The girls played buttony. We had bags of buttons round our necks and we would play each other or in teams. We had to throw a button up against the wall and then your partner would follow suit. If you could span the distance between the two buttons you were the winner and took your partners button. Then we played hitch bays. Bays or squares were chalked on the ground, we had no pavements, and we hitched the dabber from square to square. Of course there were many rules and diversities in the game and one had to practise a good deal to be expert.
We were not allowed to play any of these games on a Sunday, It was supposed to be against God’s rules, but I suspect it was because of our Sunday boots. But like all children we could find a way round. We played ‘Sunday bays’ which omitted the dabber, and ball games against the wall. The wall took the battering instead of our boots and that did not offend God. We could not play ring games like ‘Looby Loo’, ‘Old Roger is dead’, ‘Oh Mary what are you weeping for’ and Romans and British’ etc. because we could not sing songs on Sundays. I had to take the younger children out for a walk on Sunday morning while the dinner was being made.
Of course we went to all the forbidden places. Many a lie we’ve told to cover up. Then we went to Sunday school which was held in the village school. I remember we were never allowed to miss, both mother and father were strict on this.
But we never received a prize for good attendance. This went on for some years until Mother noticed that the prizes were given to the children who lived beside the teachers in the first and second rows. Some of my friends received a prize for good attendance in several successive years. So Mother took us away and sent us to the Free Church in Seaham Harbour. I loved it, and received a prize for my contribution at the Anniversary. It was a book called ‘A Basket of Flowers’. I loved the happy singing at Sunday School and it was such a bright lovely church in those days – alas it is no more.
However, old ‘Daddy Copley’ was paying frequent visits to our house to bring us back to the fold, and after about a year and a half we were sent back to the dreary old school again. After this some of our family did get the odd prize. They stood on the best table which was covered with a plush cloth. The big family bible stood in the centre with grandmother’s photo on top, then the books at each corner with a photo of uncles and aunts on top. I remember some of the books quite well. My ‘Basket of Flowers’, ‘The last of the Mohicans’, ‘What Katy Did’, ‘The Log Cabin’, ‘Children of the New Forest’, ‘Bachelor’s Buttons’ and some I don’t remember at present. I loved them but Mother wasn’t keen on reading ‘trash’. All books were ‘trash’. She thought one’s time was better spent on mending, darning, knitting, etc. You see how times change and progress.
I read a good deal when my children were young. Stories at bedtime, and rhymes and jingles were great pleasures for you when you were young and not the distorted versions my father used to repeat to amuse us.
He would draw for us mostly amusing pictures and make up a story as he went on and we would be in stitches at him and remember he was no scholar. He bitterly regretted this all his life and was determined that we should not be like him. He told us many times that when he was only an infant he was brought to Seaham Colliery. His father was a miner and he went from pit to pit.
He was taken to the local school and in order to find out which ‘class’ he was fitted for, the master asked him to read from a child’s book. Father recognised the picture and reeled off the nursery rhyme. The master looked very pleased but when asked to read the next page he did not recognise the picture and could not read a word. The master thought he had been taken for a ride and that he thought, should not escape punishment. He beat my father so severely that he ran from the building and no further punishment or persuasion could ever make him return.
Of course in those days children had to pay to go to school and no doubt my grandmother would be glad to be relieved of this debt. But how different these days, thank God or man for making it so. There was a life blighted from childhood for when he became an invalid in his latter years he would have been glad of a nice book to pass his weary hours in greater pleasure. Yes times have changed and the greater part for the better, but don’t believe that the old days were all bad. We were very poor, but we had a peace which you will never understand, that is why I still find great pleasure in my old age, watching the cows go back to pasture across our village green.
It recalls my very young days when I sat on our garden wall and watched old Sally from Dawdon Farm call the cows, ‘kee-op, kee-op’, she would shout and all the cows would turn and follow her, I can see her still in her milk maid’s bonnet, skirt turned up at the front and pinned behind, with several frilled petticoats down to her heels and a coarse apron tied with string around the waist She had big boots and a very weather beaten face, having worked on the farms all her life. We knew her by no other name but Sally. We crossed the same field, went under the ‘Dardon Bridge’ to the farm for milk. We always took three cans ‘two pints of old and one of new please’. The old milk was very cheap and we had it on our porridge for breakfast. We used condensed in our tea.
We never had coffee or cocoa. The latter we didn’t like and the former we had only heard of in the shops. The ‘hitchy dabbers’ I mentioned before were got from the ‘bottle house’. This was a factory making glassware. It was situated along Ropery Walk at Seaham Harbour, just before my time there had been a Ropery and a Blacking Factory, but these had ceased and the ‘Bottleworks’ employed many of the adult population of Seaham Harbour and the Cottages. Many of our friends worked there, but mother thought it a common place for girls. The ‘Blacking Factory’ I mentioned used to make, amongst other things, blacking for boots and horses harnesses. You put these black cakes in a tin, poured water over, then applied the paste to the boots or other articles to be polished.