A visit to Beamish, tea in Crook and an old friend

Yesterday we visited Beamish, the North of England Open Air Museum.  It was the first of two planned visits for this week.  You pay once and your ticket entitles you to visit as many times as you want for a whole year!  For the lady and gentleman we met in the Sun Inn, a real pub, with real ale, in the middle of Beamish's 1913 town, a wonderful idea, as they visit often because the pub reminds the chap of a place he used to drink many years ago.  It did sound as if they used it as their local!

As we knew we would be coming back we didn't even try to see everything; we knew that was impossible anyway, the OH and I tried it a few years ago and only managed about two thirds of the site.  With my reduced mobility, my mum on my arm (yes, but she can get up steps a lot faster than me, and beat me in Sainsbury's if she's got the trolley) and the OH's mum and her bionic knees, we really had to face reality and set ourselves just two of the areas for the first day.  We visited the town - including the pub - and the pit village.

I feel I want to write a lot about Beamish, but maybe later.  I really want to get onto Crook ... if I do another post about the museum I'll link it backwards to here, I promise.

The plan said we were going to Crook for tea at the new Wetherspoon's pub there.

The Horse Shoe Inn, Crook

The ordnance survey map I had brought along didn't reach as far as Crook, so we set the sat nav for fastest route from Beamish.  It took us along some very windy roads, up and down hills so steep that they felt like rollercoasters, and yet we were only going fourteen miles.  This is why I do like Durham so much, Barnsley and Sheffield have hills but somehow not the same.

The meal in the pub was fine, the young man serving even managed to whip up a bowl of warm water for my mum to use as a finger bowl with her rack of ribs - probably not a frequent request in a Wetherspoon's.  Then the OH and I noticed a familiar face at the neighbouring table - an old friend from the Great British Beer Festival.  Hugs and exclamations and introductions to the two mums followed.  Wonderful, what a small world!

After the OH and I had finished our tea we went for a walk around Crook so I could take some photos. 

St Catherine's Church, Crook from an old postcard

The church now has trees all around and the wall has gone, I got a picture similar to the one in the old postcard above, but would have had to stand in the road (not a good idea these days) to get a truly comparable one.


Church Hill in Crook

My granddad was born in Church Hill, Helmington Row, I've blogged about this before.  I worked out in February that this street was actually in Crook, so made a point of going to find it yesterday.  I know from the 1911 census summary books that the family lived a few doors up from a pub just on the other side of the stream, indicated by the stone wall to the left of the picture above, so hopefully I've got their house on this photo.

The market square has changed a lot from the old photos I've seen online.  My great granddad worked at the Co-op, or so the family story goes.  He is enumerated as a Grocer's Assistant in 1901 in Crook.


North Terrace, Crook from an old postcard

The big double gabled building in the photo above is just one end of the huge Co-op which used to dominate the market square.  To the very left of the picture is the entrance to Hope Street, a narrow street lined with shops.  Another relative was the postmaster at the post office on Hope Street in 1911.

North Terrace, Crook 2013

The Co-op has been replaced by a modern office block for Durham Council, but the roof line to the left seems similar.  One old shop front has survived, a hardware shop with a bow window just to the left of centre in the picture above.  The row of shops is shorter because several shops were demolished in the early 20th century to open up the entrance to Hope Street.

We collected the mums from the Wetherspoon's and returned to the car.  On the way we spotted an advert in a building society window for a 400 page illustrated history book about Crook.  It only seems to be on sale locally and might have been a very short print run as the paperback is £20 and the 'limited edition' hard back £40.  I'll add it to my wishlist ... but not hold my breath.

How and why do Family Stories become Family History?

Where do family stories become family history?  Every time a group meets news is transferred, the latest information or gossip is passed on.  But which are the stories that become family history?  I suppose they would be the ones that are repeated more than once, that get passed from group to group and that resurface on regular intervals retold and reinforced.

Do we choose which stories to pass on to the next generation?  How much editing, to save embarrassment or to make the content suitable for the listeners, do we do consciously?  As family historians we are aware that we can never know the whole story behind a picture or a document - do we need to? 

Are the stories that are passed on the ones that illustrate a particular aspect of the family that, by consensus, we feel we need to emphasise?  Or is it just as simple as repeating interesting scandal and gossip that catch the attention of the group? We tell the stories which help us to feel a connection with the family members who are present, choosing not to repeat those which may alienate the listeners, or which might be of no interest to the group.

Popular stories are often those which remind us collectively, in a way which draws us closer together, of the members who are now gone from the group.  Stories about family members who are no longer with us can contain details that, if about a person still alive, may not have been repeated for fear of anger, disappointment or shame.  We love to find a common point of interest, a memory that is shared is more powerful than just one person's account. 

"Do you remember?" or "That was when you ..." Imagine these stories as the sticky threads of a spider's web, pulling us into the conversation, giving the speaker more authority by virtue of our participation and agreement over the details and content of the story.

If we find ourselves telling a story that turns people away or which elicits no interest we stop, change the subject, take the story down a different route - that is effectively an editing of the family stories by the consensus of the group.  Whereas a tale that causes people to go at once to another person, maybe in another room or who was distracted or out of earshot for the first telling and retell it again so they have not missed out, those are the stories which will be passed on and on. 

