Errors on Felling Pit Disaster Memorial

There are two errors on The Felling Pit Disaster Memorial but there appears to be a conspiracy of silence surrounding these. One error is more understandable than the other. Let's take the more understandable one. It refers to 91 deaths and 91 names.

 There are only 91 names because the name of No. 92 is/was unknown (although, a member of The Felling Heritage Group believes the name of the 92nd victim is now known)
The monument is both a grave marker and a memorial but let's here just concentrate on the memorial aspect because it is unlikely that the remains of all victims are buried in this place.
The memorial ought to reflect that 92 souls were lost in the disaster.
The other error is even less understandable. This disaster occurred on the first working day after a rest period, a factor that is, if not common, is at least more common than any other day, in pit accidents. In this case it was Monday morning on 25th May not Sunday 24th May.

Thousands of people over the years have known that the date is wrong but, if you look at reports on the internet you'll find no reference to it, until this entry gets picked up by Google.
It has previously been on the internet on Bill Hartmann's St Mary's website but, not uncommonly with Bill, the website has been taken down; in fairness, because the bulk of the information it contained is now on his Tyneside's Silent Cities website.
I wonder if the silence on the subject is in a mistaken deference to the Rev John Hodgson whose project it was to memorialise the dead and to take steps to avoid such disasters in the future. His post disaster actions were magnificent and cutting edge and the fact that a couple of errors crept in does not diminish his efforts. He certainly would not want a silence on the subject since he undoubtedly is number one on any list of North East historians and he would want historical facts known.

Here's what I think. There ought to be a plaque placed, not on the memorial itself, which is probably "protected" but nearby, say on the inner face of the Churchyard wall, to recognise these two inaccuracies. There's no shame in doing this. The memorial is possibly/probably the first time in the history of the World that the "ordinary" dead were treated with such reverence so an 'erratum' plaque would not take anything away from the magnificence of the post disaster effort by Rev John Hodgson and others.

Having read much more on John Hodgson I can now tell you that the four engraved plates cost, in today's money, £1300. (£18. 15s. 0d back then)
Mark Lambert ( b. 1781 d. 1855) who did the engraving was, in his early working life, a wood engraving assistant to Thomas Bewick.
Here's something significant contained in the Memoir of John Hodgson by Rev Raine

 "I find the following bill among Hodgson's papers. " Rev. Mr. Hodgson to M. Lambert, Newcastle,. Ap. Four brass plates, and engraving do. for Felling sufferers, £18. 15s. Od. "

John Hodgson wrote the full report of the Pit Disaster and published it in book form to raise funds to deal with post disaster costs. It is possible that it was not on the best seller list and did not raise as much as was hoped but here's the last bit of Rev Raine's comment
"Feb. 3, 1818. Settled, M. Lambert."
The monument engraving was presumably commissioned in 1812 but was only paid for, 6 years later, in 1818. John Hodgson put huge effort into the post disaster period. The date 25th May and the victims, 92 of them but only 91 named would have been "engraved" on his mind (forgive the pun)
He had many wealthy friends and indeed his father-in-law was Richard Kell, Quarry Owner, a man of considerable wealth so it's not likely that he would have made a self employed sole trader wait 6 years for payment unless...the trader screwed up.

I, along with others, had assumed that the mistakes were those of John Hodgson but I now believe that the engraver got it wrong.

Parks, Pitches, Cemeteries & Reserves

It can be taken, as a general rule, that if there's a bit of green in industrial Tyneside it was once a quarry (or a pit head). In other words, if it could have been built on, it would have been. 

In Felling, there's the Windy Nook Nature Reserve (Kell's Quarry)

 Felling Cricket Ground (Boiston's Quarry), Heworth Burn Cemetery (Brown's Quarry) & The Bankies (Felling Quarry).

