Tom Tate
Father a coal miner and union secretary. Won competition for the design of banner. Contracted diphtheria at 10 - spent three months in isolation hospital. Sister died of meningitis. East Stanley School. Failed 11+, left school to work at the greyhound track. Interview at Co-op. Pranks. Pay, deliveries, routine. Cleaning cheeses. Weighing goods - world war two rations. Football team formed Wednesday afternoons, played in the "town trades Wednesday league". Women doing work of men during the war. Building and working conditions. Training. Life in the West Stanley Co-operative Society, serving cu...

Patterson Fraser
East Stanley school - had to have glasses, difficulty reading letters. Went to work at Tanfield farm. Left at 20 - cycled to the midlands and went to work in a big house. Caught taking a bucket and coke - told only to use it for drying hunt gear. Next day let the boiler go out in the house and got the sack. Returned home. Cycled to London and worked for a few months in a pub. Returned home. Went to work as a farm hand in Wiltshire. Differences between Wiltshire and Tanfield. Dairy produce. Wife from Wiltshire.

radio "age to age"
"Age to Age", about Beamish museum - with Peter Lewis, Frank Atkinson, Martin Gallagher, George Muirhead, Rosemary Allan and Lloyd Langley - discussion of the Durham mining life and working practices. Pitmatic dialect. The pub and Methodists. Accidents and the Stanley disaster.

Margaret Nicholson
Mrs Margaret Nicholson left school at fourteen, became a scullery maid and kitchen maid at Corchester school, Corbridge. Duties, work at Beamish Hall from 1928. Life at the hall. A trip to Blackpool, leisure. Shields drapers, Stanley.

Mr Douglas
Born at Blooms Avenue, Stanley, mother died when he was 6. Started work at East Tanfield Colliery, father built caravans and rented them out. Jack joined territorials at 17 and when war broke out was moved to Oxford, went to France in 1940 as was at Dunkirk with the 8th battalion. Took part in African landings, was held in Italian and German prisoner of war camps. England after Dunkirk. German defeat and the end of the war.

Mrs Coates
1930s to 1941 worked in a factory in Stratford. Went home to Stanley during world war two, and found work at telephone exchange, Consett. Had her own van, went out to repair telephones in the area - reaction's to her doing a "man's" job. Later worked in Radio rental

Ernie Cheeseman
British trooper served with 5th Bn Royal Tank Corps in GB, 1935-1939; served with 5th Bn Royal Tank Regt in GB and France, 1939-1940; served as NCO with 5th Bn Royal Tank Regt in North Africa, Italy and North West Europe, 1940-1945REEL 1: Background in South Moor, Co Durham, 1917-1934: family; daily life and living conditions in mining community; wages and insurance for miners; father’s employment as miner; story of injury to father at work; feeding of horses; wages; religious beliefs; influence of mother; discipline in home including use of corporal punishment; description of accommodation in...

Eliza Brown
Stanley during world war one. Starting the job, walked huge distances. Trouble with bad weather. Sorting letters. Worked as a post woman, including sorting and delivering death notices from the war office. World war two - German prisoners held at Shotley bridge hospital. Mothers union.

Mrs Linsley
Donating an old money bag to a museum in Manchester. Moved house as a toddler, school from age three as mother busy with grandfather who had had a stroke. Got a job as a telephonist but her father vetoed it. House building in world war one. Became rent collector. Working in penny bazaar. Grandfather and father in Co-op movement, brother worked there. Old photographs of Stanley, changes, who was where before.

northumbria anthology
Stanley Market: around the Derwent valley. Stanley Market, Marley Hill Ducks, Down In A Coal Mine, The Row Between The Cages, Bob And Bet, Sarah, The Hedgehog Pie, Pedom’s Oak, Have A Game For The Crack, The Tanfield Lea Silver Model Band, The Row In The Gutter, Wor Geordie’s Lost His Liggy, The South Medomsley Strike, Wor Nanny’s A Mazer

west stanley disaster
Documentary about the Durham mining and West Stanley pit disaster of 1909. Interviews with various miners of the era, those who stood at the pit head waiting, father a rescue man etc. Conditions in pit, experience of first day, windy picks.

Jack McGregor
Was a rescue man at Stanley pit disaster, 1909, describes this in detail.

Joseph French
Moved a lot as a child for father’s mining jobs. Worked doing odd jobs with a horse, then after the war went into the colliery for a time, various roles. Houses in his youth, poor condition, but mother got a new council house in 1924. People helped their neighbours. Sunday school and selling books for missionary funds. Enjoyed school and scouts. Did odd jobs looking after horses. Mother made meals out of world war one rations – stew, porridge, yesty cake. In second world war had own garden, grew lots of produce and sold from there. Herring sellers. Clippy mats. Swimming and picnics by the ri...

Ada Hull
Layout of Elisabethville School in 1928 when she arrived, facilities, slates. Other schools in the area including boys taught in old Belgian hospital. Huts in the area, people liked them. Poor children, sending to clinic for blue gentian and nit treatment. Class with mice, wind blowing in, hard for children to afford school trip. During world war two, early school dinners because women working. No hall so exercise in classrooms or outside, a problem.Murphy's show stopping in the week before Race Week. The bus journey from Stanley. Trouble getting around in snow storms, eg of steps of long hike...

Margaret Hall
Growing up in Stanley, schools.