Alan: The recent thread about Bevin Boys, and especially your last contribution, has raised many memories for me. During the latter part of the War I lived in a council house which backed onto what was then an open field. In one corner of the field, extending almost to being "over the hedge" from our back garden, there was a Bevin Boys' Hostel built. It had corrugated iron huts rather like mini-Nissen ones, no doubt the kind mentioned in the local press recently (I saw the story but in a different paper to you). The Bevin Boys themselves would have worked in local pits - Stargate, Addison and Emma, all near Ryton. I must have been one of the first people to know that the War was coming to an end! It was Guy Fawkes' night in 1944 (I would have been aged all of 2!) and my mother was standing next to the window on the upstairs landing, looking out for bonfires, fireworks, etc. I remember her shouting to her friend, who was visiting, "Come here and look at this - the Bevin Boys have got Hitler on their bonfire!" Of course, I took it literally and was convinced that if Hitler had fallen into the rough hands of our locally-employed Bevin Boys, and on Guy Fawkes night of all times, then he would get a "right roasting" and would never escape them. Indeed without his dominant leadership Germany couldn't possibly last out much longer. I suppose I was right, as well. My admiration of the Bevin Boys knew no ends. Either that Christmas or, more likely, the one after, when my parents asked me what toy (note that word - in the singular) I would like for Christmas, I confidentially asked for "a Bevin Boys' Hut". A couple of lengths of thin wood nailed to a base, and a piece of bent card between them plus a dash of paint, a tiny amount of time spent on it by my father, and that was that. I had a happy Christmas with my Bevin Boys' Hut and it came in handy for a long time afterwards as a home for my collection of other toys. It seemed to me that it was soon after the War that the Bevin Boys moved on and the Huts became a Nurses' Home for a short while, then a centre for Displaced Persons (DPs, as they were known), a motley and sometimes violent collection of mainly eastern European misfits. After a period as council-owned dwellings fighting the housing crisis, they are all now demolished (c1960) and the site is another council estate. Incidentally, my father, who worked in the munitions works of Vickers-Armstrongs on Scotswood Road (Elswick), spent 18-hour shifts there in the desperate period just after Dunkirk. He normally travelled by bus but he said that at one period it was not unusual for him to have to walk to Elswick from Scotswood Bridge - about two to three miles, because Scotswood Road had been closed to vehicles owing to all the fire hoses laid out across it. Geoff Nicholson -----Original Message----- From: alan-vickers <[email protected]> To: northumbria <[email protected]> Sent: Wed, 1 May 2013 12:34 Subject: Re: [NMB] Bevin Boys I think that the records of Bevin Boys seem to be very much incomplete. In recent weeks I have tried to see if one Bevin Boy that I knew was listedi o the records but without any success. On Friday of last week, 26th April 2013, the 'Northern Echo' had an article that the former hostel for Bevin Boys in this region, at Plawsworth near Chestr-le-Street in County Durham, is going to have a £2m makeover. The photo that accompanied the article shows an extensive complex of buildings, one of which - said to be a Romney Hut, is to be rebuilt at the North-Eas Land, Sear & Air Museum which is next to the Nissan Car Factory in Sunderland. Alan Vickers. .. Please remember to snip most of the earlier message before you post any reply...... Thank you! The NORTHUMBRIA FAQ page is located at http://www.bpears.org.uk/NorthumbriaFAQ/ ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message

Thanks Geoff. In recent weeks I read a paper on some research that had been carried out into the Bevin Boys in County Durham. Unfortunately I have not been able to go back to the website concerned but I will keep trying. I believe that there were Bevin Boy's Hostels at Morrison Busty Colliery (Anfield Plain), Plawsworth and Easiington Colliery. In January 1950 I was due to do my 13 weeks underground training and the proposal was to send me to Easington Training Centre and it was explained to me that I would stay in a hostel, I now believe that this would be the former Bevin Boy's Hostel. As it was, if this arrangement had been proceeded with, I would have had great difficulty in attending evening classes at Sunderland on 4 evenings per week so, at the last minute, the idea was scrapped and I was sent to Houghton Colliery Training Centre for my training so I never saw the Easington Hostel. It was about two years later that I met a lecturer at Sunderland Techhnical College who explained to me that he had been a Bevin Boy, unfortunately I did not get any other information but I am guessing that after he was demobbed from being a Bevin Boy he obtained his degree and was then successful in obtaining a post at Sunderland. Alan Vickers.