I had always surmised that Felling Park could have been the exception because it was right next to The Urban District Council's Offices and it was their floral bragging rights. There's no doubt that because it was next door it was given special treatment and we've seen how their desire for a big floral splash has wained since their removal to Central Gateshead. Oh, I know there's a squeeze on finances just now but, if there was a will, Felling Park could be a big splash again since the cost represents only 0.001% of the Council's available finance...£2,000 out of £200 million)

Anyway, I now realise that it was a park because this was the lumpiest part of Holly Hill. Not only did it lend itself to a tiered flower display to be seen by the heavy traffic that used Sunderland Road but it was also, yes you've guessed it, a quarry. It was known as Quarry Banks

It was opened on Wednesday 27th July 1910

I've no doubt, in times to come when "raftcrete" gets invented they will be able to economically build on filled in holes but for now we can be content that we will retain Felling Park as a space and, thanks to pensioners and school bairns who titivated the park in 2014, the Council will splash  a thousandth of one percent of their budget on filling part of that space with floowers, at least for the next three years of the WWI Centenary. They will...if, when you next speak to your Councillor, you use the words "Felling Park" and "Nigel Farage" in the same sentence

The Felling High Street 1850-1900 ish

Felling High Street when it was not full of shops. It had three chapels, a Poor House, a Post Office, side streets called Brougham Place and Russell Place and quite a few self contained dwelling houses, as against flats above shops, including Hay's Cottages, Shield's Cottages and Alnwick Cottages.
There is a well which appears to be called Baine Well..is this so named because it was a place where one could wash oneself?
Re pubs, The Bluebell, Halfway House and Beeswing are shown but note the Bluebell..here it doesn't occupy the corner spot. This was when the Bluebell Yard was an open facility where hoppings were held

and a smithy shop was in the Bluebell yard.
The Bluebell we know today was built in 1905

This advert is about the time of the Blue Bell rebuild so perhaps the new pub with a much smaller yard still let out a space to the blacksmith

Here's the map about 1900

There are many more shops than there were in the earlier map. Over the years the numbering changed. For example, early on the two Sisterson shops were 92 and 94, later they were 102 and 104. Because the High Street was a focal point for shopping over a period of 150 years each unit had a number of different tenants/owners and your remembrance of what was where will differ from persons in the generation above and below you

This previous blog attempts to give a list of occupants

Gateshead Fell Folk in Hollywood

Two Gateshead Fell Famous Fellas

Only two people from Gateshead Fell have ever made it in the Hollywood film industry and, phonetically, they have identical names!! You couldn't make it up
They are Paul Cavanagh from High Felling, an actor and Paul Kavanagh from Low Fell, an animator, separated only by the 83 years between them...

Paul C. born (as William Atkinson) 1888; Paul K, born 1971.

Read on

Billy Atkinson's grandfather was Thomas Sisterson Snr

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From the Journal 2010 - Paul Kavanagh

THE mother of special effects wizard Paul Kavanagh last night spoke of her pride – despite the film-maker missing out on Oscar glory.
Paul, originally from Low Fell, Gateshead, was nominated for the Visual Effects trophy for his work on Star Trek. But the father-of-two, who now lives in San Francisco and was at the ceremony with his wife and children, was pipped to the post by the team who worked on Avatar’s special effects. Last night Paul’s mother, Kathleen, 69, said she was “over the moon” with her son’s achievement. She said: “The nomination was enough for us. “We are so proud of him and we never expected him to do so well. “He had always wanted to be involved in computer animations ever since he first saw Star Wars when he was just seven. ”Together with three colleagues, Paul was nominated for both the Bafta – which he also missed out on – and the Oscar after acting as animation supervisor on Star Trek.The 39-year-old, who went to St Peter’s RC Primary School and the former St Edmund Campion School, both in Gateshead, and Newcastle College has worked with a series of top directors and producers.

Convert Britain's Ghost Shops and Pubs to Flats

Shops have had their day in The Felling High Street, whereas it would make a lovely village-like place to live. Has-been shops and pubs lend themselves to an economic conversion to flats. I've been accused (by my partner) of harping on about this before but look at the conversion of The Halfway House  and some of the Costelloe Building shops, or, for that matter, The Mulberry  and Old Brown Jug and see what can be done.

 In my adult lifetime I have seen this very thing in towns all over the UK. The focus of the town shifts and the former shopping areas languish, as if leaving the issue to market forces will solve the problem. Take Newcastle when Eldon Square was built the City's shopping area imploded. Walk down once busy streets, now beyond the immediate vicinity of Eldon Square, and you'll see tumbleweed blowing down the vacant pavements.

