My Grandad

I adored my grandad. I was the oldest of I think 11 grandchildren. I miss him to this day. He and nana lived in what used to be the servants quarters….in a place called Spencer’s Buildings in a hamlet called Hutton Henry in County  Durham. He played football for the village team. He used to drive one of those huge steam rollers that used to flatten the roads (that was what I have been told).

It was quite a big house they lived in…but they lived downstairs…. their bedroom was in a passageway that was the front entrance of the hose….that front door was never used. A big table in the room and two big chest of drawers where clothes and bedding were kept. A downstairs passage with a cold water sink at the end by the back door. A cellar door that we were told never to touch/open and we would fall down into a cellar. It terrified us!

Upstairs were two bedrooms which to my oldest brother and I were very scary. I have never forgotten my brother and I were staying over one weekend and slept in an old double bed under the bedclothes as we could feel the eyes of the portraits on us. We were OK the next morning when it was light even though I am sure there was nobody there. The window looked out onto a row of gardens and I was convinced a man was watching us all the time.

The toilet was over the yard…..with the squares of newspaper hanging from a nail and next to that was a cool house. In this row of houses were two other couples on each side of Grandads house.

Grandad has a huge garden which he grew vegetables, he also kept chickens and I have memories of being asked to help feed them and check for eggs in the cree. Bent over on my hands and knees I would crawl and check-in the places where they rested….with them flapping about which I am sure is the start of my phobia of birds flapping around me.

We used to visit grandad in the summer as part of our summer school holidays but as we were travel sick and also short of cash we used to walk from Peterlee along the old A19 through a village called Castle Eden over the field to grandad’s and then had the journey back to Peterlee.

As I grew into a teenager and grandad got older I started to visit him every Saturday taking him few groceries and if he wanted anything from the village shop I used to go down the village shop for. By this time I got the bus there and back….part of my weekend and memories. I always had tea there and grandad used to boil two bantam egg with bread and butter for me. We would watch the wrestling on his old black/white TV.

Grandad was about 6 ft tall but was bent over with arthritis as he got older.

Hubby and I met and married and moved down south and I never saw him again and that I will never forget. Because we were in the middle of moving/jobs when he passed my mum kept the news of his passing from me fro two weeks so I never said goodbye to him

I still dream of him I will never forget you Grandad xxxxx