BERWICK ADVERTISER, 100 YEARS AGO

26/10/2023 by Northumberland Archives

BERWICK ADVERTISER, 26 OCTOBER 1923

WOOLER PARISH CHURCH

MEMORIALS UNVEILED AND DEDICATED

The unveiling and dedication of a memorial Reredos in memory of the men from the parish who gave their lives for their country in the Great War, together with side panels in memory of Canon Wilsden, who was Vicar of the parish from 1880 to 1910, and a lectern in memory of Miss Bessie Wilsden took place in St. Mary’s Parish Church, Wooler, on Sunday afternoon. The memorials are all made from selected Austrian oak, designed and executed by Messrs E. Douglas and Son, cabinetmakers, Wooler, and correspond with the other fittings in the chance as carried out under the restoration scheme, the design being Gothic. In the panels of the Reredos are the sixty names of those who fell from the parish. The workmanship does infinite credit to local labour.

There was a very large congregation, the church being packed to the doors. Amongst those present were the Earl and Countess Tankerville and many others.

The Vicar (Canon Moran) conducted the service, which opened with the hymn “The King of Love my Shepherd is.” The lessons were read by the Vicar and the Rev, J, G. Shotton. A sacred solo, “Infinite Love,” was sung by the Earl of Tankerville to organ accompaniment. The choir gave a capable rendering of Stainer’s anthem, “Who Are These?”

The Reredos and panels were unveiled by Major J. G. G. Rea, D.S.O., and the lectern was unveiled by the Rev. J. G. Shotton, at the request of near relatives and friends by whom it has been provided.

The memorials were then dedicated by Bishop of the Diocese (Dr Wild). A large number of wreaths were placed in front of the communion table by relatives and friends. The hymn “Fight the Good Fight” having been sung, the Bishop delivered a stirring address, taking for his text 1^st Cor. iii., 8 –“Every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labour.” The Bishop, referring to the proceedings, said the day was a very appropriate one, for it was the anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar. He paid a warm tribute to the men who went to almost certain death in that memorable month of August, 1914.

The” Last Post” was sounded, and after a minute’s silence the Blessing was pronounced by the Bishop, which was followed by the “Reveille” and the singing of the National Anthem.

The members of the Parish Council and British Legion were also present, also the Freemasons, Sunday School children, and representatives from other places of worship.

NORHAM

Norham Nursing Association held a successful jumble sale in aid of the work of the Association on Wednesday afternoon, £23 5s being realised.

The dance which was held in the Public Hall on Saturday last was very well patronised, the proceeds going towards the Football Club funds. Everybody seemed to enjoy themselves very well to the delightful music of Miss Jean Smith, extras being played by Miss L. Weatherston, Sunderland. Mr J. Sheppard was at the door as usual, and Mr A. Burns was M.C.

A whist drive and dance in aid of Norham Boat races, held on Friday evening in the Public Hall, proved a great success. The Committee intend making the whist drive and dance an annual affair in order to keep their funds in a healthy condition, prepared to meet any emergency which may arise through bad weather. Thirty-six tables were occupied and 24 games were played. At the end of the twelfth game tea and cakes were served round a number of young ladies under the supervision of Miss A. Lyall and Miss H. Rule, who kindly undertook the management of the catering. At the conclusion of the games the prize winners to be Miss Purves, Miss Wilkinson, Miss J. Wharton, and Messrs Easton, Anderson and Scott. The prizes, which were of a useful nature, were provided by local tradesmen and friends. At intervals during the dancing a Dutch auction was held, and the articles sold consisted of cakes, a canary, a cockerel, and a bottle of wine brought remarkable prices. The dance music was supplied by Miss Jean Smith in her usual able manner and was much appreciated. The whist drive and dance was voted by all present as the most enjoyable event which has taken place for some time. Thanks are due to all those friends who so kindly helped by assistance, giving cakes, tea, etc, and by lending cards and tables to make the drive so successful.

