Carole

I've added a new album called ‘End of an Era' in the Places section of the Gallery. It contains newspaper cuttings dating from the 1970s about the end of the colliery. There are some photos and quite a lot of cuttings mentioning people who lived at Netherton at the time.

The cuttings make me remember what a strong community it was. Quite a lot of people really wanted to stay but the Council wouldn't improve the houses.

Carole

I have just added about 30 more photos to my gallery of old photos of Netherton and Nedderton. All the photos in my gallery are from the same family collection and date from around 1900 to the 1960s. I can't find any more recent ones which is a shame. The new photos include:

Photos of the Hall Pit and Howard Pit

Pupils at Nedderton School

Another photograph of Netherton pitmen

Office Row

Electrification of the colliery

Snow at Netherton

Training a pit pony

Nedderton village

The Winding House controls

An engine and a motor at the colliery

Children at a Wartime fancy dress pageant

Netherton residents on a Wartime day trip to the Kyles of Bute

Howard House

Various other photos around Netherton

I'm having trouble with identifying some of the photos and would be glad of any help if anyone has more information about them.

Carole

I've just been given another box of old photos of Netherton. They're from the same source as the ones I have already had, so I'm re-uniting the family collection. I will scan any which might be of interest and add them to the gallery.

Looking through, I'm having trouble identifying one of them (attached). Can anyone help me identify what it is? I thought it might be the winding engine because my grandfather and great uncle were Winding Enginemen, and there's another photo of the controls in the Winding House. However, isn't it a bit small to be a Winding Engine? Maybe it's a pump to provide ventilation underground. I'm just guessing.

Are any of you experts? Any help you can give would be gratefully received, otherwise I'll have to give it a very vague label in the Gallery.

Carole

Hi,

I have just managed to send a second photo of the girls at Franch Flag Day which might include your Great Aunty Jean without a message (I don't really know what I'm doing!) My Great Aunt Kitty is the girl sitting down in the second photo. Kitty lived at Netherton all her life, and she died in 1999. We have lost all the people who could have answered all the questions we now have.

It sounds as if you have a really interesting family to investigate, I do hope you hear from people who can help you.

Carole

Apologies for not responding earlier but I've been away.

Carole. I believe my Great Aunt is one of the young ladies dressed as flower girls. I wish I had a photograph to show you of her but sadly it's all in my head now as she died in 1982 and I've no one to get a photo from. But she was red haired and pale skinned in a family of dark haired, swarthy skinned people (much as I am). Although funnily enough, I now know she came from a gypsy family (on her mothers side) called Blythe from Kirk Yetholm in the Borders. And reading up on them they were known for being 'ungypsy' like in their looks. And were known for their reddish hair and fair skin. Once again thank you so much for sharing.

Apologies for not responding earlier but I've been away.

Carole. I believe my Great Aunt is one of the young ladies dressed as flower girls. I wish I had a photograph to show you of her but sadly it's all in my head now as she died in 1982 and I've no one to get a photo from. But she was red haired and pale skinned in a family of dark haired, swarthy skinned people (much as I am). Although funnily enough, I now know she came from a gypsy family (on her mothers side) called Blythe from Kirk Yetholm in the Borders. And reading up on them they were known for being 'ungypsy' like in their looks. And were known for their reddish hair and fair skin. Once again thank you so much for sharing.

I've added another batch of photos to my gallery 'Old photos of Netherton'. The new photos date from 1901 to the 1930s and they include pupils at Nedderton School, the Colliery Engineer and Colliery Secretary, some of the staff who worked for the Colliery Manager at Howard House, and one of some pitmen with their motorbikes.

I am hoping to get more photos from family sources and I think there will be some taken at the colliery itself. I will scan and upload anything which might be of interest.

Great photos. I'd like to see more, but of a later time if anyone has any out there, willing to upload.

Hello again Jojo,

I forgot to mention that I came across some more photos and other information about Netherton and other towns and villages on the Northumberland Communities website. You probably know all this, but just in case here's a link to the photo entries for Netherton:

http://communities.northumberland.gov.uk/Nedderton_C4.htm

Carole

Great photos. I'd like to see more, but of a later time if anyone has any out there, willing to upload.

Hello Jojo

I've had a look through my collection of family photos and I'm sorry but I can't find anything later which could be of interest. I've just got a few very ordinary family snaps which no-one else could possibly want.

It's sad that there seem to be so few photos of Netherton, and now there's hardly a trace of it left. Like you, I would love to see any others that people may have if they would be happy to upload them.

Carole

What wonderful photographs.

They are especially poignant for me as my Grandma was born at Netherton Colliery in 1914 and some of these people could have been her family.

In fact in photo three, the young girl third from the left (standing) is the image of my Great Aunty Jean (born 1905). I don't know if it is her. But facially it really reminds me of later photographs I saw of her, and she seems to have red hair, which my Aunt had. It would be lovely to find out if it really is her.