Yesterday I met a whole house full of my extended family, many for the first time face-to-face.  Some I knew virtually, through Facebook, some I had met at family weddings and funerals.  Some were comfortable talking to us, we who were 'relative' strangers, others kept their distance for a while.  Little children are great ice breakers in these situations, and once their initial shyness around new people was over they became amongst the friendliest of all, keen to collect a new adult willing to smile and praise them.

When a story was told that had a theme which evoked mirroring remarks and stories from the listeners, it encouraged the original story teller to expand upon their tale with details missed from the first telling as they now knew they had their audience's attention.  Sometimes this effect bounced back and forth between several story tellers with more and more detail being added to the tales as the narrators sought to reassure each other that they were sympathetic to the stories being told by their companions.

Finding someone who shares your world view, be it on beer or ex-husbands, childcare or education encourages you to speak more freely - this is not a phenomenon restricted to family gatherings.  But the stories we tell at family gatherings will become family stories, will become part of our family history and we choose them to suit the company, to suit the event, as tools to gain entry and acceptance to the group if we are new or to reinforce our status in the group if a longstanding member.

How do family stories become family history?   They are our collective memories, edited and agreed by the group.  They cannot exist without the consensus of the group - stories which do not 'fit' will not be accepted, stories which we 'discover' may, despite the documentary evidence behind them, never become part of the family canon.  Yet the stories on which we all agree, no matter how loosely based in reality, will become valued family history in time and will be fiercely defended against all comers!

Yesterday Belongs to You

We had a plan, a devious, cunning plan ... plotted in advance in a many leaved multi-coloured plan folder, with maps and bus timetables and lists of pubs (well what did you expect with the OH on holiday!). 

And then it rained ... all night, and all morning.  There were news reports about floods on the local roads, and it came in through the windows which we'd opened to let some of the heat out of this lovely warm cottage (still not got the hang of this thermostat).  So we didn't get to the bric-a-brac market in Chester-Le-Street, instead we just sat in the lounge of the cottage watching the rain drumming on the roof of the car parked just outside. 

Then I had one of those "light bulb above the head" moments.  An earlier version of the plan had me visiting the local and family history day at Durham County Hall, a plan I had rejected as it was very like to end in costing more money than I could actually afford to spend.  However it was indoors and there were apparently over 60 stalls and a café so we would be out of the rain, and there might be something for everyone to look at for at least a couple of hours.

Yesterday  Belongs to You is the name of the event - it is held every two years and I have visited it once before.  I believe that in 2011 it was held at the railway museum at Shildon, but this year it was going to be just down the road from our cottage.  It was meant to be, how could I argue with fate - plus it gave my mum, my mum in law and the OH something to do instead of looking at the rain on the first day of our holiday.

Things didn't go completely to plan, however, as the OH had never approached the County Hall from the north before and we got completely lost in Pity Me and Framwellgate Moor.  Too many roundabouts, not enough signs.  Finally we did manage to catch a glimpse of the County Hall, but only over a red and white striped barrier ... turn around and try again!

There was a vintage bus parked outside the venue - we wondered why?

Inside we found the promised multiplicity of stalls, people dressed up as Romans and lots and lots of lovely books, maps, DVDs, and family history accessories to buy.  On telling the ladies on the Beamish Museum stand that we were planning a visit on Monday they gave us a couple of back issues of their Friends of Beamish Newsletter.  My mum needed to sit down for a while so we left her on a comfy chair in the foyer with the magazines and a big cup of tea while we continued to look around.  As a consequence mum has decided that she'd like to sign up to be a Friend to support them and get further copies of the magazine through the post.

The OH found out what the vintage bus was for, he took a free twenty minute joy ride in it back to Pity Me (honestly that is a place ... find it here on a map, my mum says it comes from the French petite mere, or small sea, so I suppose there must have been a significant water feature there at some point, although Wikipedia is not sure).

My mother in law was fascinated by the rag rugs.  Several ladies were actually demonstrating prodding the scraps of fabric through the old sacking.  I remember the pieces of a very similar frame to one a rug was stretched on being propped up in my grandparents' bedroom many years ago. I can even remember cutting the fabric scraps for my mum when I was very small.

My own mum found a stand from the Spennymoor Local History Society.  They had a collection of digital photos on a laptop and were able to show her pictures of the primary schools from the 1950s, which would have been just after her time.  I now know she went to Kings Street primary school, information I had not had before.

Myself, I succumbed to a book containing some collected memories of Crook, subject of some of my previous posts, a DVD with a scanned book about the history of shipbuilding in Sunderland, some maps and a street directory, a couple of maps of Durham and a bargain book from the Local Population Studies bookstall.

All in all, everyone was happy, and we wouldn't have gone there if it hadn't have been for the rain.  The old saying about clouds and silver linings comes to mind.  Thank you rain!

(Oh, and we managed to get lost in the roundabouts again on the way to the Wetherspoons in Chester-le-Street for our tea.)