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{\info{\title 3}{\author Raymond Dixon Peacock}{\operator Raymond Dixon Peacock}{\creatim\yr2007\mo6\dy7\hr14\min19}{\revtim\yr2007\mo8\dy23\hr20\min30}{\version14}{\edmins100}{\nofpages3}{\nofwords1917}{\nofchars10930}{\*\company  }{\nofcharsws0}
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{\*\bkmkstart _Toc150076413}3.5 Ridsdale - 29, Armstrong St. (1932 - 1958){\*\bkmkend _Toc413320200}{\*\bkmkend _Toc150076413}
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Strictly speaking, this should not form part of the Family Tree notes, but it is so relevant to Aunt Elizabeth Dixon and the family that it cannot be left out. 'The Cottage', really the end member of a terrace, had, from 1932 to 1938, like the rest of the
 
village, no running water, no gas, no electricity, and no telephone. There may have been a telephone at the Post Office and a few households had wirelesses run from accumulators.  There was an infrequent sewage collection. The street in 1933 was just a wi
d
e cart track with a pavement, though later it was tarred as far as the end of the houses, where there was a gate. Opposite the house was a grass verge, then a stone runnel, later enclosed, which carried the run-off from the pant, and a stone stile (now go
n
e). In some ways the village was in an 1890s time warp, and today some of the houses would probably be condemned as being unfit for human habitation. About 1938 the electricity supply and a public call box arrived, and by then the world had caught up with
 Ridsdale through a tank testing ground at The Steel and Army manoeuvres. Number 29 was Auntie\rquote 
s true home, where she took refuge from her teaching activities in Newcastle. The cottage, of stone, was originally one up and one down, but Auntie had the bedroo
m divided into two and a rear window added. There was a small back kitchen, a pantry, and a few storage cupboards. Wood and coal were kept in the kitchen. When first redecorated it was found that a number of layers of wallpaper had been put one on top of 
t
he other, presumably for insulation. Nevertheless there remained gaps in the outer wall behind the stairs through which the wind blew, and the outer walls were damp at and above floor level. There was a wooden floor in the main room, but the kitchen had s
t
one flags (some of the other cottages were stone-flagged throughout the ground floor). Immediately outside the back door was a flagged area, which was later concreted over. Drinking water had to be fetched in cans or pails from a pant at the top of the st
reet across the main road; there was much more open space there then than now. The pant was a metal contraption with a drinking trough for animals, a water pipe with constant running water, and a place to set down a pail while it filled. There 
is still a superior example of a pant in the market place in Alnwick, and another much simpler one in Stamfordham. A few households used a well, which lay in the field in front of the cottages but further down the street and not far enough from a midden (
it was later used as a dump for carcasses). I have forgotten when piped water arrived, probably in the late 1940s. Milk was collected from the village shop and Post Office, Slassor\rquote 
s; it was still there not long years ago - the number of the local farm cows limited the amount we were able to buy morning and evening to 1 or 1\'bd pints (two or three gills in the local measure) \endash 
 an example of pre-war rationing. The milk used to go sour quickly in warm weather. There was an outside privy on the other side of the back lane, cold in the winter, but it was not unpleasant to sit there on a warm summer\rquote 
s day with the door open a little to give enough light to read a comic. The privies and dumps behind the houses meant that in summer there was a myriad of houseflies, wh
ich used to suffer death by being caught on flypapers hung from a hook in the main room of the cottage. DDT and other insecticides lay in the future. I never knew when or how the privy and the dumps were emptied \endash 
 that sort of thing was not talked about, but it was probably done at night. However, there was not much waste then \endash 
 those were the days before the effluent society. There was a rain barrel, which gave most of the water used for washing. Water was heated in a boiler on one side of the fire; the or
