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My trip to Blyth also reminded me of another Blyth activity, leek shows.

My grandfather on my mother's side was a very keen and very competent gardener. He was particularly good at growing leeks.  He was good with other veg, and flowers too, but of those I have no records.

In the 1930s my grandfather was a member of the Newsham, Black Diamond Leek Club. The family tale is that he won the Leek Show Prize ten years in succession so the committee decided he was unbeatable and made him a judge and told him he couldn't enter again.  For these pub competitions he was awarded a gold medal.  They were real hallmarked gold, with his inscribed initials, name, date etc.  They are probably worth a few bob just for their 2021 gold value.  I assume that there were other more useful prizes. 

His medals seem to have been passed down to his daughters and grand-daughters. I have one of them, from my sister, and have photographed another.





Are there still local Leak Shows with valuable prizes and prestige, or is local pride all about having a very big telly and a new SUV ?

I too had a tonsillectomy there in the early 1950s.  The only thing that I remember about it was that I was told that afterwards you are given ice-cream.  I got my ice-cream, but it had completely melted. I felt cheated.

There was light on the RNYC HQ ship in 1965,  but the light was gone in 2015 when I revisited the harbour.
http://www.peterloud.co.uk/photos/Northumberland/Blyth/Blyth_1.html

I am amazed that it is still floating.  When I last saw the vessel it looked more like a large allotment shed built from any old scraps that were lying around.

pityackafromblyth,

An amusing story from your younger days. I remember that corner of Union Street & Plessey Road that was dominated by Croften Pit, but I don't remember anything about a slaughter yard in that area. Was it to the right of the pit?  That is hardly surprising, we New Delaval kids never went that far from home, especially into Blyth.

It reminded me of a temporary job I had in the job in mid-1965.   I had just jacked in as an Engineer Apprentice with Shell Tankers to do a degree at Rutherford College of Technology and was waiting to start as a Technical Staff Trainee with CEGB at Blyth power Station. I worked as a bakery van driver for Newsham Co-op bakery.  Usually the job was just delivering trays of bread to various Co-op shops around Blyth, but every now and again I'd have to deliver supplies to a cake making dept. in Elliot Street, Newsham.  I can not forget the struggle I had to carry a 1 cwt, (that is about 50Kg), sack of dried coconut up the stairs to this baking outpost. I was the original six-stone weakling.

It is also interesting to think of salaries at that time.  When I left school, BGS, in 1962, aged 16, my salary with Shell was £158 per year. I can't remember what I was paid as a bakery van driver, but it was age-related, and wasn't very much.  But I do remember that a 21 year old van driver, or similar was paid, £11.50 per week, before off-takes.  At the power station, I was paid about £18 a week, but that included 'dirty money' awarded for hours spent on particularly unpleasant jobs. Working at the power station was good.  Many of the people there were very competent operatives and, I feel, deserved the good wages.

At that time a pint of Blue Star IPA beer in The Newsham Hotel was one shilling and three pence, across the road at The Club, Ordinary would be one shilling and a penny a pint.  That is approximately 6½p per pint or 5½ per pint.