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George Spenceley recalls his childhood memories of Middlesbrough and how his large family coped with life in World War II and with the happy and sad events of family life.
The winters I recall as a child were always very cold enough to freeze the nearby beck and the older children would skate on it. We had a pair of skates and I often wondered how we came to have them. The only explanation I can think of is that Dad picked them off a scrap wagon in the steel works at some time.
Almost anything metal could be found there from time to time, metal bed frames, lawn mowers, bikes, even pieces of ammunition were found there after the war.
We would play on the frozen roads making slides. As the temperature dropped below freezing we'd throw buckets of water on to the centre of the road so that it would become ice.
We'd line up and take a run and slide one after the other to the end. Great fun but like all good things it didn't last for some disgruntled parent or killjoy would sprinkle salt on the slide causing it to thaw, this meant that the group of screaming children sliding down at great speed would come to an abrupt halt and we'd land in a heap in the wet where the ice had thawed.
After a couple of days the snow would compact and we lads and lasses would shovel it, making it into blocks the size of paving stones then we'd build them into igloos or forts. We also enjoyed ourselves snowballing each another.
In 1947 when the snow arrived it blew into great drifts across the road making it impossible for the milk to be delivered on to the estate. One of us would have to go to the collection point at Brambles Farm Hotel and bring it home.
Milk was normally delivered by horse and cart and the horses were very intelligent creatures. The milk man or woman would collect a couple of pints of milk from the cart and walk up the path to make the delivery at the doorstep, the horse would take a few more steps on to the next house in readiness for the milk man to collect the next batch of bottles.
We played outside during the dark winter nights and every so often the sky would turn to a warm red glow. This occurred when one of the steel plants opened a door on the open-hearth furnaces to feed more scrap into the white-hot molten metal. As soon as the charging machine pulled away from the furnace the door was closed again and the rosy glow would disappear.
It lasted for a few seconds then it was complete darkness again but as there were a number of these steel plants in Middlesbrough, within three or four miles of Brambles Farm and the work was going on all the time, the sky was very often lit up.
As soon as the snow disappeared and the weather got a little warmer we'd get the marbles out, or 'allees' as we called them. They were made of glass with various twists of colour in the centre and they came in different sizes.
We'd scoop out a small groove in the soil at the bottom of the garden near the fence and from a certain distance gently thrown them, one, two or even three marbles towards the groove to see who could get the most into it.
At other times we'd walk along the gutter at the side of the road and take turns in throwing and trying to hit one another's marble, if the other person hit your marble it then belonged to him.
The girls played with skipping ropes and sometimes with whips and tops, we'd all play with 'boolers' (the rim of a cycle wheel), running up and down the road chasing after it, keeping it going with a piece of stick.
Jumping garden fences was another favourite pastime but this often got us into trouble with the owners. We had no difficulty in making our own entertainment. We made bogeys (go-carts) from three pieces of wood, two axles off a pram or pushchair and four wheels.
Old bike frames were scavenged from the beck, a couple of small pram wheels were fixed and the contraption was used like an old-fashioned hobby horse. Sitting astride it we propelled ourselves along with our feet.
Another pastime was flying kites. We made them ourselves with newspaper for the backing, a couple of thin pieces of wood for the frame, flour and water acted as the glue to hold it all together.
String was a problem for it was always in short supply but we got by. We then attached pieces of paper to the string pretending they were messages being sent up to the kite.
In Spring time we would go to the old clay pits along the railway line near South Bank. We'd wade in the water up to our knees to collect frogspawn.
If we were lucky and the water hadn't been disturbed too much we'd also catch different species of newts and take them home in jam jars to show our parents. We'd be told to leave them outside and, 'Put some grass in the jars for the poor creatures'.
This was usually followed by, 'Where have you been I've been worried sick, now go and get a wash before you have your tea then get to bed'. Mam would say, 'I'll teach you to go missing all afternoon when I wanted you to go a message'.
The newts always seemed to disappear during the hours of darkness.
George Spenceley, 2002
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