Below is Howard’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.
Howard Ward was interviewed by Arlene Ellis on 8thMay 2017.
I was born in Stockton on Tees on 12thNovember 1947. We lived for a very short time (just a few months) in Shaftesbury Street, just off Yarm Lane in Stockton. Then my parents had a bungalow built and we moved into it when I was a baby. It was in Urlay Nook Road, near where Tesco’s is now. But there was nothing there then, it was just a country road with a couple of farm houses. I remember going down Urlay Nook Road towards Yarm, before you turn off into Egglescliffe, there was a railway building on the corner, which we called Walker’s Corner. It was to do with the Stockton and Darlington railway. It’s still there, but surrounded by houses now.
Egglescliffe was the nearest school (if you lived on the other side of the river you went to Yarm Primary School). It was a Church of England school. We used to walk to school. It’s not that far and my mother used to walk part of the way with me. The school was in the building that is now the Parish Hall. It had a dividing partition. They used to open it for morning assembly then the partition would go across to make two classrooms. And we had what we called ‘the hut’, which was a temporary building. I think that was because we were the baby boomers after the War and there were about forty in each class. There was a large school garden with a greenhouse in it and the older children had their own little plot, just a couple of square yards. The greenhouse had a large water pit in it. Once a year we’d go up to Osmotherly on the moors and collect sheep droppings. It used to go into hessian bags then we’d put it in the water in the greenhouse to make fertiliser for the tomatoes. This is the children, remember. I don’t know if we had gloves…I don’t think it would be allowed now!
The School Principal was Mr Jackson (he was also a teacher) and his wife was another of the teachers. We had another lady teacher who was a ‘miss’ when I started but she got married and became Mrs Duncan. I have the school photograph from when I started in 1953 as a five year old. The photo has a little crown in the corner because it was Coronation Year. The only thing I really remember about the Coronation is that all schoolchildren all over the country got a blue book with a coin set into the cover.
With living out of the village I wasn’t involved in many events. Also, my father was a Jehovah’s Witness. We did go to church and there were never any problems with that, but there were probably some events that my parents wouldn’t go to, although my mother was much less strict. I had friends called Michael Brown and Robert Soulsby who also went to the village school and lived near us but not many friends actually in the village.
One thing we did used to go to was the Guy Fawkes’ bonfire on the Green. Looking at the Green from Butts Lane end it was over at the bottom end on the right hand side. We came every year, it was a big event. Firework display and everything and a Guy on top of the bonfire.
There was a big, empty Victorian house next door to the school, where The Glenn is now. We weren’t supposed to go in to play but we did. The doors weren’t locked. For some reason the house had been left and there was furniture in it. We would also go to the village shop, which was on the Green, on the left hand side about half way along, coming from the Butts Lane end. It was run by two sisters called Doughty. They were both unmarried and we used to call them the ‘Misses Doughty’. They were elderly ladies. They sold sweets, which were all we were interested in. I think it was also a grocers. I remember paying for some aniseed balls – they were about tuppence for eight – and I had the money including a couple of farthings, which were legal tender up until the mid-fifties. They weren’t very pleased I gave them these farthings because although they were legal tender nobody used them by then. I don’t know where I got them from.
With it being a Church of England school we used to go to church quite regularly. At the beginning and end of term there was always a service. And I was allowed to go to that even though my parents were Jehovah’s Witnesses.
We had the school fete in the Rectory grounds every year. It was a bigger garden then – there are a couple of houses built there now. They used to have a Maypole to dance around. And there was a wind-up record player. Bric-a-brac stalls and the usual things. The mothers baked cakes for it.
There was a Christmas party in the school hall and all children got a present. About 150 of us. Mr Jackson was always Father Christmas. I remember being very upset and crying when I got home because I got a colouring book or something, rolled up with an elastic band round and inside was a plastic train with a little engine and a couple of trucks. On the way home the train fell out so I lost it. I was only five or six years old.
There was no kitchen in the school so lunches came in a van in aluminium containers and we ate them in the hall. I hated the bananas and custard because I can’t stand bananas. Mrs Jackson used to say ’just have the custard, Howard’ but of course the custard tasted of bananas. We all got our third of a pint of milk.
I was at the school until I was eleven, when I did the eleven plus and went to the Grammar School at Stockton. When I left Egglescliffe school in 1959 it still had the ‘hut’ – the wooden building that was a temporary classroom.
I also remember there was a tithe barn behind the village, with a big, beamed roof. The local coal merchant, Mr Bretherton, used to have a depot there and park his wagons there. It has been demolished now but when you come up Butts Lane – the houses on the left, the Grisedale estate – it was in there somewhere. The older children used to play in it at school lunchtimes. It must have had quite a bit of history to it – you’d never be allowed to knock it down these days.
Today, the Green looks substantially the same. There didn’t used to be houses on the left of Butts Lane. The school is now new but the old school building is still there. Most of Church Lane is pretty much the same and Stoney Bank is exactly the same.