6 Noble Street
For a list of all Noble Street Houses and a history of Noble Street overall please refer to the Noble Street page.
* Information Supplied by Clive Dalton January 2024.
No 6. Daltons
I was born at number 6 on 14 November 1934 at 12.45. I know the time as Mum told me it was when the ‘one o’clock train’ went past to the station. You couldn’t see the station from our bedroom but you could see and hear all the trains going up and down as there was a clear view of them across Hedley’s of the Demesne’s fields before being blocked out by Percy Terrace.
My mother (Lavina or Vinnie) had twin girls that died at birth as her first pregnancy, as they came early and she could not get help to summon Nurse Armstrong to come on her bike, and who brought us all into the world. Dad (Henry William or Harry Billie) and an uncle Stan Henderson from Wylam had to dig their grave outside the St Cuthbert’s church graveyard as they were not baptised. I wish I had known where, but understandably the subject was never talked about. My brother Geoffrey was born in 1927.
Dad started on the North British L.N.E.R. railway after service in WW1 as a porter at Bellingham station, lodging with Mrs. Armstrong at No 1 Percy Terrace. He then progressed to being a guard on the ‘Wannie’ line out of Reedsmouth to Rothbury and beyond. After marriage Mum and Dad lived at Noble Street from where he biked to work each day. His final job was as signalman back at Bellingham before the line closed and he worked on the council with fellow WW1 veteran and former Noble Street tenant Geordie Collings before their family got a Council house on Reedsmouth road. Geordie was a part-time chimney sweep and we always had to get him to sweep ours before Christmas eve for Santa!
Dad bought a shed which was erected above the back lane and added a bird aviary to breed budgies which he sold to a lot of local folk as pets. He could not get proper bird seed during the war but was able to get oats from a farmer which they lived on. They were able to enter the shed where they were fed and roosted. The shed was also used as a workshop and for storing all sorts of other items. We even set a broody hen in there to hatch eggs for our dozen hens we kept in a run next to the main road garden. The shed was eventually moved to our garden by the main road before we moved to Fairshaw Crescent in 1948 – the year after the record 1947 snows.
Dad was a keen and very skilled gardener and had a green house in which he grew tomatoes, cucumbers and propagated onions and leeks for other keen gardeners in the village and most of the Leek Club members. This was quite a little business and it was my job to deliver the little packages he made up around the village. I especially enjoyed taking plants to ‘Burnie’ the Blacksmith as he always took me to his garden along the burnside to question how his were looking compared to Dad’s. All the other Club members claimed he had an unfair advantage with all the horse muck and hoof trimmings from the forge.
Dad was secretary of the Bellingham Leek Club for many years and on his death I got a cup in his memory for the best three onions which was one of his special interests. We kept a dozen hens in a fenced off part of his garden bordering the main road, and had a hen house for them made of old railway sleepers.
We left Noble Street with few regrets when we were lucky enough with a family of four to qualify for a new Council house at 31 Fairshaw Crescent. Dad kept his garden at Noble street for many years after that in his retirement using his bike as transport.