SIR WALTER RUNCIMAN ON UNEMPLOYMENT

Speaking on unemployment at the central Primitive methodist Church, Newcastle, on Monday night, Sir Walter Runciman said his own opinion was that there was no necessity for all those people to be out of work. If they could not handle a mallet or plane, they could do something; and he felt assured that, if the proper policy was adopted, employment could be found for hundreds of thousands now out of work. But he himself offered work to some people the other day, and they would not do it. That reminded him of a young girl who applied for a passage to America, and when he asked her why she wanted to leave England, she said: “I can scrub doorsteps out there, but I can’t do it here.” That was just a bit of standing on one’s dignity, continued the speaker; people did not like being seen doing unaccustomed work. Yet when he was a young sailor lad he was sometimes out of work. They got low wages in those days £32 10s a month – he thought he paid £13 a month now- and rotten food; and the cost of living was just as high then. But that did where else when not at sea.

He went to dig a garden on one occasion; and another time he saw a ship coming in and buried to ask the captain if he wanted help and got the job he was after. It was only a very few shillings, but it showed what could be done if people would only adapt themselves to circumstances. If they could not do one thing, they could do another. He had heard of communities who would rather starve than take the dole, and so would he. He had himself given people employment who said they would not accept the dole.

“I tell you,” concluded Sir Walter, “that there is work if you go where it is to be found. I don’t think anyone who has work to offer would turn a man or woman away if they are willing to take it. It is necessary to go on working to keep brain and body alive. I don’t want to die yet, and I think I would if I stopped working. Don’t get into the habit of thinking you ought to retire. If you are any good at your work, keep at it as long as you can. If you are not, get another job.

“I wish some of the leaders of what they call the working class – though we are all workers-would impress on the people they profess to lead that they can get work of some fashion if they only look for it.”

LOCAL NEWS

A volume of Dugald MacFadyen’s humorous stories and sketches, including “Buffoon’s Who’s Zoo,” has been edited by his son, R. MacFadyen, and for those who like this sort of thing it should serve to while away a journey or a cold and dirty night. It is published by W. F. Henderson, Edinburgh, at 2s net and s 6d net in paper covers.

Under the auspices of the International Bible Students’ Association, Mr J. Mackenzie, Edinburgh, delivered a lecture in the Long Room of the Corn exchange on Sunday evening. The lecturer dealt exhaustively with the new worldwide subject, “All nations marching to Armageddon,” and the audience followed his discourse with great attention.

BERWICK CHIMNEYS

A NEW BROOM SWEEPS CLEAN

Jane Pattison (60), 41 Church Street, Berwick, was charged with allowing her chimney to catch fire on Saturday afternoon, October 20^th. The Mayor and Councillor Bolus, as members of the Sanitary Authority, retired from the bench when this case came on.

Mrs Pattison pleaded guilty, saying it was an accident.

Mr Porter, Town Clerk, appearing for the Sanitary Authority, said they proposed to assume that the firing of the chimney was an accident. Mr Boyd was passing along Church Street at the time and saw huge clouds of smoke issuing from the chimney. Mrs Pattison, when spoken to, said it had been swept within the previous six weeks and gave the name of the sweep, but it was found from his books that it had been swept last on August 2^nd– 11 weeks ago. There were frequent cases of this sort in the borough, and the Sanitary Authority had been compelled to take proceedings. All that he would ask for was costs, the case to serve as a warning. In future cases he would press for a penalty.

SPORTS-FOOTBALL

EAST OF SCOTLAND QUALIFYING CUP

BERWICK RANGERS IN FORM

Rangers…………..3 Civil Service Strollers (h)…….1

Even the most ardent supporter of Berwick Rangers had “his doots” regarding the ability of the Yellow and Black to pull off the semi-final of the East of Scotland Qualifying Cup, and such scepticism was justified by the Civil Service Strollers having a good team together this year and the added advantage of home venue. The result therefore of a win for the Berwick lads after a game in which they held the whiphand throughout gave some credit to the prophets who in recent weeks have foretold a more successful run for the Rangers since their play has improved.

