The website for the Family History of Stoker & Lynn Wilson
A personal reflection: Bebside is very special place to me, Stoker Wilson, the place of my boyhood. "Bebside" is the name popularly ascribed to "Bebside Colliery" and "Horton Grange" Colliery. The mine, Bebside Colliery, was started in 1858; my Great Grandfather, William (Sinker Bill) Wilson worked there reputedly helping to sink the mine. It closed in 1926 when The Bebside Coal Company Ltd. went bankrupt. Its collieries (Bebside and Chopington) were taken over by a new company, Chopington Coal Company, they initially just worked the Chopington collieries but in 1932 they started upgrading the facilities at Bebside. They eventually started mining again in 1934, but to differentiate from the old colliery they called it "Horton Grange" rather than Bebside. The colliery eventually closed in 1962. (information kindly supplied by Durham Mining Museum, see www. dmm. org. uk). My Grandfather, John (Jack) Wilson reputedly was moved from Chopington to help with the process of getting the re-opened mine going. The ancient village of "Bebside" with its ruined manorial hall was a hamlet about 1 mile to the West of the colliery village. Bebside village grew up around the mine and railway station in the mid nineteenth century. It is now largely demolished and a ghost of the wonderful village in which I grew up in the 1940's and 50's. The village was first owned by the mine owners and then by the NCB after nationalization. The houses were rented out to miners. It was a largely a collection of stone terraced houses, very small by today's standards. The house doors and windows were all painted in the mine's regulation colours of black nd white. Large families grew up in houses that had just one main room downstairs, and a porch-like kitchen on the back. Upstairs there were at most two bedrooms. Most houses had no running water, all the water needed being collected from a standpipe in the back lane behind the house. There were few pithead baths in those days, and since the miners came home very black and dirty with coal dust, bathing was in a tin tub on the living room floor, the hot water being brought in by kettles heated on the range in the kitchen. Few houses had electricity, but had gas for lighting, but not usually for cooking. Cooking facilities and hot water were provided by a coal fired range in the small kitchen. Most houses had an outside '"midden" adjoining an earth closet. The "midden" was open to the sky and each week the "midden men" from Blyth Council came around to shovel out the waste and excrement into lorries. Of course, there were a few better houses in the village, like the house for the Co-op manager. Also, one street of houses, Mansel Terrace which had large houses for colliery officials, with running water, flushing indoor toilets and electricity. Amongst these was my grandfather, John Wilson. I was born in Mansel Terrace, and on the death of my father in WW2 I lived with the family in Mansel Terrace until I was about twelve years old. Despite the hardships this was a very safe environment in which to grow up. Being a small village, most people knew each other, and adults could keep a wary eye on children who were usually allowed to roam freely not just in the village but in the fields and woods nearby. At the end of the 1940's there were moves to improve the lot of these villagers, and new housing estates were created, first at nearby Kitty Brewster, and later a little further off at Cowpen. By the mid fifty's most of the village had decamped to the new estates. The eventual closure of the mine sealed the fate of the village. The pit heap which had dominated the village for decades was flattened. The railway station closed to passengers under the "Beeching Axe". The village was never rebuilt, and only a handful of houses now remain there today, though some re-development has recently taken place. If you travel through it give thought for the happy mining community which once lived there.