Since this has been true for at least 40 years why hasn't the Government come up with a scheme before. Also calling out for a scheme is the paradigm shift that  started 50+ years ago when we got TVs, followed by central heating, then cheap booze at supermarkets, then the indoor smoking ban  which progressively and collectively sounded the death knell for the "lonely non grub pubs" (those not part of a 'circuit' and without decent food) but it is only in the last decade that pub owning companies, who have run out of poor souls who think that they have what it takes to make a has-been pub a goer, have started to recognise that some, nay many, simply have to go.

The shift to indoor mall shopping, home tippling and now, here's the real biggie, the buying of virtually everything online, must scream out to the Government that they need to solve or help solve the problem of redundant town centre shops/pubs.
Leaving private enterprise and/or local Councils to solve the problem without intervention will, for example, mean that the lovely new town centre of Gateshead will be blighted for years to come by the approach to it down the High Street, full of boarded up shops and pubs with only charity shops and fast food joints still limping along.

In the last few years any failed pub, in a shopping area, now quickly gets converted to a shop, The Bugle to Heron's, The Black House to Tesco, The Ship to Premier and The Beacon, demolished/rebuilt as The Co-op spring readily to mind. For The Swan at Heworth conversion to a shop is not an option...its nearest shop has just been converted to a house!

Here's my point...ghost pubs and shops lend themselves to be converted to housing and Britain needs more housing, particularly flats.
UKIP, last night got its first M.P. so I'm sending this link to Nigel Farage. Watch this space

Uncle Amos Wins By Half a Century

Amos Almond

Amos Almond, Printer produced this

The Almonds of Felling
Have a prodigious publishing thirst
David got there with Skillig
But Uncle Amos got there first
...by 50 years

Read all about Amos by his nephew, David

and read this and more, if you google "Interview David Almond. Scottish Book Trust 4th October 2011"

 David Almond is very proud of his start in life in Felling

 

..."Think I’d began to be a writer when I was baby, a time I can’t even remember. When I was a baby just a few months old, my mum said she used to put me in her arms and walk down the high street in Felling, which is the town I grew up in. So I grew up in a little town called Felling, across the river from Newcastle, and halfway down the hill, on the high street, there was a sign above the street which said ‘Almond Printer’, and my uncle Amos had a printing shop. My mum used to take me along the alleyway to see my uncle Amos, go into the printing shop, and she said one day she was standing there in the printing shop, with little David in her arms. Can you imagine him? He’s quite cute isn’t he? The I was in her arms and she said she was standing there one day, she was talking back and forward to my uncle Amos, and as she stood there, the printing machine started to work, and turn, and off the bottom of the printing machines came the printed pages of the local newspaper, and she said at that moment, little David Almond started to jump up and down and go, ‘Googoogagagagaga!’, pointing and laughing at the printed pages coming off the rollers. And you know the way baby’s eyes are caught by flickering lights or by birds flying overhead, my eyes were caught by print [gasp] and I went, ‘Goo!’ and I fell in love with it, and one of the things that I still love more than anything about being a writer, is just that – black print on white paper, I think is absolutely gorgeous."

Lots more Youtubes of this whole interview

Let's finish with a later pic of Amos

Today is My Birthday

Felling's New Shops

The Felling Folk turned their backs
On The High Street, very steep
The Black Hat Brigade stepped right in
Cos the real estate's so cheap

Felling Folk are now inclined
To shop on the flat, it's true
They've got their wish...the shops are flat!
They're 2 years overdue

This blog's about the past
And I've covered much, in my day
Today, it's about the present
(I didn't get one, by the way)

Tho' when I hovered on the Google Doodle on my computer, I was a little spooked!

