Interview with Nancy Snaith (90) of Mickley in January, 2015.
Nancy was born on 23rd March, 1924, in the house on Newton Terrace where she still lives today.
Her grandparents had a shop (Nicholls) on the main street, but when her grandfather died when Nancy was 11, her grandmother found running the business too difficult. She moved into Nancy’s family home and Nancy and her family moved into the shop. Nancy was now 13, and she helped to run the shop with her mother. They sold “everything” – groceries, fruit, vegetables, soap powders, jams, pit hats, china, carbide for pitmen’s lamps, draperies, hardware etc, and each week the window was dressed to show what they had to offer.
During WW2, soldiers were billeted in Mickley. They lived in nissen huts, although some also lived in private houses such as the vicarage, the school house, and some with Nancy’s family. Her mother would regularly invite soldiers into her home for evening visits – and for Sunday tea. Members of the Welsh Regiment had their own dance band, and would play for dances in the Reading Room. A Welsh soldier taught her to dance. Soldiers built a cookhouse behind the mission room, and after the war, this was converted into a fish and chip shop. Nancy served at Prudhoe fire station on Thursday nights during the war, sleeping there until she was called for duty.
Her grandfather had been a good businessman, and ran a local bus service with two buses which ran between Newcastle and Hexham. Father was a driver and Mother was a conductress. They also had a fish and chip shop, which stood where Mickley Garage is now. Young Nancy would help in this shop, where fish cost 3d and chips 1d. Behind this shop, the family kept hens, ducks and turkeys. At their main shop – Nicholls – Grandfather had an electric washing machine and mangle in a separate room, and people would pay one shilling per hour to use these facilities.
Nancy went to Mickley infant and junior schools from the age of five. She had many good teachers, but remembers one who used the cane far too much.
On leaving school at 14, she worked in the family shop until she married at the age of 23. She had one daughter, who is now 66, and she is very proud of her extended family.
The people of Mickley were well served with all of their basic needs. Milk was delivered from Hall Yards, and poured into the jugs which people brought to their doors. A fish merchant and greengrocer also came from door to door selling their produce. There were two co-ops, the largest of which was West Wylam and Prudhoe Co-op – now partly occupied by Jiggery Pokery. Here, drapery and hardware were sold on the east side of the building, and groceries on the west. Up Eastgate Bank were the cobbler and the butcher. Other businesses included a hairdresser’s, a sweet shop which also sold homemade bread and teacakes, a house which sold pies and peas on Fridays. And there was a cinema – The Cosy!
Further up Eastgate, was the entrance to a play park and cricket field. There was also a tennis court and bowling green, as well as attractive rose beds. The cricket field was later used as a rose field by Ellis Wood, a well-known Prudhoe rose breeder. When this eventually closed down, the site was used as a market garden, where people could pick their own raspberries, blackcurrants and strawberries. It was later abandoned, and grew into a wild area. Now – in 2014-15 – it is being developed into a small housing estate.
During Nancy’s childhood, children would play in the fields behind Newton Terrace before houses were built there. They would have picnics and make mud pies. They would also play on the streets, where there was no danger from busy traffic. When she was about 9 or 10, the Ratcliffe family moved into the wood to the west of Mickley School, where they lived in their caravan. They had a sawmill, and chopped down all the nearby trees which, luckily, have now all been replaced
As well as Mickley Club, there were two pubs. The Miners’ Arms was half way down Station Bank, and at the bottom of the hill there was the Hare and Hounds, which also ran a ferry service in the form of a rowing boat, which took people across the Tyne to Ovingham/Ovington.
Nancy’s father was always strict, and insisted that the teenager always had to be home by 10.00 at night.
Nancy married John Thomas Snaith, who worked in the garage from which her father ran a taxi business. He had removed his moustache to make himself more attractive to her!
Many people in Mickley lived in miners’ houses, which were very basic. A lot of the properties were back-to-back, with a living room and pantry on the ground floor and one bedroom upstairs. Their lavatories were separate buildings – some of which were reached by crossing the main road. In the 1950s/60s they were demolished by Prudhoe Urban District Council, which had built new modern housing estates in the Oaklands and West Wylam areas of Prudhoe. Many people moved into these new areas, while others moved further up the coast, or as far away as Cannock Chase in Staffordshire.
Nancy remembers the Mickley Carnivals. People would paint their doors and “sandystone” their steps to make the village as smart as possible. The parade began at West Mickley and progressed all the way along to the football field, where marquees had been erected, and the judges were waiting to decide which produce would win the prizes.
Part of her working life was spent doing part-time work for the Co-op, and she would travel to stores at such places as Greenside, Wylam, Corbridge, Hexham, Branch End and Prudhoe’s “Half Way.”
She has made many friends over the years, and she is always pleased when people stop to speak to her and relive old memories.