Below is Neil Abbot’s written history of his recollection of living in Egglescliffe. You can follow what he says in his oral history by clicking the above and sitting back and enjoying what he says.
Neil Abbott was interviewed by Ian Reynolds 4thApril 2017.
I was born November 25th, 1941 in Darlington. I went to the local Grammar School and from there I joined the Northern Echo as a cub reporter. I worked there until I was 21 then transferred to the Evening Gazette in Middlesbrough at Bishop Auckland to concentrate on sport. I spent some time there, through to 1966 when I was seconded to work from Head Office for the coverage of the World Cup. I duly covered the matches at Ayresome Park, including the most famous result of that period when North Korea shocked Italy and beat them one-nil with a goal by Pak Do-ik. After that time, Head Office decided that they wanted me to work in Middlesbrough so they gave me a couple of months to move from Bishop Auckland to the Middlesbrough area. I didn’t really fancy Middlesbrough as a town in which to live, so one afternoon a friend of mine – as I don’t drive – drove me around this area and I spotted a house in Egglescliffe. Shook hands with the owner after agreeing a price and so I have been here since May of 1967. I have enjoyed the village life – it has been superb here and I’ll only go out feet first!
The village looked different when I first arrived. Now a lot of places are rendered and painted white but then property was very old and the people who lived in it were also very old so they couldn’t really afford to do much to it. People who have come in since have had a bit more capital and they have invested it in the property and smartened the place up quite considerably. That’s not to say that the old folk neglected it, but they just didn’t have the cash to spend on it. But it was a way of life that was totally different in those days. I can recall that there were only four cars around the village green and I think there are probably about 74 cars now. The old folk then used to pop down to Yarm for the shops and nobody used to bother to lock the doors. They were brilliant people, even though they took a bit of getting used to. I was told the first week I arrived here that it would take 25 years before I’d be accepted as a villager. I said at the time I’d give them a fortnight! But walking round with a Border collie as I did, I used to stop and chat to people and got to know them quite well and I think I was accepted long before the 25 year ‘apprenticeship’.
Most people had coal fires – that was the norm. I remember going from here to the Gazette office in Middlesbrough and I couldn’t see across from one side of the road to another because every property in that area – they were terraced houses – the smoke from the chimneys just obliterated. You didn’t get smog around the village but you did get plenty of acrid smelling smoke, which wasn’t very pleasant.
The Post Office cum shop was run by the Doughty sisters and it was taken over by the Hardy family. Jean Hardy used to run it throughout the day and occasionally her husband, Norman, used to help out. It’s the home in which Janet Hardy, the daughter, now lives. It’s on the Green and Rose Terrace. It was quite small. You stepped inside the porchway and on the left hand side was where she kept the stamps. It was a tiny little room. They had shelves where they stocked the food, tins of beans and things. It was tiny but it was well stocked. It was a great place to be – the sort of place you could pop into not just for stamps, but they also stocked bacon, eggs, bread, tins of food, so if you ever ran out of anything you didn’t have to go down into Yarm. You never got out without a conversation – it could take half an hour to buy some egg and bacon.
I was a regular at the pub. It was part of the village life. Edith Abbey took over running of the place after her husband, Charlie, died. She ran it with her sister, who was a widow, but both were getting on. Occasionally Edith would go for a nap in the afternoon and sleep in. I know one of the regulars was a chap called Bert Dodsworth – he was the manager of the local bakery, ‘Jackson’s the Bakers’. Having worked in a hot atmosphere he would drive up at five o’clock, press the bell – no response. So he would pester Edith to have a key cut so he could open up! She relented in the end, so he got this key and for the first two hours of an evening we used to serve ourselves and serve anyone else who came in to the pub. No fancy cocktails or anything like that! It was a pint or a gin and tonic. That worked quite well. She used to come down at half past seven, say ‘is this all mine?’ and scoop the money into the till. Then in the end she said ‘why don’t you lads just operate the till yourselves?’, so we did. She never lost a penny. When she died Frank Morley took over the running of the pub. We were sat there one night and Bert Dodsworth – he used to have this enormous bunch of keys – he peeled off one, tossed it behind the bar and Frank caught it and said ‘what’s this?’ Bert said ‘it’s a key to your front door’. Frank looked absolutely astonished; he said ‘how long have you had this?’ Bert said ‘about two years’. I said ‘don’t worry, Frank, we’ve all got one!’
One of the regulars in the pub was Bert Bell. He was born in the village and lived in Cliff House in Church Road. He was a real character. He was a motor mechanic and used to help with break-downs, quite often after having had several pints. The police would call at his house and say ‘there’s an artic. broken down, can you come and help us free it?’ Bert would say he’d had half a dozen pints and couldn’t drive, but the police said ‘don’t worry. We’ll get you there and back’. So, he’d go out to these breakdowns, crawl underneath the lorries, free them, and then they’d take him home again. And anyone else around the village who had a problem, Bert was the go-to man. He would help out. A great-hearted fellow.
By the time I came here the gas lighting had gone, but I do recall that there was one man who held out. He was called Bill and he lived in Chantry Cottage, which was just beyond the Pot & Glass. Old Bill was a gardener and he lived in a Church house and steadfastly refused to have electricity put into the house. Walking past on a night time you could see him lighting the gas mantle; it gave off a brilliant light. He lived there surrounded by cats; he took in strays. He used to tend to the Rector’s garden and trim the hedge round by the churchyard. Lovely man.
At the time of Reverend Nelson they used to have a Church Fete and they had a mini railway which used to run in the church grounds. That was always an attraction.
There’s a place in the village now called Wells Cottages, but it was always known as Pump Row. No idea why the council changed it.
I regularly attended the bonfire nights on the Green. That was the one thing I think that brought all the villagers together. Everybody came out. It was a great way of getting rid of garden rubbish! The bonfire used to reach enormous heights, then the Smith family used to put a bale of hay or straw to get it away, and Mrs Smith would turn up for the ritual lighting of the bonfire at about 6 o’clock in the evening, and the bonfire would merrily burn until midday the following day. It was a bit chaotic – no organisation – fireworks going off left, right and centre, rockets included. I recall a pal of mine putting a rocket in a milk bottle and it hit a house! Fortunately it narrowly missed going through a window. I think he might have been in the Pot & Glass beforehand! People around the village used to make toffee apples and the girl guides, scouts and cubs used to have hot dogs on the go. It was a good night all round. But then somebody mentioned Health & Safety and public liability and were we insured? And that was the end of it. It would have cost thousands of pounds so that put the kibosh on it.
As a reporter I concentrated mainly on football and cricket but you had to turn your hands to anything. Athletics, golf, any number of things. Later on, after giving up reporting, I turned to page design and sub-editing. I was responsible for six racing pages per day when it became tabloid, and also thirty tabloid pages of junior sport, which came out on a Saturday. Lennie Lawrence was the manager who took Middlesbrough from what was then the First Division into the newly-formed Premiership. I was page designing then, so didn’t interview him as a reporter. But I knew him by sight and saw him carrying the Sunday papers back to his clubhouse on the Green. When I congratulated him on his promotion he looked like a startled rabbit. He was born in Brighton so maybe he wasn’t used to people talking to him! But that was a good day and you always get the other side of the coin. I remember seeing him the day he got fired from Middlesbrough, though I didn’t know it at the time. I had been down to Yarm for a paper and was returning home down Back Lane when I saw this car coming towards me at a snail’s pace. I looked through the windscreen and saw it was Lennie Lawrence but he just seemed in another world. When I got back in the house I put the television on and there were the headlines ‘Lawrence sacked by Middlesbrough’. No wonder he was feeling down.