Jack Noble of Liverton Mines

By Rosemary Nicholls

“When I was twelve, I cycled fifty-two miles to my granddad’s in Sunderland for a holiday,” says Jack. “It was the first time I’d cycled beyond Guisborough, but I did it on my own in about five hours against a strong headwind.”

Jack was born in 1928. His dad was a Whitby farmer, who joined British Steel at Skinningrove and became a chargehand on the mixer. Jack’s mum from Sunderland served in the First World War Land Army in the Penrith area. When they married in 1925, they set up home in the Thornlea bungalow at Liverton, opposite today’s Waterwheel Inn.

“It had a tin-sheeted roof and asbestos sides. There was no electricity and we had to walk 150 yards to get water,” he remembers. “I hated wash days because it was hard work wheeling a buggy with two tubs of water back to the wash-house.” The family made do with candles and paraffin lamps when it was dark.

In 1933, Jack started at Liverton Mines School, which had three classrooms. “It was a good little school,” he says, “but it was closed because of subsidence and we were sent to Loftus Juniors. In 1937, the family moved to the Liverton Mines house in which Jack and his wife Ann still live. Their house wasn’t affected by the subsidence, but he remembers: “In one of the houses in Cleveland Street, you could put your hand through gaps in the wall!”

Jack recalls the village layout in his youth. Rows of street houses had a toilet and pigsty at the end of each garden. The night soil man, Billy Sharp, used to come round to the old houses and empty the toilets every Friday evening. “I can remember eight or nine friends of my mum’s used to come regularly to our house for a bath. They rented their houses from Lord Downs and he hadn’t put bathrooms in. Now though, lots of the houses have had extensions and are little palaces.”

As a youngster, Jack used to spend holiday time in the woods with about a dozen others. They didn’t wear watches and were allowed great freedom. They were out all day, building camps from branches, making camp fires and cooking chips.

Jack was given his first bike when he was nearly four. He had to have wooden blocks on the pedals at first, but as soon as he could, he was cycling up and down to Loftus to meet friends after school. From 1937, when he was nine, they began cycling the five miles to Saltburn Brine Baths. “Sometimes there were two on a bike, with one sitting on the crossbar,” he says. “If the bikes were out of action, we walked.”

“Swimming at Saltburn Baths was good as although you paid for an hour’s swim, you were never thrown out. You could stay in for ages. We did cycle or walk the ten miles to Redcar Baths sometimes, but there they threw you out after forty minutes. If you wanted to swim longer, they made you get out, get dressed and go and pay again.” He had half a crown (12.5p) pocket money a week and could spend it how he liked.

When Jack first went to the Brine Baths, he’d already learnt to swim in Kilton Beck, where the lads blocked the stream to create a pool up to three feet deep. He says he was pushed in by the big lads and had to work out how to do it. “They’d probably have pulled me out if I was sinking,” he adds.

Jack says he used to enjoy swimming in the Brine Baths, although the water was filthy and there wasn’t much heating. The sea water was changed overnight on Thursdays, so Friday’s water was cleaner, but colder. He could swim crawl underwater for a whole length and he liked diving off the springboards and high diving board.

They used to throw big stones from the springboard and then dive in to find them, but Jack says it was often too difficult because the sea water was so dirty. “Redcar Baths was much cleaner, as they used ordinary water,” he says. But he never gave a thought to Saltburn Baths being a health hazard.

He recalls that the changing cubicles were very basic. “There was just a seat and a half door, which you could see over and under. Some lads, being lads, worked out that from the high diving board, you could see into the ladies’ cubicles!”

Jack remembers that the army used the Brine Baths, when the war started. In full uniform, including boots, soldiers marched into the water and practised swimming lengths to prepare them for service.

Jack went to Guisborough Grammar School for four years and in his last two there, he joined Mr Whur’s Friday afternoon cycling group. They rode to Saltburn Brine Baths for a swim. “I think Mr Whur may have come in the water with us, but I don’t remember anyone teaching us to swim. We just used to go and splash about,” he says. Following his successful cycling to Sunderland in 1941, for the next year’s holiday he cycled 45 miles alone to his uncle’s farm at Willington. “My uncle let me drive his Ford tractor, which was fun,” he says. “I remember too that each day half a dozen Italian prisoners of war were brought to work on the farm by the Army.”

In 1942, Jack joined Loftus Boys Club and the Army Cadets. He was awarded silver and gold medals in the Green Howards Association and is still a member today. He wanted to join the Navy on leaving school, but was turned down because of a bad ear. So his dad had a word with the Skinningrove Works Employment Officer in the White Horse pub and he was taken on as a wages clerk. He found that this job gave him free evenings and weekends to do more cycling.

In 1946, Jack joined the Cycling Touring Club, which rode on Sundays as far as Durham or York. He became a member of Teesside Road Club and raced with them over distances of up to 100 miles for nine years. He joined the Rough Stuff Fellowship in 1952 to cycle off the beaten track, over the tops of the Moors. As a member of its Hard Rider section, he rode up to 180 miles on a Sunday. An itinerary would include stops e.g. for lunch at Rothbury and for tea at Wolsingham.

With the Hard Riders, he cycled the length of Norway after taking the ferry from Newcastle to Bergen and a boat up to the North Cape to start. “There was a lot of uphill and downhill riding and the roads were mainly grit,” he remembers. Another time, he took a ferry from Southend to Ostend and cycled to Rome. He also rode round the Apennines and Dolomites and the island of Corsica.

Jack qualified as a P.E. Instructor at Lilleshall to teach P.E. in Youth Clubs. Through this, he met Ann who lived in Windsor Road, Saltburn but was working in Loftus Youth Club and they married in Emmanuel Church in 1967.

At Skinningrove Works, Jack gained experience as a clerk in the Melting Shop Office and Work Study, but took voluntary redundancy when a move to Middlesbrough was mooted. He was a qualified First Aider, which helped him get a new job as a driver attendant in the local Ambulance Service, first transporting outpatients and later emergency cases. He retired from this in 1991.

Since then, he and Ann have enjoyed lots of UK and European holidays. He says he took 11,000 slides and trained as a projectionist to show them. He chose to give up cycling in his late seventies and car driving at ninety-one, but he still gets to Saltburn Retired Men’s Forum every Monday morning!