Your father didn’t like you playing at Protestant services?

’Yer what! Why nor!’

Catholics and Protestants didn’t get on?

‘Aye, there was always that feeling there, in the background. They still don’t. The bugger’s still there. You can still sense it at times.’

The Catholic Club?

‘It was down the street, straight opposite Balder’s shop. That was before the war that. It was where the old fish shop was. That was next to Barnets, there used to be a fish shop there, straight opposite. Old Chippie McCoy used to be in there. He used to have a fish shop and Ginger Dawson used to be in. And then Ginger went to the pub, the Railway Tavern. When he came out of the fish shop he went down there and he was down there till it finished.’

So Thornley was a busy place back then?

’Saturday night? You couldn’t get stirred. Two houses at the pictures, same at Wheatley Hill. You couldn’t walk along the front street, man. Friday nights, the shops were open till 10 o’clock. Paddy’s Market. Down by the Colliery Inn, both sides of the road.’

What did they sell?

‘All sorts. Butchers, sweets, clothes.’

The Bookies

’They used to stand at the corner ends. They used to always stand at the same place. Taffy Watson used to stand behind Gingers. Billy Whitehead, he used to stand behind Balder’s shop, down that way. They was Les Maitland, he used to stand up on the North Side. Eeeh, I forget now.’

What about the police?

’They knew they were there all the time, but they used to get the tip off. Someone saw a copper, he’d run round, tell the bookie and he’d be off in a house somewhere.’

What if they didn’t pay up?

’There was one or two welshed. You couldn’t do anything about it. One or two of the buggers got skint--a daft priced horse would go in and that would do it. Oh aye, I used to bet. A shilling up and down and a shilling double. You picked two horses. A shilling up and down: if any of them wins you get paid and the same two are doubled. You get a shilling up and down. It’s like a shilling on each and a shilling doubled. That was my bet. But a shilling then was like two pints of beer.’

The Pub

’We used to go the Station, down the bottom end. The Station Inn, opposite the club. Used to go down there when we were about 17. Teddy Grosvenor, he used to come

over. Bob Davison. There was four of us. We were about 17-year-old, we were below age, but we used to go and get

round the corner, out the road.’

The drinking age was 18 then?

NEXT: More on drinking in the village.

‘Aye, he was a character, him!’ Top: the Railway Tavern in Thornley. Nicknamed ‘Ginger Dawson’s’ after its landlord, William Dawson, the pub was closed in the mid-Sixties and, like much of ‘the bottom end’ of the village was subsequently demolished. The young man in the foreground is Ginger’s son, Bob aged 17, which would date the photograph around 1930. Above are Ginger and his wife Meg Dawson on the occasion of their 50th Wedding Anniversary and at the bottom is a close-up of the Railway Tavern sign. Click on the images to enlarge them. Photographs courtesy of Ginger’s grandson, Bob Dawson.