Stories

Annie was born on March 7 1915 and grew up with her elder sister Margaret and their parents in a house in a street behind the High Street. When she left school Annie, like many girls from the village, went into service.…

Beryl and her twin sister Margaret were born in 1946 at their mother’s mother’s house in Park Avenue Coxhoe in 1946. Shortly after their birth Beryl and her sister went home to live with their mum and dad; John and Moll…

Det was born in West Cornforth in 1899; the youngest of six children. Det had four sisters, Bella, Annie, Lizzy, Ellen, and one brother Jimmy.

Doris was born in a house in Ferryhill Market Place in 1933 where her father was a skilled carpenter and undertaker. Doris’s father, Edgar, made the carved furniture in St Luke’s Church and the Masonic Lodge in Ferryhil…

Doris was born at 2 Commercial Street Coxhoe and came to live in Windsor Terrace West Cornforth when she was two years old.

We alighted in West Cornforth from Wheatley Hill in about 1955. My family had lived in my great grandmother’s house until her death, and it was now that my mother was to fulfil her ambition of opening a baker’s shop. So…

Frances Nelson, the daughter of William and Mary Ann Nelson, was born in East Howle where her father was a miner, in 1865.

GLADYS THIRLAWAY nee ROSSITER MY MAM

Gwen was born in … Her father … had been a prisoner of war in the first world war. During the second world war he carried out duties as part of the home guard.

An abridged life

A View of Life in our village from that reported by George Hudson.

Jean was born on the 5th August 1923 the adored only child of Julia and William (Bill) Foster. They lived close to Kimblesworth Colliery where her dad was a blacksmith. Jean attended the local school and then Durham Gir…

Jenny was born in 1919. Jenny’s father had started work at the pit but came out of the pit when he took over his brother’s horse and carts. Her father kept his horses at the Balaclava which wasn’t too far from the famil…

Jenny (nee Iseton) Walker

I was born at my grandmother’s house in Framwellgate Moor and went home to West Cornforth soon afterwards. Dad was a butcher and we lived on the premises. The kitchen and living room were downstairs and the sitting room…

Madge’s husband came to West Cornforth from Barnsley when he was eighteen. He came to West Cornforth with a shot gun and a fishing rod. He worked at the pit and was an excellent fisherman. When he wasn’t at work he was…

Margaret Gill

Mrs Black

Patricia (Pat) Wallace was born in Back George Street, a terrace of houses behind New Road Terrace West Cornforth, on the twenty third of August in 1939.

Peggy Sweeting was born Violetta Liege Sweeting in Foster’s Buildings, West Cornforth on 9th August 1914. She was the third child of Elizabeth Sweeting (nee Owen who had lived in The Balaclava Public House, West Cornfor…

Giuseppina ‘Pina’ Mitton

Shirley Cadman was born in Spennymoor on 3 April 1936 . Shirley’s younger sister Irene was born in Spennymoor and the family moved to West Cornforth shortly after in 1938.

Zena Mary Waugh Zena acquired and ran a General Dealers/Grocery and Haberdashery store at 66 High Street (next door to Sweeting's butchers), a business which she bought from her uncle Wilson Bell in 1956, when she was 4…