Bell, Jim - Obituary
Origins[1]

The Methodist United Reformed Church in Bellingham was packed on 27th November 2017 as the people of Bellingham and district gathered to pay their last respects to Jim Bell, whose long life had touched so many people. Jim had died peacefully at home on 18th November, aged 89 years, one of the oldest residents of Bellingham at the time, having borne a short illness with fortitude and cheerfulness. His was an eventful life, too, for, as a lorry driver, he met a great number of people on the roads around Bellingham. From the day he was born on 14th September 1928 in the mining village of Hareshaw Head, the son of George Bell, a coal miner, and Betty Baty, Jim had always wanted to drive lorries. He would recount with visible pleasure the incidents that had peppered his long career.
The biggest change in Jim's life came on 21st October 1972 with his marriage to schoolteacher Dorothy Mary Carins, daughter of Thomas Reed Carins, a farmer at Anton Hill. Their married life was an example of perfect happiness as they complemented each other wonderfully. In the latter years of their marriage, Dorothy worked hard to found and develop the Heritage Centre and Jim was always there to support her through the ups and downs of her fine undertaking – and there were plenty of downs as Jim and Dorothy overcame the challenges, bureaucracy, funding, rules and regulations with sheer determination, unswerving devotion and, most important of all, mutual support.
But it all came together on 10th June 1994 when the Heritage Centre opened its doors in the front showroom of Shellcroft, the former garage. Mrs. Miller kindly let the premises to us for a peppercorn rent. The first season saw 494 visitors sign the visitors' book. Admission was 10p. Rapid expansion and a series of fine displays resulted in a move to Station Yard and the opening of purpose-built premises on 25th May 2001. The opening of an extension on 10th October 2008 has enabled the Heritage Centre to offer its visitors an increasingly deeper appreciation of the local area. Both Jim and Dorothy were made life members of the Heritage Centre and Dorothy received an MBE in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours List of 2009 in recognition of her tireless efforts to get the Centre off the ground.
It was, however, Jim’s family who had unwittingly been the catalyst for the founding of the Heritage Centre. Jim's father, George Bell, was the second of nine children, three boys followed by six girls, which meant that Jim was well-supplied with aunts and uncles. Of particular significance were his aunts, Ethel Annie, Frances Maud and Mabel, who managed the bakery business that their parents, John and Rebecca, had established around 1908 after they moved to Parkside Place. The three spinsters retired in 1972. Ethel, the eldest, died, aged 86, on 4th December 1981 and Frances died, aged 93, on 17th March 1990. With the death of Mabel, at the age of 91, on 23rd December 1991, it was left to Jim and Dorothy to attend to their personal effects. In due course, Dorothy discovered a box containing hundreds of photographs and postcards collected, perhaps hoarded, by the sisters over 75 years.
It had been Dorothy’s original intention to reunite these photographs and postcards with the families named on the pictures and an exhibition was duly staged in the first fortnight of January 1993 in the old Bellingham library. The pictures generated a great amount of local interest but few claimants appeared. She soon realised, however, the wider significance of the cards, especially as some had been produced by local photographer Walter Percy Collier or his brother-in-law Harry Ord Thompson. It was with the support of Jim and other local people that the idea of staging a permanent exhibition became a reality. Locals in these formative years did great things to create the Heritage Centre, helped in later years by the professional guidance of David Parry and David Walmesley, to name but a few. Bellingham acquired its own Heritage Centre and the rest, as they say, is history.
The death of Dorothy on 23rd September 2014 left a great gap in Jim's life. She had not been well for some time but, whether being by her bedside when she was in hospital, or looking after her when she was at home, Jim proved to be a devoted husband, companion and friend. He had been a champion leek grower and, even after he himself became ill, liked nothing more than to tend his garden greenhouse, have a bite to eat in the Carriages and then sit quietly in the Heritage Centre, the monument that Dorothy had created not just for Bellingham but for the North Tyne Valley and Redesdale.