© Jon Bratton

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This History of The Felling Blog is a satellite of www.gateshead-history.com

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Then & Now

Each photo can be clicked to enlarge

Bottom end of Halfway House down to Church Street

Sisterson's upwards

Leash shop on left side downwards

Just before Croudace Row looking downwards

Above and below Halfway House

Looking down to Wellington Street and beyond...most of the bottom left and right shops gone

Looking up. McGuinness shop downwards all gone. Then the bottom shop was chopped (hence the new gable end) to widen Wellington Street

The Pottery Business in The Felling

The pottery business in The Felling is here but let me start with this really potty business in The Felling. A cup and coins were dug up in Heworth churchyard and fooled a lot of people for a long time. It was a very clever hoax, as is this. That pic is neither the cup nor the coins involved

This is a drawing of the actual cup and coins.

There's a great long illustrious list
Of Famous Felling Folks
Including the anonymous genius creator
Of The Heworth Hoard Hoax
A new pub chose Cup and Coins
A worthy name, to its credit
Unfortunately, that's the only thing
The pub's had, of any merit
It's now on its third name
No doubt it'll change again, quite soon
May I make a suggestion
The Last Chance Saloon
(That was meant to be sarky...but actually it's a great name)

Anyway, this article is not about that potty business
It is about how the manufacture of pottery featured in The Felling's history

Not a lot is known, but....here's what I've found.
Newcastle Chronicle, through its advertising columns sheds a little light. The following appeared on Nov 3, 1759

"Wanted immediately, and will be let on reasonable terms, a Co-Partnership in a current going Pottery on Heworth Common, near Gateshead Turnpike Bar, commodiously situated for Clay and Coals. Where is made Tortoise-shell, Agatestone and Black Ware, to great perfection, with a variety of other kinds of earthen ware’
Thomas Sill and John Codling, were also the owners of potteries in Heworth. Little, however, is known of their pursuits"

Elsewhere on a genealogy site there is this
“John Codling ran a pottery business in Felling Shore and Sheriff Hill in Gateshead in 1830-40's. He went bankrupt in 1844 when in business with Thomas Patterson in Sheriff Hill (reported in London Gazette). In 1851 he was over the Tyne in North Shields living at Brewery Bank and again working as a potter. He died there in 1872.”

and this

“George Patterson ran Tyneside Potteries about this time in Gateshead and John Codling may be related to the Pattersons as one of his daughters was a servant to Ephraim Patterson and recorded as the latter's niece. John's first marriage was to Sarah Patterson a daughter of Ephraim.

and this

“Heworth Shore

At the Tyne Pottery, belonging to Messrs. Thomas Patterson and Co. white and coloured flint-ware are manufactured; and common brown earthen ware is made here by Mr. Joseph Dawson, and also by Mr. John Codling.

An historical, topographical, and descriptive view of the county palatine of Durham 1834”

and this

“Thomas Patterson and I have been researching for the last 6 years or so. I have managed to purchase a piece of pottery which is believed to be manufactured by Patterson & Codling. In fact one of Thomas Patterson's nieces married a John Codling whom I believe may be the son of John Codling.

The number I bought last year includes a piece stamped P & C (Patterson & Codling) and P D C (Patterson, Dawson & Codling).”

I have the book "The Potteries of Tyneside" by R.C. Bell and M.A.V. Gill who say this of the

Tyne Pottery (circa 1821)
The pottery was under the management of T. Taylor & Co. until 1827 when that management moved to the Newcastle Pottery. The Tyne Pottery passed to Joseph Wood, and in the same year to Thomas Patterson, there until 1829
In 1833 a directory lists Codling & Co there but in 1837 Patterson & Co is listed

Sorry, but that's all I've come up with, thus far

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This History of The Felling Blog is a satellite of www.gateshead-history.com

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High Revs at Heworth

The First Four

John Hodgson 

The Revd. John Hodgson M.A. F.R.S. Rector of Jarrow-with-Heworth, 1808-1833, sought separation from Jarrow to form a new Parish of Heworth, but in vain. Because he was an aclaimed historian he's the only one to get his own Wikipedia page

Matthew Plummer

The Revd. Matthew Plummer M.A., pursued the separation aim for a decade, succeeding in 1843. So he was the first Vicar of Heworth. During his 44 year ministry from 1833-1877, he subdivided his large parish and built two new churches, St. Alban's at Windy Nook in 1842, and Christ Church at Low Felling in 1866, both with their own parish.

