South Tyneside - May 2018 Meeting Report

[Annf]

The meeting held on Wednesday 16th May 2018 commenced with the A.G.M. when the current Branch Officers were re-elected for the forthcoming year.

The speaker was George Nairn who gave a presentation in old picture postcards entitled 'Up the Great North Road'; a journey which started at Scotch Corner and ended in the Scottish Borders at Lamberton Toll.  George gave a brief introduction by explaining that it was in 1894 the first picture postcards were sent in the UK, and how they became very popular in the early 20th century as postcards were a cheap and fast way of communicating with family and friends.  A local man, Mr Johnson of Gateshead was to catalogue some 18,000 cards.

Starting at Scotch Corner, at the site which once housed The Three Tuns but is now home to the Scotch Corner Hotel, there were 'historical stops' along the way in Co. Durham such as the Toll House on Blackwell Bridge, Darlington town centre and it's transport system, Aycliffe, Chiltern, Croxdale & Burn Halls, the City of Durham, Chester-Le-Street, Birtley and Gateshead.

Next came the crossing of the river Tyne and the completion of the Tyne Bridge in 1928 then it was on to Newcastle itself, with one of the cards depicting the early Fenwick tearooms.  Following on from the city centre there were some early views of Gosforth, Seaton Burn, Blagdon Hall, Stannington Village, Morpeth (including a postcard of the funeral of Emily Davison Wilding in June 1913), Alnwick & the Castle Gardens, Belford, the Goswick rail disaster of 1907 and then on to Tweedmouth and Berwick.

There was a wealth of information in this talk and not only did we get an insight into the towns and villages where our ancestors lived, but it also stirred up quite a few memories from our younger days.