dawn rings the bells as well. I was a Server on the alter for a number of years. My father was churchwarden for over 25 years and I followed in his footsteps, I’m churchwarden now. My mother used to do the Mother’s Union and attend all the garden fetes and make cakes for the cake stall for many many years.
I have enjoyed being part of village life. I have used the Pot & Glass public house in the village since I was old enough to go into pubs. When I first went in the landlady, the licensee, was a Mrs Abbey. She wasn’t in there very long, then Frank and Marnie Morley took it over and they were in there for a number of years with his brother-in-law (Harry) and Frieda so it was all family-ran and I became very friendly with them and their family. Sharon Morley, who’s in the choir now, is their daughter-in-law. Following Frank and Marnie in the Pot & Glass were Bill and Ann Taylor and they must have been in there for about 12 years. Ann was a nurse and Bill looked after the pub. They had a one-armed bandit and every night Bill would be on it. Following them was a guy called Graham, came from a pub in Stockton, but he was only there for something like six months. Then you’ve got the present landlord we’ve got now, who is Dave Bunyan and his wife, Ann. I have played for the Pot & Glass darts team for a number of years and we’ve played in the local dart league. We’ve always done reasonably well as a team but it’s always a good social night out.
I moved into my own house in the village, in Church Close, just 12 years ago. The farm’s always been part of the village. Technically there’s two farms; there’s the one at the bottom where Johnnie and Margaret live and the one at the top end near the telephone box where David Smith and his wife, Sue, live. The old Manor House at the bottom, which is unfortunately falling down – there’s plans to resurrect that which I think will be good. So, the village has always had a farm and always had farm land all around it and if you go down through David’s farmyard to the riverbank, on the left-hand side you’ve got the old woods, which were Almond’s Woods, where we used to play when I was a kid and collect conkers for conker fights in the school playground.
The village itself – apart from the shop and the post office closing – is exactly the same as what it was. There’s nothing changed, the Green and the road around it’s exactly the same, so that part of the village is really good. The thing that’s changed is Butts Lane, as you come into the village on the left hand side there’s a new building estate, Grisedale, St Margaret’s estate then onto Sunningdale. So there’s a lot of building that’s gone on there. And if you come out of the village towards the pub, the Pot & Glass, there is one or two little changes. There’s the big white house where the doctor lives, which is on the edge of Church Close, that’s a newish house and the one next door to it, where you live, Arlene, is a new house. I don’t mean brand new, but new in the context of the village. Where Merritt’s live, on the opposite side of Church Close, has always been there. And our three houses, down Church Close, they’re built in the orchard, which was the orchard of where Richard and Astrid Merritt live.
When you get to the Pot & Glass there’s the old cottages along there that go round to the War Memorial. Looking down from the War Memorial to the river and the bridge at Yarm is what we used to call the bog banks, where we used to play. Stoney Bank has always been there. It didn’t have the metal barriers it’s got in the middle of it now. That’s obviously to stop people going down on their bikes but when we were kids it was excellent for sledging. We used to start at the top, at the War Memorial, and sledge all the way down past what is now the flats at the bottom then there’s a little footpath that goes down the Bluebell onto the river bank. So we used to be able to sledge all the way from Stoney Bank all the way down to the bottom, down the little cut and onto the riverbank. It was a long, long way down but if you got right to the bottom you had done really well. The field on the right hand side at the bottom of Stoney Bank, which has got a little pill box in from the war, we used to sledge in that as well. But that field is no good for sledging now because the grass is too long. I remember going home one night from sledging absolutely frozen and me clothes were actually frozen to me, to my legs. I literally walked with icicles on me trousers! I remember my mother having to put me in the bath with me trousers on to warm them up to get them to come off!
Obviously, things in the village now are changing. We’ve got the EARA (Egglescliffe and Area Residents’ Association), which is a little group I’m a member of, which is supporting the village life and trying to make things in the village remain as best we can, as it is and as it was. We’ve also got the renovation group, which is looking at how we can keep the village as it is but regenerate bits and pieces, for example the entrance up from Stoney Bank, to make that more attractive than what it is now. And the entrance from Butts Lane as well. And we’ve also recently got planning permission to change the Parish Hall, as well. So we’re going to leave the Parish Hall footprint very similar to what it is now, because it is a very nice building and it’s got a lot of history to it. As I said, it was my old school and there’s a lot of people who still live round about who went to that school. It became a Parish Hall when the new school was built. The church owns the Parish Hall, but the Parish Hall Association pay a peppercorn rent for it, but it does need modernising, new toilets put in etc. so we got planning permission to do that and we’re just in the throes of negotiating the funding to do that.
The church sold the Rectory after 1976. Mr Nelson died in ’75. I think Dawn and myself’s wedding was the last one he booked in – he died in ’75 and we got married in ’76. Shortly after that the diocese sold that building for the Rectory and they bought a house opposite the school, which was a Rectory for a number of years, then in the last few years that’s been sold as well. So the church doesn’t actually have a Rectory anymore in the village. Following Lesley Nelson there was Colin Purvis, Roger Chadwick, Tim Ollier, and obviously Sylvia (Wilson) is the Vicar that we’ve got now. And if I have missed any I’m sorry!