Mary English
Mary belongs to: The Fishermen's Mission
Mary grew up around North Shields Fish Quay. Her father was a fisherman and she has many memories of both the Fishermen's Mission and North Shields Fish Quay. Mary still helps out at the Mission.
Mary was interviewed by Carl Greenwood on 20 January 2006. The interview took place at North Shields Fishermen's Mission and lasted 1 hour, 6 minutes and 46 seconds.
Playing on North Shields Fish Quay
"Anyway, if you played down here, and you went home and you stunk of fish you got brayed"
Anyway, if you played down here, and you went home and you stunk of fish you got brayed. I frequently got brayed- “this is not a play area,” but to us it was.
It was a fantastic area, you could play in the boxes, you could build dens, you could be cheeky to people and hoped nobody knew, but they did so, communal whops, you could go on the foreshore, you could go and pick winkles, you could look for crabs, you could make a boat out of wood fish boxes, it would sink, you know, not even two foot from the shore, they’d sink- maybe it was just as well. There were big adventures you could have- all the adventures you wanted. You could have, like the rope on Lloyd’s Jetty, you could play swings. You could play on all the rocks and you could look for the fish and anemones. In all… it was wonderful- this was nature in our backyard.
And we loved- of course we always had the rats, there was always rats- you used to have to watch some of them were the biggest rats going. And you used to say, “there’s a rat got an Alsatian in its gob gannin alang there.” The rats were massive.
Mary has 12 memories in the memorynet:
Mary's memories with a Adventure theme:
Playing on North Shields Fish Quay
Mary's other memories:
Fishing boatThis memory has these themes:
Adventure | Childhood | The North East
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