phila

The glove factory wasnt a school. My father tells me it was a memorial hall and that Barrington school was on the road from there to Bedlington Station. My mother went to that school about 1943. I dont think that schools used it but more Sunday teams etc. Office Row was just to the right of the photo in line with the two houses shown. I lived in Double Row and the wooden shop there was called Robertsons or Robinsons. The pit was closed but the miners walked over the fields to Boomer Pit. A chap called Dody Crackett lived in one of the big houses at the bottom of Office Row and he used to look after animals, safety etc for the pit. I remember pit ponies being put out in the fields at holiday time on the road down from the top road railway crossing.

I was born in Office Row, No. 8, in 1953, although we lived in the next street this was my Grandmas house. The pit was closed by then but Bedlington A and D pits were still open where my father worked. Barrington was a series of terraces with 'semi detached' outside toilets with coalhouses on the side. Street lighting had been gas shortly before I was born according to my grandma but I never saw it. I broke my collar bone playing football in Office Row. As there were no telephones my Grandma was assigned to have a slate board outside the house for anyone to write the need for a doctor on and the doctor would call to look at it each morning then call on the sick. I remember Dr Robson from Guidepost doing this. We used to play on the pit heaps and go collecting blackberries there when in season. We also used to go to get bullrushes from the pit ponds, something I would go mad at now if my kids did it. There was a football field next to Office row used regularly and I have some old photos of me and some of my brothers there. There were some bigger houses at the North end of Office row got to through an opening in the wall at the bottom of the street. I think I can only remember these being derelect and used as a sort of 'camp' for melting lead from the roof etc. Perhaps these were the houses that could have had people working there. They are in the background of the attached photo but they dont look derelect. All the gardens were big and used for growing vegetables. Nobody used their front doors. There was a little store for groceries etc in the next street. There was a school on the main road that turned into a glove factory years later and my mother worked there for a while.