I feel sure that many readers and contributors to this blog will occasionally like me reminisce about our childhood and times past, and not necessarily about football either. These various half-forgotten memories of events, sometimes embellished by the passage of time will no doubt evoke a touch of melancholy, perhaps even sadness.
Growing up in Middlesbrough as a young boy, I used to spend a lot of time playing with the other kids who lived close to us and what surprises me now is that they all lived within the radius of half a dozen houses. Boys and girls would frequently play street games together and then the lads would break off, and with a found tennis ball play footie against a neighbour’s brick wall, or side of a house. If it was the weekend, we’d take a casey out to Hustler’s Field and there’d be four or five Mannion wannabes running around. None of us would have been wearing Boro colours, just our regular clothes, although with a bit of luck, there might have been the odd pair of boots with leather cleats nailed to the soles. Ouch!
One memory that caused me to write this article is about an expedition that never was, at least for me. It was 1952 and I would have been eight.
Word had got around in ‘our gang’ that Fairy Dell out toward the further southern reaches of M’bro was a magical place to go for a picnic. It’s far from clear who said that, but the seed was planted, so discussions began to take place among the group and on the appointed day, everyone was to meet at the bus stop to catch the blue corporation ‘L’ bus. Our mother had packed up some sandwiches and an apple, with a bottle of water for each of us. In those days, I found it easy to become distracted, and for whatever reason, I was not ready when my older sister announced she was leaving. She told me to catch the next bus if I missed the one that everybody else was aiming to catch. I can’t remember now whether the ‘L’ bus stopped opposite West Lane Hospital, or whether one had to go down to the Roseberry, but either way, I eventually I caught the following bus.
Once on the bus, it dawned on me that I didn’t know exactly where I was going, except that my destination was called Fairy Dell. Luckily, in those days, you could ask the conductor to “put you off” where you wanted to be and he or she would ring the bell to stop the bus and tell you it was your stop. I alighted the bus as instructed and stood on Marton Road not knowing which way to go, so I picked a direction and eventually came to lane that led off into the woods. I thought that must surely be the lane that would take me where I wanted to go, so off I set with my little sandwich bag and water.
I seemed to be walking for a long time down this lane getting deeper and deeper into the woods, and there was no sound of kids playing, so I began to wonder if I had chosen the wrong direction. Maybe I should have gone the opposite way along Marton Road? I stopped and thought about it, turned around and went back the way I had come for about ten paces, then stopped and considered that I hadn’t really gone far enough, so turned around again and went on for a while longer. Not for long though. By then, I was feeling unsure about where I might be going and I was also getting peckish, so I sat on a stone wall at the side of the lane and ate my lunch, before setting off for home. I felt quite discomfited that I hadn’t reached the nirvana of Fairy Dell where the rest of the gang were sure to be and I wasn’t sure how I was going to explain why I never joined them. I’m not sure I ever did.
You will all be well aware of how distances to an eight-year-old don’t resemble anything like distances in the real world, so how far I actually got down that lane, I never really knew.
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That’s just one of my many memories and of no particular consequence or importance. Who’s next up as we take a trip down memory lane?
Lovely post Johnny. Thanks for posting and starting a perfect close season theme.
Childhood, so dreamy, I remember us believing from one of the older kids , he was probably 12, telling us Pele was staying with them during the 62 world cup, we all went over to see, No Pele, it was a secret, what a wonderful world at the time,
My own childhood adventures were developed once we moved from our council house in Norwich Road, Linthorpe (the house in which I was born in 1955) to Nunthorpe in 1961.
I recall walking to Flatts Lane at the top of Ormesby Bank then onwards towards the ponds of the old brick works where we caught sticklebacks and newts. Happy days.
@powmillnaemore
Thanks Powmill. I thought it would be good to have something else to read on the blog when there was no news coming out of MFC.
That’s a great yarn Peter.
