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Miners picnic 1957

Didn't one of those on the left used to be Wemyss (sp?), the wholesale confectioner, back in the mid 1950s? I can remember carting an unstable load of empty crisp tins there on my bogey as an infant. Yes, those packets of crisps with the little blue bag of salt used to come in oversized biscuit tins to keep them fresh. My motive was purely economic - to pocket the deposit on them. Mr Wemyss, however - god rest his soul - wasn't prepared to cough up the going rate, likely embossed on the tins, and all I got was a pittance (or maybe a few sweets) for my trouble. The sweets are long forgotten, but the bitterness lingers on - such is life! 🤣

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Hi We are moving to bedlington as we have just bought a property on front street. The property in question has a blue plaque on the wall outside (Gibsons who i believe were a family who made nails) and I've been told used to be a wholesalers and such over the years prior to becoming a home in the early 2000's, id be really interested if anyone has any old photographs of 36 front street (opposite the Black Bull) prior to it becoming a home. thanks

Coming soon! This is an interesting family and I've been researching them this week. I'll post soon, probably on John Dawson's thread The Last of the Nailers. It will probably be long so it may need a few posts.

The aad photo of the shop is hoo aa remember..broon painted shop front..roller shutters in later yrs,probably after the break-ins..the war hadn't been owa just four yrs prior ti my first seeing this Aladdin's cave..the only sweets I ever got at that age was when me Mother tuk me ti Doctor Hickey's Surgery,at Choppington,just up the bank from where a lived in Storey's Buildings,doon aside the Willow Bridge at Choppington Station..Dr Hickey aalwis kept a big tin of sweeties on his table at the side,and every kid who went to see him,even if it was their Mother who was the Patient,they got a sweetie..that was the way to befriend the kids and allay any fear aboot gaan ti see him!![dinna forget..we didnae hae the drugs we hae nooadays..us kids picked aal sorts of infections up..!!

Hi Folks,Wemyssies was a confectionery wholesaler when aa was a bairn livin doon Hollymount Square from 1947..as a got ti aboot five yrs aad,me aader Brother,who would be eight yrs aad,[taakin aboot 1949 noo!],used ti tek me aroond and up Bell's Place,and aroond the corner..and we used to gaze in the windae of Wemyss shop,at the piles and piles of big sweet jars of sweets of aal description..we kids had nowt..me mutha cudnt gie us a jam sammidge in the afternoon when we hungry between meals..so we used ti drool owa the sight of aal these big sweet jars..we used ti watch vans coming and gaanin,loading and unloading whacks of these jars at a time and wondered what was gaan on..we didn't knaa wat the words "Confectionery Wholesaler" meant!..we were pitmans kids..a still wasn't at school yit..[a started in the Autumn term at the Bedlington Village Infants school in 1949].In later years,some of the Millfielders broke in and stole jars of sweets,the same ones broke into the Clayton Ballroom..they got caught and fined..it was a big crime scene in them days..hearing of local lads being taken to court..Bedlington was a quiet peaceful little village!!..It seems that building hasn't changed much owa the yeors...but Bedlington sure has!! Cheers!

Our Government (Canadian) is giving away millions to foreign companies to come and build facilities for making batteries, we have most of the "ingredients" to make them, but the environmentalists rather we get others mine it, using less friendly methods.

Noting wrong at all @Tonyp. I was simply contacting stustep, via the '@' name tag method, so they could see what had been said about the property with the Blue Badge that was the initial query. The info on the other premises is good I see Canny Lass - Coming soon This is an interesting family and I've been researching them this week. I'll post soon, probably on John Dawson's thread The Last of the Nailers. It will probably be long so it may need a few posts. - looks like she has been digging on the genealogy site

Thank you all for getting in touch it’s interesting to have information about the houses and buildings nearby … I think the 2 buildings are heavily related to each other from what you all have said and what I’ve previously found out. thanks

I think stustep appreciated it

Sorry I cannot add anything to this story . The Gibsons were a local family. My family knew someone of that name but right now it is too late to ask the relevant questions . Sadly we never ask the right questions and time defeats us all in the end . A track we love starts with ‘ Will these city streets remember us we walked them long ago ! Torn apart by a bitter wind that took us far from home ‘

Hi Alan don’t think anyone has gone off track what’s wrong with giving a new member information to there question we are just trying to help about the area where he’s new house is I would be interested never mind

Yes, there was a vending machine company on Front Street East at some point. Something Vending prominently displayed there. Back to Weymss: the snacks for the Market Place factory came from there. Also, I've got a vague memory of taking boxes of something like KitKat bars (though maybe they were Penguins) to the Mechanic's Institute for them to sell, that may well have originated from Wemyss.

I used to have morning paper round for hollymount in the mid seventies I remember the shop having coffee vending machines in there so it might have been a supplier to factories etc I might be wrong as it was a long time ago

Question for Councillor Sanderson: Have you ever been in a modern data centre? If you have, the one thing you'd have noticed is the distinct lack of human beings. Yes, a sprinkling of security staff and the odd cleaner, but thousands of jobs?!!! Though... maybe he means Chinese jobs building the gear, and remote administration, and supervisory jobs in the SE? Are they going to duct all the waste heat into local homes to provide free super-clean central heating, so providing a REAL benefit to the community? Now, THAT would be worth having, and any politico worth his/her salt should be pushing for such a scheme.

