Lesley Nicolson interviewed by Arlene Ellis 12 July 2018
I was born in Parkside Maternity Home in Middlesbrough in 1950 and I came to Egglescliffe when my husband and I got married, and we were looking for an old place to live in and this little place became available and we had actually never heard of it before. We were just looking round and we came across it and decided to come and live here because that house was available,
We moved into 8 The Green in July 1970, newly married and it was our first home together and we lived there until 1978. We had a mortgage for the grand sum of £3,500, and we were told we were not allowed to change the windows, but had to paint them, and it was a condition for granting the mortgage. It had a back garden and a shed with a lean-to kitchen and bathroom, the kitchen led into the bathroom and was very narrow indeed and if I opened the door to the oven you couldn’t get past to go to the bathroom. There were no cupboards just a sink and a few shelves and the fridge had to live in the hallway at the bottom of the stairs, there was no room for a washing machine, so thank goodness for launderettes. Eventually we had a new kitchen and bathroom added and after the birth of our first child I remember having to stay in hospital for a couple of extra days whilst my husband finished installing the bath. In the early seventies you remained in hospital for eight or nine days after the birth of a first baby, so that’s how times have changed.
There was only one entrance to our house though we did have a garden at the rear. It was heated by solid fuel and the coke was stored in a bunker in the garden. When the coke was delivered the men had to go through the house bent low to get through the doorways and up a few steps, and often they couldn’t get parked right outside the house so to start with they had a slope to manoeuvre, the bins had to be managed in the same way. We just carried on like that for years all the time we were there, we didn’t change the heating, somebody else changed that after we left.
The path and the road outside our cottages were un-adopted and in a bad state of repair and I can remember going to a meeting in the school about it. The council wouldn’t take responsibility for it until the residents repaired it. On elderly gentleman voiced the fact that he had no children and he still had to pay Council taxes for the upkeep of the school, and he didn’t see why he had to pay for the path outside his house. My husband at that time worked for a road surfacing company, so he arranged to have the holes filled in with tarmac and then obviously the council took it over.
We had the milkman deliver milk, it was a totally different life then, totally different lifestyle for everyone. There’s a difference in the traffic round here now, the number of parked cars around the village green, I guess it’s unavoidable really.
We had a neighbour named Mrs Napier she was originally from Hutton Le Hole and she lived next door to us. The access to our loft was in the hallway of her house and from what we were told our two houses were originally three. When we first went to live there, if she was going out, she would very kindly leave her back door open just in case we needed to be in the loft. I can’t think that we ever went into the loft or would ever need to, except on the one occasion for initial inspection. She was a lovely neighbour and made us very welcome in the village, particularly as at that time when we moved there, there was only a handful of young people living in the village, most of the cottages were occupied by families that had lived there for many years.
At the time we lived there, Nan Tulip, the Wallingers and Nelly Simpson lived in Ivy Cottages, Bert Bell and his wife, and Bob the fish man lived on Church Road, and Dan Smith lived with his family on the corner of Church Road.
Richard Clark was an artist and illustrator of Rupert the Bear and he lived with his wife in Greensides.
Jean Hardy and her family ran the post office and a general store and amongst other provisions, I remember sold the most delicious Wensleydale cheese. It was always really fresh and crumbly, it’s just got a nice memory for me.
Jill, a teacher and Dave Baguley an engineer, newlyweds also had moved north for work and lived at number 6 and a Mrs Smith lived at number 5 The Green, and I seem to remember she worked at Rigg’s the butcher in Yarm making pies and her daughter lived next door to her.
Mr and Mrs Ward lived at the end row on the corner of Pump Row, A man called Albert lived with his sister in the top corner cottage of Rose Terrace. He was a farm worker, you never saw him without his wellies and we used to joke that it would take a general anaesthetic to get them off. He had no teeth but I have it on good authority that he could still eat an apple.I have a photograph of him and another gentleman sitting together on a bench on the Green and unfortunately, I can’t remember his name, but the following week he died peacefully in his home. He was found sat in his chair, so it was really a nice way for him to go. And very shortly after that Albert also died.