COMMENTS ON PLAY

There was no denying the superiority of the Rangers on the day’s play and even supporters of the Edinburgh Club admitted that their team was well beaten. The Berwick team was smart on the ball and all their attacks were made with method. Much of the good work came from good advice and general ship shown by Atkinson. Harvey was not killed with work but what he had to do he did well. Younger showed good form at back and what he slipped Haswell got. Atkinson was the outstanding man of the half line with Wakenshaw a close second. The Borthwick-Johnston wing showed splendid football and though they had not the luck to get goals they were the means of leading up to two of them. Wilson was one of the most useful men in the team and was always on the spot while Purves distributed well and played an improved game. Of the home team Bridges and Lamb played a sound game at back while McLaren at centre half was splendid in defence. The forwards were a nippy lot but once the Rangers’ defence got their measure they seldom had a look in. There was little to chose between them, but Sutherland and Purves took the eye most.

Who got soup at the Hexham Soup Kitchen? Part One

26/10/2023 by Northumberland Archives

This guest blog has been written by Phil Carstairs.

The Hexham Soup Kitchen seems to have started life in the cholera epidemic of 1831/32 but finally became more permanently established in the late 1830s judging by reports in local newspapers, notably the Newcastle Courant. Hexham Soup Kitchen’s minute books and other documents dating from 1841 to the early twentieth century are held in the Northumberland Archives at Woodhorn. Contained in these documents are lists. Lists of subscribers to the charity, lists of worthy committee members, lists of ingredients for making soup, of expenses for converting a vacant factory building into a soup kitchen, and lists of the deserving Hexham poor who were deemed worthy enough to receive soup and bread during the winter months.

This last category of list, recipients of soup, is the subject of this article. Although there were many thousands of soup kitchens across nineteenth-century Britain, lists of those receiving soup at these soup kitchens have almost never survived.

Like many other soup kitchens, Hexham’s did not rely on subscribers to hand out tickets. It invited the poor to apply for tickets which could be exchanged for soup and bread. The Soup Kitchen’s committee interviewed applicants for tickets at the start of each ‘season’ (usually December to March) to determine their worthiness. In 1851 the committee asked Mr Fairlamb, Hexham’s Relieving Officer, to attend the application process at the Vestry. He was the poor law official appointed by the Guardians of the Poor for Hexham Poor Law Union. His job was to provide immediate relief to those poor in crisis and to refer cases for long-term relief or admission to the workhouse to the Board of Guardians. He would have known many of Hexham’s poor and have had an opinion on who was deserving of charity and who was not. Mr Fairlamb was co-opted onto the committee in January 1861, cementing the close relationship between the charity and Hexham Poor Law Union.

The list of successful applicants would inform the committee how much soup to make and bread to order. The eligible got only the amount of soup they deserved, and no more. Further people could be added to the list during the season and ‘casuals’ (a category ranging from those suffering an emergency to tramps and vagrants) could be given soup on a case-by-case basis.

Soup lists for seven different seasons survive in the Northumberland Archives collections; each list contains the names of between 200 and 400 people. The first five lists are written in the back of the minute book used between 1841 and 1881. These five lists are on consecutive pages and so must have been recorded in chronological order. Only the last is dated, 1880-1881. The other two lists are in alphabetical ledgers. The lists record the names of the heads of household and the family size or the soup ration awarded, and their approximate address (except for the second list). The first list also records the occupation of many of the applicants.

Although six lists are not dated, we can work out to within a fairly narrow period when they were drawn up comparing the data recorded in the lists to census data and burial registers. Street addresses can also provide data evidence for a list. For instance, Jubilee Terrace probably got its name from Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in June 1887 and first appears as an address in the first of the alphabetical ledgers (other preliminary data from the census suggests a date in the late 1880s or early 1890s for this list). Identifying the exact dates of these lists is ongoing, but there appears to be one list from roughly each decade of the second half on the nineteenth century. The rest of this article focusses on the 1880-1881 list, made in December 1880, coinciding roughly with the 1881 census which took place in early April.

