Falstone - Sound

Transcription of an interview with Mr. I Proudlock recorded on the 10th November 1972

Mr. Proudlock was born and brought up in Plashetts, a mining village near to Falstone in the North Tyne valley. During the full recording he talks about life and work in the village, 1904 to 1920.

During this extract Mr. Proudlock talks about the colliery, shepherding and the loss of his brother -in-law, aged only 19 years, to pneumonia.

[Transcription]

The relations with the workmen at Plashetts and the boss Mr. J R Elliott they couldn't have been better. I think most of the men would find that if things were going badly, when Mr. Elliott went down the pit and he told Dick Irving, one of the workmen, and got on about finishing, to keep going, there's another sandwich in the bag Dick, and that was kept up for lots of years.

Libby had some brothers, one of them gave up pit work pretty quick and went on shepherding, and shepherded the rest of his life, and he's retired and he lives at a place called Sanker now.

Her other brother died when we were at Plashetts, just a young fella, he was nineteen. He worked in the pit until just a week or two before he took pnemonia, which in them days was fatal, and he died at nineteen years of age.

 

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This tape recording comes from the large collection of oral history recordings held by the Northumberland Archive Service. Interviews were conducted by Record Office staff from the early 1970's right through until the mid 1980's. The purpose of the recordings was to capture the essence of life in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. Many different subjects were covered, including coalmining, farming, fishing, domestic life, World Wars and entertainment. Over 350 recordings have been collected comprising approximately 700 hours of recollections.

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