5 Noble Street

Noble Street page.

* Information Supplied by Clive Dalton January 2024.

No 5. Davidsons

Tommy and Isabella (we all called her ‘Daven’) were like extra parents to me. Tommy was a ‘Surfaceman’ in the railway gang that kept ‘the permanent way’ between Bellingham and Falstone in good order, even to keeping the grass mown at the side of the track. He could mow grass with a scythe as close as any lawn mower. He was also a pipe smoker and on many visit’s I’d study his routine of cutting his baccy, massaging it, filling then lighting his pipe to suck in the fumes and then spitting with amazing accuracy into the ash below the fire without hitting the black-leaded ironwork. You didn’t see the spit fly – only the puff of the ash when it landed. I often tried to spit like that but never could – and neither could my father whose spit into the fire when he was smoking his pipe was much more of a ‘slavery’ ejection!

Tommy kept a ferret in a hutch beside his wood pile up above the back lane and fed it milk and bread every day. Its toilet department was not very savoury! We kids kept well away as it was certainly not a pet. He like some others had a saw horse (cuddy) to hold branches and old railway sleepers while they were being cut up into logs and kindling for the fire with his two-handed crosscut saw. He accepted my help on the saw if I did what I was told, especially when it was my turn to pull. The Davidsons kept about a dozen hens in a large grass covered run next to their shed on the way down to the main road.

We loved Daven who had a very large goitre (thyroid gland) on one side of her neck. A medical boyfriend of my cousin offered to remove it but she was too scared to agree. It didn’t seem to affect her although she would never have told us in any case, and always wore a fine scarf to hide it if she went anywhere special. I loved their house as they had a model sailing ship in a case, and on top of the ‘Dess bed’, they had a case with a stuffed dead rabbit, a weasel and a magpie. The Dess bed was one that folded away into a cupboard with two large doors when not in use.

Margie was their daughter and Billie their son. Margie was in the air force WAAF’s during the war and left when pregnant. She married Edgar Hutton from Moosyhaugh at Falstone who worked away for a forest harvester (Des Ward I think) in Yorkshire, coming home each weekend on his ‘Rudge’ motor bike which he seemed to spend all weekend on maintenance and repair in their shed down by the road made of railway sleepers. They eventually got a house in Fairshaw Crescent in the village not far from our house when we moved there, so I loved visiting as Edgar was always sharpening a saw as he sat by the fire, and I learned much about this skill and other forest work.

Bill served his time as a motor mechanic at the Northern Garage in Bellingham under the eagle eye of Tom Pile, and eventually worked for Forster’s buses in Acomb. He married Peggy who was a ‘conductress’ on the buses in the days when you paid for your fare and got a ticket after the bus had taken off.

Daven also had a son (Charlie Hall) before marriage and I loved when he and his wife Mary visited from Newcastle at a weekend. Charlie worked for Ringtons tea which was a brand that came around in a van and sold packets of tea and tins (tea caddies) to put it in. These were always kept on the mantelpiece above the fire. Charlie was in the navy during the war on HMS Sheffield which saw plenty of action and he gave me his navy hat which I was very proud of. He also gave me a piece of sugar cane that he had obtained on one of his voyages to the tropics. I loved Charlie and Mary.

Bill had one memorable claim to fame. The water for the street came from a spring up on the fell behind the houses and then into a large tank above the tap between ours and Davidson’s house. There was a heavy metal lid on it which the kids could lever off and see into the dark depths of the water. I didn’t see it but Bill fell in and had to be hauled out. This got him the permanent nickname of ‘Tankie’.