Mr and Mrs Vout
Father from Lowestoft, worked on the herring boats, married a Gateshead lass and settled there. Father's allotment - gentlemen gardeners. The workhouse (now Bensham hospital). Education and prospects - ages of leaving school, how this mattered. Quakers locally. Their first house (1940s). Baby born too early when wife told husband had been shipwrecked. Views on going to war. Having a baby in hospital. Sacked from first job when off with broken ankle. Worked at TVTE as a joiner upholsterer. Clark Chapman - graduated to draughtsman. Made redundant. Easy to get jobs. Unions. Mrs Vout's family - fa...

Mr Gowland
Beamish chapel – history of it. Music, love feast, Sunday school, special congregations at Yew Tops, camp meetings, heating, decorations, mining beneath the chapel – could hear people shout at ponies, furniture, routines, visiting preachers, chapel social life, sermons, congregation, lectures, flowers, organ, weddings, funerals. Those who strictly kept Sunday free. Treatment as a conscientious objector during world war two

Mr Allott Smith
Father was a sinker, involved in sinking of Blackhall colliery in 1909, so he was there from the very start, describes the village growing up - getting a water supply, the first rows of houses, there were no roads into the village. When man had pit accident they stopped a train and put him in the guards van to go to Hartlepool. People banded together when anyone was ill. Children's games. Building of the first tin school, 1911, and first tin church. Many people lived in huts on the beach or in caves, he did too when first married. Playing football as a boy, obeying parents. Went into blacksmit...

Mr Jordan
Father had been a soldier in India, mother sewed all their clothes, remembers wearing a dress as a small child. Walking to school, meals, loved the countryside. School mistress. Celebrations for the diamond jubilee of Queen Victoria. House, six of them in upstairs bedroom. Playing football. From 10, he delivered newspapers. From twelve, his father, a deputy overman, took him on trips into the pit - said that his father took him in seven for company. First impressions of the pit. Wanted to stay with newsagent but mine paid better, so went down at 14, as a traffic boy. Compares ugly mine to beau...

Tom Crawford
Sings little chancy-the Galloways was tired (possibly the only song to come from Alexander Barrass through oral tradition - part of the Driver's Song), we were strolling along the wagon way. Singing in the pits, learning pit songs, mother played piano. Father listening for buzzer to know whether had work that day. Poverty - sandshoes in winter, selling potatoes to buy shoes. Father good miner, understood stone. Father a "puffler" - ran a team making roadways in the pit. "Fanny wood" -wood taken home to light fire or you wouldn't get any! Taking drills home to avoid theft. Paying for fuse, old ...

Mr and Mrs Temperley
Fetching milk and tallow candles. During the depression, only working a few days but couldn’t get dole. Hooky mats, learning to quilt. Making sand from sandstone to scour the floor. Furniture, upstairs room had roof tiles, reached by ladder. One and a half doors on the back of houses. Funeral bidders and christening customs. Carlin Sunday, jarping Easter eggs. Games.