I have used the workhouse site a number of times but hadn't looked at the pages for Ponteland Workhouse before now. I must say that it brought back a number of memories. We moved to North Road Ponteland in 1956 and we lived over the road from the Old Peoples Home as it was then. My bedroom was at the front of the house and it looked directly over the road at the building. My mum died aged 38 in that house in 1959 and her mother ended her days in the Old Peoples Hospital opposite in 1977. Ponteland village was a good place to grow up in I must say and we had so many more freedoms compared to children these days.But it was much colder then.... I do remember a particulalry snowy winter before Mum died and as usual I was put to bed with the lights out and the window open. I wasn't allowed up until the morning and as I dropped to sleep I could feel what I thought were a few drops of rain in my face coming through the window. When I did wake up my bed was covered in a blanket of snow and when we went outside the snow was that deep it came over the tops of my wellies.. My half brother tells me that this year has been the worst he can remember but hey he was born in April 1963!! John Ayton _________________________________________________________________ Send us your Hotmail stories and be featured in our newsletter http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/195013117/direct/01/

Hi John I lived at 81 North Road, Ponteland (opposite the farm) from my birth in 1948 until 1963 when me moved to Gosforth. I attended the infant school, long since gone, and the primary school which is now closed and awaiting redevelopment. I remember a teacher called Mr Ridley and also a Miss Aitchison, I think. My step-grandfather also died in Ponteland cottage hospital in 1971. I am a cyclist and quite often pass down the North Road which hasn't changed much since those days. My step-grandfather, Fred Spinks, used to teach joinery at the former Cottage Homes further up the North Road towards Kirkley - now the Northumberland Police headquarters. I believe he was also involved in the original construction. I remember him teaching me Geordie expressions such as "If yuh ganna gan gan if yuh nay ganna gan haway wi wuh", it was only much later that I found his parents were from Norfolk! Ponteland certainly was a great place to grow up. I was never in the house winter or summer, football, cricket, sledging, playing by the river, "cowboys and indians". Kids these days are brought up soft. We used to have ice slides down the schoolyard many yards long. What is Health and Safety anyway? cheers Bruce McArthur