James Steel

Dr. James Steel, was vicar for 40 years from 1877-1917. He spent his time and money on the education of Heworth children through his chairmanship of the Heworth School Board, and to improve the Church's interior, which was needed. Lack of finance had constrained John Hodgson in bringing about improvement but Dr Steel could and did splash the cash to transform the church. First, the original stone floor was covered with oak boards and mosaic tiling, followed by an oak panelled ceiling. The Georgian box stalls were replaced with oak pews. A font by W.S. Hicks was set at the west end, though the 18th century font was retained. The tower clock and a Harrison organ were installed, and the splendid carved oak pulpit and a rood screen from the Ralph Hedley workshops gave the final touch of Victorian grandeur. 

In 1912, Dr. Steel provided Heworth with its first Parish Hall, on the site of the first school in the village, the Parish School, founded by John Hodgson in 1815. In the same year was unveiled the finest window in the church, a lovely memorial to Mrs. Steel in stained glass by Ballantyre of Edinburgh. This window on the north west wall contributes largely to the listing of St. Mary's as a Grade Two building, and is visited by art experts and Victorian enthusiasts. 

Charles Lemuel Gwilliam 

1917-1928

The Reverend Charles Lemuel Gwilliam is the only vicar of St. Mary's buried in the churchyard. He died suddenly of pneumonia in 1928. Sadly his memorial is now damaged and the cross lies forlornly across the grave.


Two More

Ray Knell

In 1812 a pot and coins were found in Heworth Churchyard, leading to the belief that St Mary's church was of great antiquity. In 1984 the Rev Ray Knell wrote to the Newcastle Antiquities Museum's curator to say that his church was about to celebrate its 1300th anniversary and suggesting that, as the pot and coin should be a special feature of any such celebrations, perhaps the Museum would verify that it was a dedication beaker of A.D. 685. The reply was unexpected. The Museum could not confirm the antiquity of the pot and the coin was undoubtedly a forgery! per J.M. Hewitt

William David Taylor
1994-1999

The Rev W. David Taylor was one of three vicars killed in 1999 when their car was crushed between two lorries as they returned from a country walk.  Revs Taylor, 39, Michael Hough, 50, and 40-year-old Catherine Hooper all died instantly in the five-vehicle pile up at roadworks on an accident blackspot stretch of the A1. They were in a Rover 414 queuing at temporary lights on the Felton bypass in Northumberland. 

Upper Heworth Farm

Drawing by Sydney Oxberry in 1910. Click to enlarge

Upper Heworth is the name of this farm when it was occupied by, perhaps, the most famous/talented Felling resident, Rev. John Hodgson who was heavily involved in the post Felling Pit Disaster (1812) period. He wrote the report into the disaster, took the initiative in the naming of all but one of the 92 people killed and for the first time ever, in the history of the World, listed them on a lasting memorial. He became active in bringing forward the implementation of safety lamps in pits and indeed he personally went down the pit to test a prototype.

While living at Upper Heworth, from 1816, he started the massive project that was his "History of Northumberland"....

Here the Upper Heworth address is shown.
Click to enlarge

 ...in which, he is the first to name the builder of the Roman Road as Hadrian. This last Volume of the book was completed by Rev John Hodgson Hynde and published by the Society of Antiquaries after Rev John  Hodgson had died.
(The Society had among its members two Revs with remarkably similar names. just by happenstance)

click to enlarge

click to enlarge

The History of Northumberland has been digitized by Google and may be read for free online. Click here

  Read more about the Rev here

After Rev Hodgson left to go to Northumberland in 1823 this farm house was later occupied by Rev Edward Hussey Adamson and his wife in 1846. He was the first incumbent of St Alban's Church, Windy Nook and he lived at Upper Heworth until the vicarage was ready for occupation

 Click to enlarge

 Click to enlarge

 Click to enlarge
The farm was known, at some time,  as Cleasby's Farm and at another as Stephenson's Farm on the road that became known, at that time, as "Stivvie's Bank".

The farm building was demolished in the 1930's

© Jon Bratton