Born In Shotley

A Memory of Shotley Bridge.

My parents were from Northumberland; my father from Newcastle and my mother from Slayley. They moved to London during the 30s to seek work. They married in 1939 and my sister was born that November. By September my mother was pregnant again, but as my father was working in a reserved industry, he sent my mother and sister north to escape the Blitz. They went to stay with mother's brother William Lambert, who lived on Front Street in Shotley Bridge. He worked at Consett steel works. So I was an evacuee, but 'in utero', as it were!

I was born six weeks early in April 1941, in a maternity home in Blackhill. We stayed for about six months after I was born before returning home to my father, as the Blitz had died down a bit.

After the war we regularly visited my aunt and uncle in Shotley, and I remember he kept a pig in the wash-house! I have happy memories of walking by the Derwent.

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