Thank you for sharing these photographs.

Hi Poldweia

I'm glad the photos are interesting for you. It does seem quite possible that some people in your Grandma's family could be in the photos that I have got.

I have put about a dozen more photos into the Galleries section (click on ‘Galleries' at the top of the screen, then on 'Places Gallery' and then scroll across to the right and click on ‘Old Photos of Netherton'). There is one taken during the Second World War of a large group of people dressed up for a fancy dress pageant - maybe you might spot family members in that one.

I'm not sure if we are counting people in the same way in the photo you mention - the people in it are not all standing side by side in a tidy line. There are two girls toward the left of the photo standing side by side carrying trays of flags and medallions, both wearing white caps (a bit like old fashioned nurses caps), and they both have coloured ‘bibs' with a medallion pinned to them. The girl on the left of the pair has a roughly centre parting, the other has a side parting with her hair swept across.

The girl on the left of those two (the one with a roughly centre parting) was my Great Aunt Kitty Harrison. I'm afraid I don't know who the other is, in fact I can't identify anyone else in that photo. If you can't be sure about which one is Kitty there's another photo of four of the girls in the Gallery section and it's easy to spot Kitty in that one - she's the only one sitting down.

I've noticed your post seeking information about the Tweddle family and I wish I could help but I don't remember ever hearing the name mentioned by my relatives at Netherton. I hope you do get some replies from people who can help you.

Carole

Me personally, i would try running a program like ccleaner

this will erase the old stuff left behind from the old install and should bring back the old functionality. if it does not, the worst that can happen is it cleanes up your pc a bit!

click HERE to download it...

Thank you - I now have a cleaner PC but sadly no restoration of the missing function. It feels as if Roxio didn't just deactivate it so that you would be forced to use Drag-to- Disk, it feels as if it is has deleted this Windows function completely. I'm still hoping for a solution but trying to think of a work around to use instead. I know I could re-install Windows XP and I think I've got everything backed up, but I suspect I might just dig myself into a deeper hole.

I could be wrong but sometimes when you uninstall stuff it comes up with something like. One or more programs share some of the items you are uninstalling. If it said this then you may need to reinstall roxio then when its say this again then select the items you uninstall. Not sure. Without actually seeing the problem & having a fiddle I'm not too sure but you could try it. It won't harm anything I suppose. Good luck.

Thanks very much for your suggestion. I've tried this but you only get the option to select out uninstalling Drag-to-Disk or the whole of the rest of the software suite. If I'd known at the outset what I do now I would have tried a customised installation to avoid installing Drag-to-Disk in the first place.

I installed Roxio Easy Media Creator 9 for a one-off job to edit a collection of old cine films which had been transferred onto DVD. I had various difficulties with the Roxio software, in particular the Drag-to-Disk function. One problem was that it seemed to have disabled the function within Windows which originally copied pictures to CD, ie. 'Copy to CD' in Picture Tasks. Now that I've finished the editing job I decided to get rid of Roxio and I have uninstalled the whole suite including Drag-to-Disk (using Add or Remove programs in Control Panel). I'm left with no way of copying pictures to CD because the 'Copy to CD' function has not been restored to the 'Picture Tasks' Menu. Too much to hope for I suppose.

Does anyone know if I can reset the 'Picture Tasks' Menu to restore the original functions? I'm not keen on reinstalling Windows XP if I can avoid this. Help would be very much appreciated.

Thanks for taking the time to explain this. I'll use it if I ever want to get a picture into a post.

I don't doubt that the Bose speakers Monsta suggests are great but I wanted a 2.1 set of speakers for my PC, not a 4.1 set, and I was looking within a price limit of £100. I tried a range of speakers in this price range - nothing I tried came close to the Harman Kardons. The appearance initially made me think twice because I loved the design but suspected that something so radically different might be putting appearance before function and they could be really let down by poor sound quality. Not so. I was astonished by the sound when I tried them. They produce a clear undistorted sound with more volume than I could possibly want. They have the capacity to produce a really punchy bass if that's what you want, although I generally don't so I haven't got the bass turned up very far.

Appearance definitely isn't the key factor for me but I find a lot of computer equipment frankly ugly (apart from Macs - wish I had one) so it's just a bonus to find something in my price range which sounds great and looks great.

I looked at Monsta's link to the Bose speakers on That online auction site that is in no way as good as Free Bedlington.co.uk Classifieds to see what I might have missed, but as they are a 4.1 set they weren't what I was looking for, and as the current bid for them is £190 (including delivery) with 3 days to go they would in any case have been way out of my price league.

I agree with 3g that by far the best way to chose speakers is to try them out and make your own comparison. People have different preferences for sound quality and appearance. Some people will think the Harman Kardons just look weird and hate them - fine, each to their own!

