Below is a photo from a family album taken in 1962.  Notice in the back ground Bill and Ben the Flower Pot Men.  These were made in response to a popular children’s television programme. They were put out each Spring and stored away in Winter. A new version of Bill and Ben was created a few years ago and are regular visitors to the café on the green.

The image below is a photograph showing Blyth War Memorials.  The Celtic cross on the left is to commemorate the fallen from the Boar War. It was originally located at the junction of Bridge Street and Freehold Street.  It was designed by Morrison and McLean of Gateshead and was unveiled on 22 July 1903 by Lord Ridley.  The monument was then moved to Ridley Park in 1950.

The cenotaph on the right is to commemorate the fallen from WW1. This was originally sited outside the Thomas Knight Memorial Hospital on  Beaconsfield Street. In 1950 this was then moved to Ridley Park. 

The centre memorial commemorates those who died in WW2, along with new memorials which were created to incorporate the names of those not on the original memorials and also to commemorate those who have died in conflicts after 1945.

In June 2018 work commenced on the restoration and refurbishment of the war memorials. The parade area was paved and the steps re-laid in granite.  An accessible path was added from the parade area to the top of the Cenotaph. In 2019 new lighting was installed. 

As a child I was a member of the Girl Guides and every Remembrance Day we would march from St Cuthbert’s church down to the cenotaph carrying the Girl Guide Flag to show our respect. 

I have always considered Ridley Park to be a wonderful place, a place that holds dear memories to me and my family.  I hope you have enjoyed a brief snapshot and hopefully it may encourage you to visit.

There was no discrimination of who suffered, young, old, rich or poor and we mustn’t forget that this was a worldwide epidemic, as it is today. No one was safe from it. Royal families around the globe also suffered. Prince Charles who had a mild form of Covid 19 in today’s pandemic while the Kaiser and the Kings of Spain and Belgium contracted influenza back in 1918. 

Locally, a report had been received on 4 November 1918 of a death at Studley Agricultural College of Doris Cicely daughter of the Honourable Francis and Lady Anne Bowes Lyon of Ridley Hall, Bardon Mill. She died after a severe bout of influenza.

The newspapers also published the death in late October 1918 of Dr A. Conan Doyle, son of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who died at St Thomas Hospital, London from influenza. 

On 17 December 1918 the Newcastle newspapers headlines reported the death of an Association Footballer. That player was Angus Douglas, who played Outside Right for Newcastle United. He previously played for Chelsea. From Lochmaben, [a small town 4 miles west of Lockerbie]. Angus was only 31 and had been married for 12 months. His wife had also died from the deadly disease, only 8 days prior to his death. He had been ill a few days with the flu when pneumonia set in, causing his death.

The Shrove Tuesday match held annually in Alnwick was the subject of a Northumberland Archives blog Football: A Matter of Life and Death? Folklore has it that a similar game was played in Ford between the married and unmarried men of the village in the eighteenth-century. Before the game could start, however, the men who had been married in the previous year had to ‘jump over, or wade through’ the Gaudy Loop.

The Gaudy Loop was a pit filled with water and rushes. Its connection was with marriage, and in particular newly weds, rather than football. ‘The Monthly Chronicle of North-Country Lore and Legend’, Volume 3 states that the tradition of the Gaudy Loop is long gone and forgotten but its custom was to demand money from newly married couples before they could leave the church. A couple marrying at Ford Church had to jump over or wade through the Gaudy Loop “or forfeit money to be expended in drinking to [their] health”.

Sometimes a ‘paten stick’ was used instead as the Gaudy Loop was not near the church (being located in a farmer’s field, and subsequently filled in for ‘being a nuisance’); on these occasions both the bride and groom would have to leap over the stick before leaving through the church doors. This may have been discouraged by the church rector. The custom of stopping a newly married couple from leaving a church until a payment was made was not uncommon. Bamburgh and Holy Island had ‘petting stones’ for the bride to be carried over before leaving the Church.