Margrove Park

Birk Brow was a hazardous road and even now needs treating with respect in bad weather, although it has been altered. The road has given rise to present day village occupations, with two garages, two repair yards and a breaker’s yard. In the 1920s and 1930s when cars first came on the road, lads used to sit at the awkward bends and when cars stalled ‘they earned a copper or two’ by helping to push them up the steep hill.

The railway came in 1861, and enabled the ore to be transported to the furnaces of Stockton and Middlesbrough. Men were employed from all round the area and as lead mines were closing in Teesdale, these miners transferred to Cleveland.

The village itself consists of two straight terraces of houses with six tall houses at the front which once housed oversees and deputies; it has one corner shop. Rents in the 1920s were three shillings and four pence per week, when each yarded house had an allotment and each house kept a pig and killed their own. Food was plentiful and ‘not one piece of the pig was wasted’.

The houses were bought by Dorman & Long, when they became mine owners. In 1962-1970 they were sold to sitting tenants for ?100 each. Today there are only eight council houses, the others being owner-occupied. There was a third row of houses – Reading Room Row was demolished because of mine subsidence.

At the back of the houses to the right is the old stable, reminiscent of drovers’ road stables, which housed the horses from Sporwood Mine. This is now a vehicle repair yard. Adjoining it is Noddings Abattoir, at one time a tannery but now dealing with animals and animal feedstuffs.

Charltons is now a quiet village with an independent breed of people. In the 1920s and 1930s it was a hive of activity. There was a butcher’s shop on the road to Hollins Farm, a haberdashery in someone’s sitting room, a baker’s and a sweet shop. There was also a fish shop at which ‘Nelly-one- pan’ operated – she only ever used one pan for, fish and chips. Nicknames are prevalent and pertinent in this area. Norman Broadley made bikes out of scrap, painted them black and sold them for six shillings. The village had a brass band, football team and a cricket team. The wooden Miner’s Institute maintained by Dorman & Long had a library, reading room and billiards, and a hall for dancing and meetings. The reading room had been on the end of the street which had to be destroyed. Underneath there were miners’ baths. They walked from all round the area to dances played for by a pianist, and many people still go dancing, especially the 60 to 70 year olds. The Institute was burned down in the 1970s but a new community hall is still well used and at the moment houses the Lockwood Beck Textile Map of five villages which has been made in the community.

The water supply to Charltons came from a spring on the hill to three ‘taps’ at the back of each street. It was 1952 before houses were given running water and flush toilets. The spring was used until the 1960s when Scaling Dam was opened. Water was collected daily for each house. On Friday nights the residents took their soap and towels down the three streets to queue in the brick waiting room for their turn in one of the three baths provided. There was an old iron bellied stove for heating the water. Sometimes they waited for hours to bath and if they filled the bath too full they were in trouble because people had to wait even longer for the water to heat again. The charge was three pence per bath and two children had to share a bath of water. ‘The ladies went in before the men from the mine came home’. Unfortunately at that time if a man lost his job then he lost his home as well.

Transport was with Readmans and John Dobson, who ran brakes with horses to Guisborough and surrounding villages. When brakes with two horses went up Birk Brow then people got out and walked. John Dobson then progressed to buses – the rattling Charltonians which did not appear to run on time. Today the village has a firm of coaches, Best Way Travel, and is served by the local bus.

Among the older people there can still be heard the old dialect, which is nearly Old English with even an odd Saxon word. It is spoken with phonetic pronunciation and a diphthong. A pity this is being lost as it is from the old Cleveland.

NB
The village information above is taken from The Cleveland Village Book, written by members of the Cleveland Federation of Women’s Institutes and published by Countryside Books. Click on the link below to view Countryside’s range of other local titles.