John Slack and his wife lived round the corner in Pump Cottage and they suffered the sad loss of their second son to cot death in 1974. John and his wife had a lot of input around the village, I think he’s been mentioned before in people memories and I think he had something to do with the committee.
Then we had Edith Abbey who owned two cottages next door to us, which her nephew eventually moved into, I can’t remember his name either unfortunately. Despite the conservation act she was able to get permission from the council to install the fishbowl window that is still there, into one of the cottages and convert the other cottage into a garage so it was all very controversial at the time.
Then there was an episode of a man exposing himself on Stoney Bank in the mid-70s. A lady called Dot who lived on Eastbourne Avenue confronted him with “you are never proud of that are you!” There was a lot of talk in the Pot and Glass in the evenings with people saying “I bet it was…..” and it didn’t take long for the police to catch him after that.
We went to the Pot and Glass regularly and there was always a friendly atmosphere, Edith Abbey owned it, but a man called Jack managed it and I think he had been in the army, but he was a stickler for calling last orders and time. Causing lots of groans and moans from the regulars, we always sat in the bar chatting and playing darts and dominos and old Jack who wasn’t really so old sat in the corner with his dog and delighted in getting the dog to sing and perform tricks for any new comers. During the electricity strikes my husband took a Tilly lamp and hung it from the beams and it left scorch marks on the ceiling where they remained for many years, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they were still there.
When Mrs Abbey died Frank and Marney took over the running of the pub and the day our son was born my parents knew just where to ring to find my husband celebrating the birth, it was Frank who congratulated them and confirmed that we had a boy and not a girl that they were convinced we were having.
Once in a while the Smiths would herd their sheep across the Village Green, that was quite a spectacle and it made me feel like I was deep in the countryside and you would hardly know that there was a busy main road a few yards away, there wasn’t so much traffic back then and you could easily get parked in Yarm which had three supermarkets.
Just occasionally a coachload of people would arrive in the village, whether lost or sightseeing I don’t know, but it was quite a challenge manoeuvering a coach around the bottom corner of the Green. The edge of it would get churned up and eventually it would get re-edged with a wider strip of cobbles.
Among the social events were dances in the village hall, the bonfire on the green and the village fete and the pub used to put a bar on in the village hall, for the dances. It used to be very popular with local people
Going down to Yarm Fair was very popular.
There would be dancing around the Maypole for the village fete and that was performed by Egglescliffe school children and there was always a fancy-dress competition. At one of the fetes, we had my son who was maybe not quite three, I dressed him up as Tarzan, he stood at the top of the stairs and said “I am not wearing that dress”. One year we had a stall outside my house selling ice cream at the village fete and it was courtesy of Yvonne Sederson who lived opposite us and whose parents owned Pacitto’s. We had no way of keeping the ice-cream cold then so we had to keep popping it back in the fridge in the kitchen.
My husband was very interested in cars and had the opportunity to open up a garage in Whitby, and that obviously meant we moved away. The house prices were rocketing, houses on the Green were very sought after, as they still are, so we sold very easily with just an ad in the local newspaper in 1978. A couple of years ago number eight was up for sale and the asking price was £300,000, such a difference from 1970 when it was £3,500.
When we left, I just had the one boy and as it was 1978 he would have just turned three coming up four. He didn’t go to the village school, he went to the little nursery in the church hall.
We moved back after 4 years but we moved on to the main road, on to this side of Yarm Road so that Andrew could go to Egglescliffe School. It was the first school that he really settled at because we had had a bit of moving about in his early years and he didn’t settle at school but he did here. In fact, I knew he had settled at school when one morning he woke up and he had the mumps, and he had a face out here and he said “but mam I can still go to school”. Yes, that was quite a breakthrough and the school teachers and the school was such a friendly little school and a nice place for little ones to be going to.