GRANNY CONWAY
When Francis Conway left County Sligo to seek a better life in England he took with him his wife Mary and his mother-in-law Rose Barrit.
They settled at Bill Point, Longbenton, Northumberland, where they lived at 34 Hickes Houses. Francis found work as a general labourer and they raised six children.
The same names appeared in each generation and Francis, the son of the above, also had a son named Francis who married Ellen Gatherer. One of their daughters, Mary Agnes, married Simon Stokoe Stewart and had two sons. Robert Alan and William.
Robert, always known as Alan, told me about his Granny.
Granny Conway had thick white wavy hair, a penchant for the ‘Picters’, and an addiction to snuff.
‘Go along to McArdles on the lane and get me two pennorth o’ Prince Royal, and if they’re both in wait for her, but if it’s him watch that he puts the knife across the scoop, not his finger, ‘cos he’ll brush some off’, she would say to Alan, handing him the two coppers. Mrs McArdle was a friend of hers and they often enjoyed a glass and a natter together in the back of Ned Brannen’s shop, which was also an off license where just about anything could be purchased.
Nellie Conway was around five feet four inches tall and well rounded. Her once dark hair was pulled back in an attempt to control the springy waves that usually managed to escape and bobbed around her face. She was quick in her movements and used to hard work having brought up a large family of her own and several of her younger siblings. She lived in Hibernia Road, Walker. It was not a very long road and was joined at the top by the road that ran into Walker Naval Yard and was named Church Street although always referred to as ‘The Lane’. Both sides of Hibernia Road were lined with houses. Terraced, small, each pair was enclosed by a yard at the rear. Each house consisted of two rooms up and two down. This provided living accommodation for two families; those living upstairs reached their home by way of a staircase set in the middle of the back wall. Those downstairs had a door into the front street and another door into the back yard. Each yard served four families and contained two-wash houses, two coalhouses and two toilets. By the time Alan was old enough to visit his Granny the toilets had been up-graded to water closets from the original ‘thunder boxes’ which had to be emptied during the night by council workers. On the wall beside one of the washhouses was a brass water tap. It had a cone shaped handle which was difficult to turn.
The downstairs houses had a poky scullery in addition to their two rooms. These sculleries had a brownstone sink in one corner with no tap. Water was carried indoors from the communal tap in the yard. The only other amenities in the scullery were a few shelves. All the buildings were lit by gas but, as there was no gas fitting in the scullery, candles had to be used. Of the two rooms one was used as a living kitchen where all the cooking was done on the cast-iron range which, as well as an oven, had a small boiler on the side which was kept full of water so that there was always a supply ‘on tap’. A door led from this room into the bedroom.
The upstairs dwellings were similar although they didn’t have a scullery, just a brownstone sink in one corner of the living room. Nellie Conway lived upstairs. Her living room was furnished with a big dresser that stretched floor to ceiling along the wall as far as the recess where the sink was. Large china meat dishes stood in a row along the top shelf of the dresser, the lower ones held the everyday pots. There was a Windsor chair and a high-backed chair, several plain wooden ones and a few crackets1. Behind the table was a long wooden bench. In front of the window was a small table on which the bread was placed to cool after it was removed from the oven. Clippie rugs were scattered on the lino and net curtains screened the view onto the back lane. In one corner, beside the black leaded fireplace, was the ‘dess’ bed. This was pulled down from the wall each night for the three girls, Mary, Nellie and Rosie to sleep in. In the bedroom was another big dresser, rather grander than the one in the living room, two beds and a fitted cupboard in the corner.
A young woman employed by the council lighted all the gas lamps at the tops of the flights of stairs each evening. Her name was Gracie Lightening and she was the wife of Bulger Lightening whose mother, also named Gracie, lived next door to Nellie Conway. Old Mrs Lightning’s husband had been killed in the Boer War. His name is inscribed on the War Memorial in the Haymarket in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. It used to be source of speculation amongst Nellie’s family when they discussed ‘the olden days’ because while it was a fact that his name was on the memorial it was also a fact that it wasn’t the name by which he was usually known. They never did find out why he had two names.
When Granny went to the ‘Picters’, which was as often as possible, she would lose herself in the plot. From her seat in the front row of the stalls she could be heard declaiming loudly, ‘Watch out, he’s right behind you!’ ‘Eeh the villain! ‘And other similar exclamations.
Granny had a little job that helped to eke out the family finances. She was a bookie’s runner. People would meet her in the street or visit her house to hand over their betting slips and money.
‘Lend us y’r vine, Nellie’, they would say, and scribble out their bets on scraps of paper with her stub of pencil.
‘Tuppence each way, if it comes up, shift to the double to win’. Sixpence was a big bet.
Douglas, the bookie, would meet her at The Stack, the pub on the corner. She was only allowed to go into the ‘jug and bottle’ which was a small area entered through a separate doorway with a window into the pub proper through which out-sales were dispensed. Women were barred from all other parts of the building.
Slips and money changed hands secretively; care had to be taken because gambling was against the law. Despite being careful, Granny fell foul of the law on more than one occasion.
Francis, her husband, was a tall man with thick white hair and a bushy white moustache. His eyebrows were jet black. Francis worked as a labourer for Newcastle Corporation. Francis smoked a pipe; he used to grumble about his mother-in-law who lived at the top of Walker Road opposite The Stack in an old bay-windowed house. When she visited them she helped herself from his tobacco tin to fill her clay pipe. When he went up to Newcastle he visited a club where he could speak the Gael with other compatriots. Francis died in 1931 and, at his request, travelled to the churchyard in a horse drawn hearse with black horses adorned with black plumes
Crisscrossing the streets and up and down the back lanes Granny was a familiar figure in Walker. In her black coat or sometimes with a black and white shawl thrown around her shoulders, she shopped and ‘neighboured’, cared for her grandchildren whilst their mothers were at work, went regularly to Mass and lived her life in her own inimitable way.
- Granny was a character but would have been most surprised to hear herself so described.
‘Away wi’ ye hinny’, she would have said. ‘There’s a lot like me!’
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