Oh yes, those Sticklebacks and Redbreasts are sure to conjure up memories from a few more readers! I spent many a happy hour wading in the beck at Great Ayton with my net and a jam jar.
…… and who knew that Fairy Dell had its own website! There’s another rabbit hole.
I can recall meeting up with school friends from Swans Corner Primary School and catching the train from Nunthorpe to , to go fishing. To be honest we didn’t do too much fishing - I remember playing in the bracken covered hills near the station and playing by the stepping stones.
Funnily enough my lasting memory of one particular day was walking back in the early evening sunshine from Nunthorpe Station to Mayfield Road with (my memory insists) a blackbird singing on almost every house roof.
Nostalgia, eh? Nothing beats it.
Nostalgia, eh? Nothing beats it.
That's the thing, Martin. At our age it's unlimited.
My own childhood adventures were developed once we moved from our council house in Norwich Road, Linthorpe (the house in which I was born in 1955) to Nunthorpe in 1961.
I recall walking to Flatts Lane at the top of Ormesby Bank then onwards towards the ponds of the old brick works where we caught sticklebacks and newts. Happy days.
it’s fascinating to see the crossovers between blog members. I walked up Norwich Road regularly in the late fifties/early sixties on my way from Eastbourne Road to Park Road South. Thinking about walking, I can remember being left to walk from Eastbourne Road to Linthorpe Primary school on Roman Road. How many parents would allow that these days. Anybody else around that part of town in those years? My biggest memory from school is playing leg cricket in the playground.
UTB
@selwynoz I went to Linthorpe School before we moved. My brother and sister also went but they were older than me so had moved on to secondary school by the time I started at Linthorpe. I have very limited memories of the place, as I was only there for two years I think, but I recall a tall Victorian building with high windows - oh, and awful school dinners.
Those posts have revived a lot of memories. Sticklebacks in Martin West Beck, or the Beck as it simply called. We used to go beck jumping up near Devil's Bridge, is that funny old cobbled bridge still there? it was only a short walk from Tollesby Road where the blue T Bus terminated.
My grandfather had an allotment just off the Avenue and his plot backed on to the beck. Paradise once you were down the concrete cliff side to get in. Fell in a few times too. Then it was a move on to the moat in Acklam woods, the pond in front of the school and the 'Artie', all stickleback land but I do remember seeing what looked like huge fish to my childs eyes, (Carp?) in the moat and the ornamental pond. kept me amused for several summers with a cane and a bit of nylon line and a float. never caught one though!
I'm sure it all looks very different now.
UTB,
John
I looked on Google Earth and Devil's Bridge is still there.
So you and I must have had joint stickleback rights to that section of the Beck. Not exclusive then.
As my moniker suggests I now live in York but the posts really do bring back memories so many thanks. Off the top of my head:
1. Beck jumping near Devil’s Bridge was a constant! We used to then go on our bikes to the “mud hills” near the golf course (does anyone else remember them?) and then trying to find golf balls in the rough and then selling them back to golfers on the course for some pocket money
2. Scouring the local area for empty Lowcocks bottles and then taking them back to the local shop to claim a deposit
3. Spending whole days in the summer holidays on Sandy Flats footballing with mates
4. The best of all…a night match at Ayresome Park when I was a young kid. Walking up Roman Road in huge anticipation before seeing the floodlights, drawing you to the ground. A haze of cigarette smoke floating towards the lights. Queuing up to pay at the turnstile before trying to get a barrier on the terraces.
Such happy days!
If it’s nostalgia you’re after, have a look at this site: https://www.mytownmyfuture.co.uk/
A while back, you wrote: ‘Nostalgia, eh? Nothing beats it.’
Maybe. But it definitely ain’t what it used to be………….