The 1880 list contains the names of 339 heads of household, 23 names are crossed out and one a female first name was replaced with a male one. People’s names will have been crossed out for various reasons. Some died that winter, like Dorothy Dodd and Thomas Brown. Others moved away, like Davison Bell, a joiner, whom the 1881 census records in Ryhope, Tyne and Wear. His family were still in Hexham at census time but not on the soup list so, having found work in Ryhope, Davison may have been sending money home to his family. Others were later deemed to be ineligible, perhaps because they found to be undeserving, or because they became so destitute that they had to enter the workhouse, like labourer William Askew and his two children. Charles Lowe appears on the list twice, once crossed out, probably the correction of a bureaucratic error rather than him trying to cheat the system, which would probably have resulted in him losing all entitlement.

The 1880 list is not in alphabetical order, suggesting that it was drawn up in the order in which people applied. In several instances people who were recorded in the census as being neighbours appear next to each other on the list. This indicates that they probably attended the application meeting together and is evidence of community and solidarity. Ann Dinwoodie and Isabella McGill were neighbours in Tyne Green and both worked at the paper mill as ‘paper dressers’; they attended the application meeting together, perhaps to provide each other with moral support: applicants for charity were exposed to intrusive investigation and to shame. Similarly, Thomas Welch a painter and Ellen Ritson, a cordwainer (shoemaker) lived next door to one another in Bell’s Court on Priestpopple, and attended together. All the soup applicants lived in Hexham town rather than the surrounding rural parts of the parish. Although they had occupations listed in the census, they were mostly without work or only working part-time as queuing for soup and taking it home would have taken several hours.

Newcastle’s Bath House Estate, a journey through maps

23/10/2023 by Northumberland Archives

One of the aims of the Northumberland Archives Charitable Trust is to improve and promote access
to documents held within Northumberland Archives. Projects have been funded to list collections as
well as adding descriptive content to existing collections. This additional information is added to our
catalogue making the content available and searchable via the Online Catalogue on the
Northumberland Archives website either at home or in the search rooms. The current cataloguing
project focuses on a collection of deeds relating to lands owned by members of the Clayton family in
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

In 1884 Nathaniel George Clayton acquired the Bath House Estate in Newcastle-upon-Tyne which
included a mansion called Bath House, shops and dwelling houses at Westgate Road, dwelling
houses in Villa Place, and tithes from hereditaments formerly called Moats Gardens. The
conveyance refers to an earlier deed of 1873 in which the boundary of the lands was defined and
detailed on a map. In between the two transactions a number of mortgages raised funds secured
against the Estate. Like his uncle, John Clayton, before him, Nathaniel was also interested in
acquiring property and land with a close proximity to the Roman Wall.

Using the plan included on the 1873 deed it is possible to compare it to other plans to see changes
to central Newcastle-upon-Tyne. The main streets named on the plan are Bath Lane and Westgate
Hill.

The 1844 ‘Plan of Newcastle and part of Gateshead’ by Thomas Oliver predates the conveyances mentioned; it highlights that part the boundary of the Bath House Estate matches the boundary between St. Johns Parish (in pink) and Westgate Township (in yellow). Again, Bath Lane and Westgate Hill are named.

Google Earth shows the current view, the route between Bath Lane (highlighted with a blue dot) and Westgate Road (rather than Westgate Hill) is now intersected with St. James’ Boulevard; however, the ‘point’ where the two roads meet is still visible. Adjacent to this is part of the Roman defensive wall built.

Looking at the hand-drawn plans on various 19th century conveyances, it is amazing how often it is possible to match up an area of land to compare it to its modern usage. Why not have a look to see what other maps and plans you can find that show the changing use of this estate.

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