So if the move for the QTS Data Center is successfull then Cambois will have a cloud hangiing over it for many years to come

The Nissan supplier is piddling compared with other international efforts, so their use of "giga" probably raises some chuckles in international circles. I seriously doubt whether any of the other UK efforts will get off the ground, as there's already oversupply. The TYPE of battery matters enormously these days, and by the time you ramp, it's very easy to find that there's no market for what you are producing at any price. We've seen this before in our area. Remember the Siemens DRAM factory off the spine road. By the time they were able to produce 1M bit chips in volume, the market had already moved on to 4 Mbit and the factory was a very expensive white elephant. The speed of innovation in batteries at the moment is even faster than that!

Very few changes have been made to the building. In the photo, taken early 1900's, the Gibson family property is the first building on the left.

PS Have you read John Dawson's topic 'The last of the Nailers' in History Hollow?

Hi @stustep and welcome to the forum. The Gibson nailers get a mention in Graces Guide https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Bedlington_Ironworks where you can read that: "During the first quarter of the nineteenth century the splitting mills became disused at the Bedlington works, and soon after that all the nailers shops, apart from one, disappeared from the town. The last shop belonged to the Gibson family and can be traced back to the beginning of the last century. Mr. Gibson says he was forced to finally pull down the shutters of his shop in 1930. He has since been known in Bedlington and district as "The last of the Nailers". Hope this is of use to you.

@John Fox (foxy) & @Mal I am assuming the council will have records of the Blue Plaques - do you know who to contact at the council offices? I don't know if English Heritage are sent all info on Blue Plaques (to me). @stustep - I know @Andy Millne added an entry into the bedlington Timeline :- @Jammy posted in a topic 'Halfpenny Woods' create by @Canny lass and mentioned the iron Works and in his comment was this bit about nails :- Something else that has me thinking. Which way were the completed steam engines moved from the works. I suppose they could have travelled towards the Kitty Brewster or beyond to flatter ground and joined the rail network in the Bates pit area. The furnace bridge is an arch but is flat on the top so the engines could be wheeled/dragged across it with teams of horses. Then there would be the problem of getting them up to the bank top. I doubt horses could pull them up but perhaps a stationary steam engine could pull them up but where would they go from there. There was a rail track from the iron works that ran along the edge of the river towards the black bridge. This track was paid for by the Iron Works and connected with the Barrington pit track that brought coal to the riverside for transfer onto barges. The iron works then had coal delivered directly to the works. I'm not sure if the trains went along that track because it was probably not a standard gauge track and was used to carry tubs of coal. The trains could have been loaded onto a barge though that would be risky and where would they be off loaded. I'm a bit puzzled. There is a stone block wall next to the furnace bridge which was probably reinforcing the land behind it and was used to tie up barges bringing supplies to the Iron Works or taking some of the other goods produced at the Iron Works. The Iron works also produced 100,000's of stamped nails that were transported all over the UK and the world. I'll have a look at the Evan Martin booklet - Bedlington iron & Engine Wporks 1736-1867' and see if the name 'Gibson' gets mentioned.

How many battery factories are there in the UK? one factory The UK only has one factory producing batteries at “giga” scale: a site run by the Chinese-owned AESC in Sunderland that supplies Nissan. It is capable of producing 2 gigawatt hours (GWh) of battery capacity a year. Two more gigafactories are due to be built.20 Nov 2023

I've likely said this before, but at the risk of becoming boring... 😁 Looking back, it will be no bad thing that early expectations regarding Cambois weren't met. The reason I say this is that world battery prices are on spectacular decline (per kilowatt) right now. What looked economic a few months back could easily turn into a white elephant today. There are so many plants now in construction that there's going to be a painful shake-out in the not too distant future. Also, Lithium batteries are rapidly becoming a strategic material: what would the military now do without its modern armada of drones?! Import barriers and local incentives are becoming the order of the day. So if you don't have a large enough domestic market established to take all the output, it's doomed from the start. It's always nice to be on the cutting edge of new technologies, but those who play with sharp objects... Doing what you do do well still has a lot to say for it. If you consulted Elon Musk on this, he'd certainly say start at the downstream end small and then vertically integrate backwards. Nice that some of this is already going on:- https://etn.news/energy-storage/rimac-energy-opens-new-bess-manufacturing-facility-in-the-uk

https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/britishvolt-cambois-northumberland-county-council-28887437?fbclid=IwAR20CimeFvKKDjmhSdLRo4siOuIeapWcpQYDB2t1zHutHaFHv8_NcRCzhvM

Following a long absence on this site I have just become aware of Derek's passing today, sad news indeed. A true gentleman respected by all who were fortunate enough to have the pleasure of his company.