Thanks for those links. That Devil’s Bridge article is brilliant. Not that I know where it is. Being a Grove Hill lad from Peter’s badlands, I used to play with my mates at a different beck, the one that ran through the edges of Berwick Hills, along the Whitby railway line and then past the bottom edge of Belle Vue Grove and then St Antony’s school. Ormesby Beck - I’ve just traced it on the map and it flows into the Tees just East of The Riverside. None of your upmarket Devil’s Bridges for me. Oh no. Our beck was usually full of old prams and bike wheels. Where we played, it ran through an evil-smelling tunnel for 20 yards or so and we used to dare one another to go through, which wasn’t easy as you had to crouch down all the way to avoid banging your head. I had my first - and thankfully last ever - cigarette there. Just short of the tunnel were two concrete parapet walls hemming in the beck: another challenge was to jump from one side to the other; I did, landed heavily on my arm, and for the second time in a few months broke it in two places. I’ve had pins and a metal plate in that arm ever since! I must have been twelve. Bionic Boy! Bloody idiot, more like! Happy days.
@clive-hurren The Devil’s Bridge was outside my purview too, but plenty on here seem to be familiar with it. My own limb breakage occurred from jumping off the “apparatus” at Swan’s Corner Primary School and landing on my left wrist. Cue, an urgent trip to the General Hospital.
Thanks for the opener it’s just what we all needed to blow the cobwebs away from a poor Boro season and recall our childhood memories.
A lot of us must have lived so close to each other whilst children and the same time frame as well.
OFB
I grew up in Romney Street near Gresham Road and went to Ayresome St School.
cobbled streets where we played our football and Tin Cans and sticks boys and girls together. Fireworks and throwing bangers at each other and making giant snowmen.
Ringtons delivering the tea and the Coal Cart and Milk delivered by Horse with the old folk using a shovel to clean up the horse manure for the roses.
Venturing up to Linthorpe cemetery not allowed to cross Linthorpe road whilst still young. Playing Tarzan on the trees and swinging off the old gravestones. Being chased by the police who took our names and we followed to see them tearing up the paper with our details on.
Happy days long days only interrupted by the Topper and the Beezer
OFB
Sorry, Bob. I lived some 1 000 miles to the North East from your North East. But I do know at least some places mentioned like the beck near the railway to Witby.Thanks for the opener it’s just what we all needed to blow the cobwebs away from a poor Boro season and recall our childhood memories.
A lot of us must have lived so close to each other whilst children and the same time frame as well.
OFB
Up the Boro!
I developed to Dan Dare Oor Wullie (and Fat Bob!) and we moved to a new bungalow just off Ormesby Bank.
A secondary school in Acklam meant two buses and during the winter sledging down the hills behind us at the top of Ormesby Bank.
After being married for a few years we moved into a new house at Marton with a gate into Fairy Dell. I played football there nearly every night with my two sons and their friends Neil (RIP) and Andy Campbell both of whom became professional footballers.
We moved again in Marton and our house is very old and is close to Marton West Beck North which is an extension of Fairy Dell.
So reading your stories fellow Diasborians shows what a close knit community we are and I’m pleased to be a part of it
OFB
@original-fat-bob I used to sledge on a field at the top of Ormesby Bank too.
My Mother’s twin, my Uncle Bill, lived with his wife, Mary, near Fairy Dell I think. Would it have been on Gunnergate Lane?
Gunnergate Lane leads,to,Fairy Dell, the old house (Hall) is no longer there but the gardens are what became the lake and the rest of Fairy Dell.
OFB
OFB, We still buy our tea from Ringtons, used to come by a horse a cart but now it's a VW Caddy van. If I get time tomorrow I'll put up another burst of nostalgia!
ATB and UTB,
John
Ringtons delivering the tea and the Coal Cart and Milk delivered by Horse with the old folk using a shovel to clean up the horse manure for the roses.
Those are some great memories, Bob.