iginal Victorian range had an oven on the other side with a hob for a black kettle. Another range replaced it in 1935/6, the new boiler had a tap below to drain the hot water. Baths were taken in a \lquote tin\rquote 
 bath in front of the fire. Two paraffin-burning portable wick Valor oil stoves and the open fire were used for heating \endash 
 later there was also a small electric fire. Cooking was done on the range and on paraffin wick stoves in the small kitchen. For some reason Primuses were not used although it took half an
 hour with these stoves to boil a kettle if the fire was not lit. I think the cutlery must have come originally from Great Grandfather Swann's household; the knives were not stainless and smelt horrible when cleaned with Vim, probably due to traces of sul
p
hur and phosphorus in the steel, and the forks were tridentate. A pair of sheep-shearing clippers, used to cut the grass in the early days before a small lawn mower arrived, probably came from the same source. Uncle Bob Dixon made three legged stools. Lat
e
r a small plot was bought behind and beside the privy, and a hut was put up at the further end. Aunt Elizabeth had a flower patch immediately behind the wall and next to the privy. Ridsdale lies at nearly 800 feet facing north, and sheep used to break in 
u
ntil the fence was strengthened and a beech hedge planted. In summer we usually used to sleep in the hut, which had bunks and a single bed. I think the bunks later ended up either in the air raid shelter next to our Newcastle home or at Hexham. Lighting w
as with paraffin lamps until electricity came in 1938, but cooking continued mostly as before until the cottage was sold. The next nearest general store, Graham\rquote 
s, was at the bottom of the hill on the way to Woodburn at the junction with the back road to Knowsgate. This road was little more than a gated cart track until about 1937. Graham\rquote 
s was an old-fashioned general store with everything in it for the local farms from candles to a variety of tea which was supposed to suit the local water \endash  a marvellous place for a child to go into on a winter\rquote 
s evening when it was lit by oil lamps. There was an inn, the Armstrong Arms (now The Gun) at the end of the street on the main road, run by the Nesbitts where we sometimes used to have lunch or tea. The kitchen there
 had an old fashioned range with a huge fire and a spit for roasting joints, and room service was operated by a manual bell pull with a tasselled handle. On a couple of occasions Douglas and I spent the night at the inn (in a feather bed) when the cottage
 was full, and hot water was brought into the bedroom in cans in the morning \endash  the privies were outside, though there was a chamber pot for immediate use. The inn had been used by the first rock climbers on the Wannies at the end of the 19}{
\fs24\expnd0\expndtw-2\super th}{\fs24\expnd0\expndtw-2  C and the visitors\rquote  book with descriptions of the climbs was still there to be read. There was a butcher\rquote s shop, run by Mrs Nesbitt\rquote 
s brother, on the main road, and later several of the village houses sprouted small shops which sold odds and ends.
\par }\pard\plain \s15\qj\nowidctlpar\widctlpar\tx0\hyphpar0\adjustright \expndtw-2\lang2057\cgrid {\tab The village was served by several buses a day run by Fosters\rquote  of Otterburn, to Newcastle, a 2 hour journey \endash 
 the bus went all around the area \endash  down to the Barrasford Sanatorium near the North Tyne and over to Colwell, to Portgate on the Military Road and then to Stamfordham an
d Newcastle Haymarket. Some of the buses, at first petrol driven models, took a very long time indeed to get up the hills in first gear. There was also a small bus (\lquote Moffitt\rquote s Motor Coaches\rquote 
) to Bellingham, at 6 miles the nearest town, which left several t
imes a day from beside the inn. A 2-mile walk took you to the railway station at West Woodburn and the 2-coach train and little steam engine would take you to Knowsgate, Scots Gap Junction (change), Morpeth (change), and Newcastle, or, the other way, to R
edesdale Junction and Bellingham. We used to watch the trains from the hut window, though there was a single great occasion when we travelled by rail to Newcastle, probably in 1938. 
