Alan Wood, Thropton – Memories of walking and travelling
27th March 2019
Alan was born in 1941, in Sunderland, an illegitimate ‘foundling’. When he was three his grandmother brought him to live with her and his uncle, a local farmer. Someone once told him that all he ever did as a child was cry, to which he said, “well are you surprised?”
Every day, Alan walked to school. He describes how he “collected up” other children along the way and how the older ones looked after the little ones. Two small boys with basin cuts walked from the top of the hillside for six miles. Alan described himself as semi-literate, he could read but not spell. When he went to Thropton school they didn’t know what to do with him, so they used to get him to empty the bins. Alan said, “I should have been inside learning and those who could already read and write should have been emptying the bins. School didn’t teach you much, apart from good manners.”
Alan’s grandmother would go into Alnwick four or five times a year. She would walk to the station at Whittingham (8 miles) and if there was no train, she would walk down the moor all the way to Alnwick (another 8 miles). She always walked back. At one point she would see deer and zebras at Callaly Castle.
Along the way the Moor people had stalls selling strawberries and mushrooms. The first time Alan did this trip with her he was just six years old.
When Alan was old enough to work, he went to the Hiring Fair to find work as a hind (general labourer) around 1955. There was a fair in Alnwick and one in Morpeth. Cock and Hens’ day was 12th May and the Shepherds’ turn was 11th November.
Alan was a shepherd. The farmer would pay 5 shillings to retain his services each year, later this became £5.00. The life of a hind was almost nomadic. Each year, the farmer would lend his horse and cart so that the hind could move all his belongings from the last place of work, with his family, to the new place. Alan described one of the places he stayed as being just a wooden hut, too cold for his three young children. The jobs came with benefits. Alan had 15 ewes, which he kept on a different hillside to the farmer’s ewes, a cow and a calf (follower), food for his dog and a pint of milk a day.
Poaching and rabbiting provided food for the family. Whilst poaching for salmon, Alan had a bad accident and injured his back. He could no longer work as a shepherd because he couldn’t turn the sheep, so he had to find different work. He tried working at Hardy’s, but he hated working indoors and missed the hills, so he got a job as a gardener in a big house. He was given a trial and told he must work without time off for 6 months, he ended up staying 30 years and living in the house he is in now.
After the war, Alan remembers the men returning to the valley with a bit more money. Many bought motorbikes and side cars. This made travelling to Morpeth and Alnwick much easier. Alan had a motorbike and he used the side car, which was often a wooden trolley, to transport sheep and rabbits he’d trapped and his dogs, which would pee in it because it was so cold. When he used to take his grandmother to the dances she complained it ‘hummed’ and he would be told to go and wash it out before she got in it.
Interviewed by OOT volunteers, January 2018