I was always fascinated by horse drawn carts and wanted to drive one in the worst way. I used to pester the coal man for a ride every time I saw him. One day, he relented and let me climb up beside him. There were a few more deliveries as we went down the road and I stayed on the cart while he delivered the coal. After his last delivery on our road, he said he’d let me off at the bottom, before he turned the corner, so we set off and I had the reins (under his guidance). We passed my sister on the way and she ran home to tell the tale. “Mam, the coal man’s run away with our John on his cart”, so my mother set off down the street after us shouting for him to stop and worrying the neighbours. What a palaver!
Hello @jarkko
I always think about our time in Finland whenever I read your comments. I spent a very happy year living in Pori with my family, while standing by a drilling rig being built at Rauma Repola in Mantyluoto.
We travelled here and there through parts of the south and were lucky enough to have been adopted by a local family who were eager to practice their English. We were invited to their family summer house in Savonlinna for the Midsummer Solstice; a fantastic celebration.
No longer a young boy then, but in my prime.
Reading everyone's memories of Fairy Dell and Devil's Bridge took me back. Born and all my time in Middlesbrough on Clairville Road, those were places I only heard of when I went to The College (already at Saltersgill in my day) and began to mix with kids from the other side of the Beck.
Most of my younger days were spent joining in the football that was arranged regularly by word of mouth. We would meet on Clairville Common and occasionally play on one of the two pitches laid out there alongside the steep incline up to Clairville Stadium. The ground was always rough and so more often than not we would find a flatter piece of grass closer to Clairville Road and throw down our jumpers for goal posts.
I was never great at ball games, so was usually one of the last to get selected when the teams were being picked. That is until one time I went into goal and found I had a good instinct for closing the angle, and (with hindsight) reckless abandon for diving at feet, and a remarkable agility for shot stopping that earned me the nickname of "The Cat", after Peter Bonetti.
Sometimes the game was organised to be played on the St Joseph's School playing field. We would all jump over the fence and take advantage of the small sized football pitch and goalposts...until getting chased away by the caretaker.
Better still, the game was arranged to be played at Hutton Road from time to time, when we would climb over into the Boro's training facility there and play on that pitch.
If it wasn't football, then a few of us might play a game (I don't remember what we called it), kicking the ball across Newstead Road from one side to the other, trying to land the ball directly on the edge of the kerb.
Innocent days.
Here's a memory for you.
When I was about ten or eleven, don't remember quite when, but just before secondary school, my mate David and I used to be allowed to go to watch the pre-season training at Ayresome Park. We'd walk there and back from Tollesby because it was in the pre-bike days going down Roman Road, St Barnabas' Road and round the ground to gain entrance at the gates at the end of that short cobbled street next to the school and the Working Men's Club, autograph Books in hand waiting for the first glimpse of that beautiful turf in the sun.
We watched them train, spellbound, and then we were allowed onto the cinder track, not the pitch, to get the players autographs. I shouted to Dave let's get Rodgerson's and then a voice rang out and I knew it was aimed at me. I turned and sheepishly walked up to none other than Brian Clough.
"Young man, it's not Rodgerson or Alan but Mr Rodgerson to you stop go and apologise and ask him nicely and then come back and see me." Dave just stood there wide-eyed and slack jawed. I duly went to see Mr Rodgerson who signed my book with a grin on his face while I shook. Then back, shaking even more, to Mr Clough.
'Right you know how to address people with respect so nw ask me properly now". "Please Mr Clough may I have your autograph please".
"Of course young man, and it's 'sir' after my name in future. And what is your name?". "John, sir, thank you". Autograph signed and off we went.
Living in Tollesby I was not far from where Brian Clough lived in a cub house on Highbury Avenue and one morning I saw him while I was heading off to do my paper round.
"Morning Mr Clough, sir" I shouted, back came the reply, "you learned a good lesson there John, well done". He'd only remembered my name and he always acknowledged me in the mornings and always did remember my name.
I've still got the autograph book somewhere: Clough, Yeoman, Harris, Bilcliff, Taylor, Holliday, Day and of course Mr Rodgerson is in there too.
Amazing how that small episode has stayed with me.
UTB,
John