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Norman Roberts

About six generations of Norman’s family have lived in Prudhoe. His grandfather Roberts told him that the family originally came from Lancashire, but he believes that older generations actually came from Wales. In the early 1800s, family members made their way across the country towards this area, looking for work. When they reached the Tyne, they saw a red glow across the river – the glow came from bee-hive coke ovens situated at various points between Bywell and West Mickley. They told the manager of the ovens that they were looking for work – any kind of work! He directed them towards Bywell where they were given jobs as stonemasons on the new bridge which was being built across the river. When this work was finally completed, one of the family decided to stay in this area. He married a woman from Ovington before moving into the new Mickley Square.

There are family memories and anecdotes about the opening of Ovingham Bridge. The development of the Tyne valley railway line was a catalyst for the development of several coal mines. The John Pit at West Wylam was sunk from 1836-1839, and occupied a site close to the roundabout on the A695 Prudhoe bypass where today’s travellers can see an old coal tub. Norman tells of a flooding incident in the Prudhoe Main shaft, which ran in the direction of Prudhoe Castle. This flooding meant that there was no work for many of the miners, and they moved to new jobs at Clara Vale, Emma and Greenside.

His father, a miner at Mickley, died in 1929, when Norman was just six months old. Because of his death, Norman and his mother were evicted from their colliery worker’s cottage. They moved into one of the Legion cottages in Prudhoe, and then into Norman’s grandfather’s council house at Edgewell, before moving, with him, into South View. They survived on fifteen shillings a week, thanks to the introduction of the Widows and Orphans pensions by Winston Churchill.

When the grandfather died, that home was lost, and they moved into Locomotive Yard – behind the Locomotive Inn at the bottom of South Road. In 1939, slum clearance started in Prudhoe. Many homes were demolished, and new council houses were built at Edgewell and Castle Dene. Norman and his mother were put into a two-bedroom house on Edgewell Road, where they could not afford the weekly rent of nine shillings – even with her cleaning job, which paid two shillings and sixpence a week. When she was no longer able to work, they had to apply to “the Parish” for extra money to survive. This was a humiliating thing to have to do.

Norman’s entire school life, from infants to leaving at the age of fourteen, was spent at Prudhoe West School. On leaving school, he found work in the laboratory at West Wylam Colliery. This work involved analysing dust samples from mines to ensure that there was no danger of explosions, as well as other matters of health and safety. He later worked in a laboratory on Scotswood Road, and then as Assistant Mining Geologist between Westoe and Bates’ Colliery. The Mickley Coal Company, owned by Sidney Bates of The Grange in Prudhoe, had approximately twenty pits, employing about 17,000 men in the Tyneside area. Bates was a strict employer, who even used spies to ensure that all workers never “slacked,” and that mines were run according to his orders. He was a powerful man in the Prudhoe area, and when the Prudhoe Urban District Council was formed in about 1910, he assumed the role of chairman. The council chamber occupied Prudhoe House – former home of Matthew Humble – on South Road.

Some of Norman’s fellow workers were German, and when the Second World War was imminent, they were ordered to leave their work. Some were transported back to Germany, while others were interned for the whole of the war. The main internment camp was at Shotley Bridge. Apparently there was also a detention camp on the land opposite Mickley School.

As a boy, he lived through hard times, and in order to survive, he and his friends would steal food from local gardens. They were just a few of the many who were forced into such behaviour.

Later, he married Nancy Routledge, a girl from Crawcrook, whose mother was an ardent socialist. Their first home was in a prefab at Low Prudhoe. Many of the prefabs were very cold because, before they were constructed, the insulating layers in the wall sections had been stolen. In about 1959, they moved to the house at West Wylam where Norman still lives. They had two children – a daughter and a son.

One of the main changes to the Prudhoe area took place before Norman was born. He believes that the main road – more of a track – came from the Crawcrook toll gate, down the old main street towards the south side of Bradley Hall, then towards Prudhoe, crossing the Stanley Burn by the old bridge which can still be seen below the B6395, then past Prudhoe Hall, through Homedale, past the Grange and along the “High Road” (Highfield Lane). Old Ordnance Survey maps show these tracks, and Norman says that the best of these maps is the 6 inch one published about 1900, when large parts of Prudhoe as we now know it simply did not exist. Station Road was built in the late 1930s. For some years it was simply known as “the New Road.”

Norman remembers a time when there was a fish and chip shop in what is now the car park of the Dr Syntax public house. This corrugated iron structure was being built when the Boer War started in 1899. It was built as a temporary pub to replace the old Dr Syntax while it was demolished and replaced by the building we still see today. After the War, in 1903, Gilbert Atkinson returned from South Africa, where he had been fighting. He had received a bounty of £20 after working with the South African police force; and he used this money to buy the corrugated iron building, and start a fish and chip shop – with tables and chairs. The building served that purpose until it was demolished in the 1950s, and was the beginning of a very successful business.

He also tells a story of members of the Northumberland Fusiliers who were taken to the docks at Blyth, where they boarded an old collier boat which would take them to serve in the First World War. The walls of the coal storage area had been whitewashed, and a latrine had been installed above it. It was “standing room only” for the men who had to use it on their way across the sea to France. While the men stood, straw bales were lowered down, followed by the colonel’s horse, which would accompany them on their voyage.