\par \tab We spent many holidays and weekends at Ridsdale, usually with Aunt Elizab
eth. Since there was hardly any traffic, even on the main road, we were allowed as children to go anywhere. Ridsdale is no great shakes historically; it started as an ironstone-mining village in the early 19}{\super th}{
C (there is still ironstone and coal in the vic
inity), but there was a small quarry with lots of fossil shells, and a pond in a fir wood planted  on old spoil heaps with frogs, newts and caddis fly grubs. Further away there were heather moors, a Roman fort, and the remains of a Roman altar called the 
G
iant's Grave or the grave of Robin of Risingham or Redesdale above the farm at Parkhead. It had been dedicated, I believe, to the Roman woodland god Sylvanus and was blown up by a farmer who was tired of visitors in the 1820s; I expect the remains are bui
lt up into one of the local stone field walls. We had many picnics beside the River Rede at Blackburn Linn, where there were sticklebacks and other fish, and others beside the Chesterhope Burn. No cars there then: we walked. Another site was dubbed the 
\lquote Red Cow Picnic\rquote  place after a curious cow which chewed at some drying socks \endash 
 I fell into the Broomhope Burn there on two separate occasions, and Douglas once. The boy at Parkhead kept Bantam hens and we bought eggs there. In the summer, at hay-making time, w
e used to ride with the other children on a horse-drawn hay bogie, which had a device for drawing the haystacks on to the cart (there is one in the Beamish Museum). There are other recollections; Douglas & I playing with a crystal set in the hut (I wonder
 
what happened to it), watching the cows being hand-milked, watching the sheep being dipped at Chesterhope Farm in a dammed up part of the Chesterhope Burn, watching the peewits on the way to Chesterhope, opening the back door to a 3ft snow drift at the Ne
w
 Year, roasting chestnuts on the fire, making drop scones on a griddle, trying to read by the oil lamps and having to play cards instead, listening to Auntie's gramophone records before electricity came (no wireless then), listening to the distant sound o
f
 Northumbrian pipes played by Mr Armstrong on an August evening when we were going to bed in the hut, Father putting the lining in the hut, Auntie trying to garden in the thin, stony soil, Mother eating a piece of maggoty cheese and not noticing the maggo
t
s until Douglas pointed them out using a magnifying glass, washing myself in a bowl at the wash stand with hot water brought up in a can. Not so nice having to empty the chamber pots and the slop pail in the morning & getting water from the pant. Our Scot
tie dog, Rex, struggling to get home on his short legs after a picnic at Blackburn Linn (on picnics we used Bakelite cups and saucers, which smelt of phenol \endash  Bakelite, a phenolic resin, was a forerunner of plastics). Drinks of Robinson\rquote 
s Lemon Barley Water
. Walks towards the Wannies and the so-called Lonely Lake (a small, peaty lough) to collect bilberries, or over towards The Steel in the snow (that path is now blocked off at the remains of a wooden stile). Occasional long walks to Bellingham or Otterburn
 (8 miles) and taking the bus back \endash  one time on the way to Bellingham Father showed us how by putting one\rquote 
s ear to the railway line one could tell whether or not a train was coming. There was the occasion when cousin Daphne pushed brother Neil off the top 
of the stile opposite the cottage into a bed of nettles (she rather liked pushing male cousins - she pushed me into the swimming baths at Chillingham Road, Newcastle on one occasion). Brother Douglas remembers sledging down the street on a borrowed sleigh
 one New Year holiday, probably 1938/9. The Northern Lights could be seen sometimes from the back of the house in winter, since there was an uninterrupted view all the way to Cheviot, 20 miles away, and no light pollution.
\par \tab Our next door neighbours were Mr and Mrs Crouch. Mr Crouch had been a policeman but had retired because of TB. He slept in a hut in the garden even in winter. Mrs Crouch gave me a taste for pickled nasturtium seeds which I have retained to this day. 

\par \tab Brother Neil, then aged 7 and cousin 
Daphne, then aged 6, spent a few weeks at Ridsdale at the beginning of the war when it was feared Tyneside would be heavily bombed. They attended the village school, which Neil tells me had about 20 pupils of infant and junior age in 1939 \endash 
 older children 
went to school at West Woodburn. The toilet arrangements were primitive. Gas masks had to be carried and there were gas mask drills at the school. The only teacher was a Miss Husband. Neil tells me that on the day war broke out he, Daphne, and Mother went
 to the Presbyterian Chapel at West Woodburn to pray in vain for peace.
\par \tab At that time some of the men worked at the farm and some at the semi-military encampment at The Steel; we used to see them coming home along the field path after work. There were few s
igns of prosperity, and when electricity finally reached the village in 1938, courtesy of the North-Eastern Electricity Supply Company, one or two of the households certainly had difficulty paying the first bills - I can remember hearing chit chat about t
hat at Slassor\rquote 
s. The Steel became more important as war approached, and by 1938 it was usual to see Bren-gun carriers and tanks parked along the street at least once a week as the soldiers and engineers sought refreshment at the pub. When Auntie felt she h
ad to sell the cottage in 1958 she offered it to me for nothing, and I am still sad that I could not take it. 
\par }\pard\plain \nowidctlpar\widctlpar\adjustright \fs20\lang2057\cgrid {\fs24 
\par Raymond Dixon Peacock
\par Oxfordshire
\par June 2007
\par }}