There are loads of customer reviews of the Harman Kardons available on line if anyone's interested. Some people say they are using them with an iPod to replace their main hifi/audio system. I wouldn't go THAT far but they do give our Denon system with Mission speakers quite a run for its money.

I notice from scanning some reviews online that one person bought them even though put off at first by their appearance: "Not sure of the alien phallic jellyfish thingy they've got going on but the sound is simply awesome (for less than £100..!) Bargain price too.. I'm hearing sounds on cds I didn't know where there... After the initial should I shouldn't I etc I am simply overjoyed that I did... "

Well, that thought hadn't occurred to me...

By the way, the price on Amazon for the Harman Kardons has just been adjusted down to £90 (9th Jan 2008).

Thank you 3g for adding the photo and link to the Harman Kardon website. I would have tried adding a photo but so far my attempts to put photos into posts using the PhotBox photo sharing website have been unsuccessful. Your photo is much better than my description!

If you want some multimedia speakers for your PC or Mac you can get some brilliant ones for under £100. I bought the Harman Kardon Soundsticks II, best price probably from Amazon (currently £97) and they are just fantastic. Unbelievable sound quality, very easy to set up and great to look at (transparent and curvy, and the subwoofer looks like a small fountain with a blue light). There are loads of user reviews for these speakers on Amazon too.

I tried them out with our new Sony Bravia TV. I just plugged them into the earphone socket and the sound is just too good to be true, so I bought another set for the TV. They sound better than friends' much more expensive multi-speaker surround sound systems, and they look far better too. I've checked and they will work with any audio device which has a socket for 3.5mm audio jack - MP3 players, games consoles, Walkman etc.

I can't think of any bad points, except that the subwoofer looks so good that you don't want to hide it away.

Ha! I'm proud to have a pay-as-you-go Nokia 1100 which cost me all of £9.99 (new) two years ago. It does everything I want and I really don't give a **** what anyone might think of me because of the phone I own. I'm happy to spend my money other things.

When it gives up the ghost I might be tempted to get one with a camera, but only if it's cheap!

A belated Happy Birthday to 3G. Thanks for all your work on the website and your help to the bewildered!

If you have your own business getting professional advice on anti-spam measures plus other aspects of computer security and privacy would be a very good move.

If you're a private user I think you will be able to sort this out by alterations to your AOL account settings. I used to use AOL some time ago (then only dial up) and it actually had pretty good facilities for filtering out spam and blocking unwanted emails. I'm not familiar with the current version of AOL but I support Mr Darn™'s suggestion that you try AOL's "live help" service. I used this a couple of times and it was genuinely helpful.

Good luck.

Surely it's the mining connection. The Klondike gold rush happend just before the turn of the centurary. Most miners from wherever must have contemplated becoming involved, and many of them actually did.

I've mining on both sides of my parents families. On my mother's side, her parents did follow the call of gold. But later, to a more mature industry, and not quite that far West.

Anyway, amongst mining communities The Klondike would have become a euphemism for for somewhere way-out; somewhere you only ventured to at your peril. Hence Klondike, Cramlington.

In such dangerous occupations a sense of humour wasn't optional, it was an essential survival mechanism.

The people I heard using this term were from my grandparent's generation, probably born between about 1890 - 1910 so they would have heard about the Klondike Gold Rush when they were children. Perhaps they heard of people who left to try their luck. I thought the Gold Rush must be the connection, but the sculleries I remember weren't the sort of places to make you think of striking gold...

I'd never heard of the reference to Cramlington/Klondike. The back of beyond, perhaps?

Thanks for to monsta and threegee for your suggestions.

Does anyone have any idea why some people at Bedlington and Netherton used to call their scullery the "klondike"? I heard this when I was a kid and my Dad later confirmed that I wasn't imagining it because he remembered it from his own childhood at Netherton in the 1920s/30s. I can't come up with any idea to explain it.

I have now put these photos and others into the 'Places' section of the Photo Gallery.

hi carole, I got the pic eventually. It is absolutely amazing. The old house hasnt changed much.....the black bits have been cleaned off and some new windows put in but otherwise it looks pretty much the same.

We have been trying since 1999 to get a pic of our house and i think you must have the only one in existance. so well done and thanks ever so much. Isnt it a shame that it was ever pulled down. I'd have had lots of fun restoring it to its former glory had it been left intact. The council, in their wisdom, wont let me replace the building. Such a shame that such a part of bedlington#s history is gone forever.

Anyway, thanks so very much. It means a lot to me and I'll stand you a pint if we ever run into you.

any more pics anyone has would be gratefully appreciated.

maureen and keith

Hi Maureen,

I found your personal message first so I think you should have my message and email by now. I'm so pleased that I happened to have a photo that really means a lot to you. I inherited all my family photos from my Dad last year and I have been gradually going through them and scanning selected ones. When I came across my Mum's slide of the old Co-op at Netherton I admit that at first I wondered why on earth she had photographed a burned out building. Just as well that she did. I think you may well be right that it's the only photo in existence of the old Co-op.

I agree that it's a shame that the old Co-op building was pulled down. The whole building would have made a fantastic house, and it would have been a real labour of love to restore it. From the photo it looks as if it could have been saved, but I suppose it didn't make financial sense at the time. At least they kept part which had been the Manager's house so the memory of what used to be there hasn't completely gone. I feel quite choked that virtually all trace of the colliery and colliery housing has gone, as if all that history has been wiped away. Maybe people who had to work at the colliery wouldn't feel the same, I don't know.

I'm glad to have received your email address so that I could send you the other aerial photo which I don't think I should put up on the website - copyright, and all that.

I'd take you up on your offer of a drink (and buy you one in return) but I now live at the other end of the country and I don't get back to the North East very often. My last visits to Netherton were to my great aunt who spent the last few years of her life at Howard House when it was a Care Home. She died in 1999 and I haven't been to Netherton since then. Before she moved into Howard House she lived at Nedderton, opposite the old school. I used to get up to see her as often as I could, and take her out. After a trip out she always wanted to end up at the Shangri-La cafe at Bedlington.

If I turn up any more photos I'll make sure that I get them to you.

A Zeppelin airship dropped bombs on and around Beddlington on 14th/15th April 1915.

There is a copy of a postcard showing this Zeppelin over Blyth on the Northumberland Communities wesite - check this link:

http://communities.northumberland.gov.uk/005594.htm

Mind you, the website does point out that it looks suspiciously like a fake because no-one in the street is taking the slightest notice of the huge airship going overhead.

Inspired by Cympil's post of Netherton Pitmen, I have scanned some of old family photographs taken at Netherton Colliery. There are a lot of people I can't identify, but someone else might recognise them.

Thanks to everyone who has sent me helpful and encouraging messages. I don't know if I'm going to get my photos in properly but I'll give it a go ...

The first photo was taken in about 1911. The man 3rd right (with his ‘bait' under his arm) is my grandfather, Edward Rochester, known as Ned. He became a winding engineman at Netherton, and worked until he was 69. He died only 2 years later. I was 6 when he died but I remember him well. He was a lovely man, very kind to me when I was a child.

The young lad on the left is Tommy Harrison, also called Percy by some (his middle name). His older sister later married my grandfather, so Tommy was my great uncle. When the First World War broke out he ran away and joined the army and he was sent to France. His parents contacted the army authorities because Tommy was only 16 and he was sent home. He did it again the next year and this time his parents decided to let him go. He served with the Scottish Regiment of Horse, surviving the Western Front and Battle of the Somme. After the War he worked as an engine fitter at Netherton Colliery.

The slightly older lad second left is Joe Swann, Tommy's cousin. Joe also became a winding engineman. He worked at the Hall Pit (near Nedderton village) while my grandfather worked at the Howard Pit. I don't know who any of the others are.

The second photo was taken at Netherton Colliery in about 1915, I think, but I'm not sure of the exact year. The man on the far left is Michael Harrison who was my great grandfather. He was the colliery engineer.

The 3rd photo is of French Flag Day in 1915, a fundraising event for The Great War held in the grounds of Howard House at Netherton. My great aunt Kitty Harrison is 3rdleft but I can't identify anyone else.

4th is a photo of a Netherton Chapel outing in about 1917. I can only identify 3 people, Joe Rochester back row right, my grandfather's older brother, and Joe's 2 children Billy and Kitty front right and 3rd right.

5th photo is of the Pecketts engines at Netherton Colliery. The Office Row houses are behind. My great grandparents Michael and Thomasine Harrison and their 8 children lived in the house on the end of the row.

6th is Netherton football team in 1921. My grandfather Ned Rochester is 3rd left in the back row, but I don't know who any of the others were, and I don't know what the trophy was.

7th is a photo of some of the children at Netherton School in 1924. My Dad is front left (with his front teeth missing at the time) but I can't identify any of the others.

8th photo is Michael Harrison, my great uncle, and brother of Tommy in my first photo. He worked at Netherton as an engine fitter. He was a member of the underground rescue team even though he was a surface worker (perhaps because he was exceptionally strong). This photo was taken just before he was lowered down a disused shaft to look for a man who had gone missing, I think in the 1930s. Michael put on extra layers of jackets to try to give him some protection in the shaft. He told the family about the eerie experience of finding wooden coal tubs fully loaded and still in good condition, as if waiting to be raised up the shaft. He though he might be crushed when crawling under rotting bratishes to search for the missing man, but he wasn't there.