New Lambton: George Parkinson

Above: Mr George Parkinson

George Parkinson was born the son of a miner in New Lambton in 1828. His baptism was recorded at the Parish Church, Penshaw on 8th June 1828. His mother was Mary (nee Fenwick) and his father, William Parkinson, was also born in New Lambton in 1804. In 1912, at the age of 84 he published a book called "True Stories of Durham Pit Life", described in the book's introduction, by Wm. H. Stephenson (Mayor of Newcastle) as "Reminiscences of Methodism". It is true that Mr Parkinson was indeed a proud Methodist but in addition to the story of Methodism in the area, the book also provides many valuable references and insights into the way-of-life of a Durham miner in and around the New Lambton area.

The foreword to his book reads as follows:

During the later years of a long and busy life I have been much pressed by a wide circle of friends to write its story, or at least to outline in personal reminiscences, its varied experiences. My only opportunity, however, for responding to this request now comes amid the growing infirmities of age, compelling my retirement from the work in which I have been happily engaged from ruddy youth to hoary age. After seventy years of joyous toll amidst the community to which I belong, I sit down in the reflective light of eventide, while the undimmed eye of memory ranges over a landscape of over fourscore years. These memories are written without pretension to literary finish, but not without hope that they may be what my friends desire, and that possibly they may be found helpful to others. They have been written with some feeling of certainty that they will at least be read with gratification in the home of many an old Durham miner, not only in this but in other lands, recalling cherished memories and the happy associations of former days. The recollection of these 'days of auld lang syne' may re-kindle smouldering fires of remembrance, and even a longing for 'the touch of a vanished hand and the sound of a voice that is still.'

Mr Parkinson goes on to introduce New Lambton:

The village in which I was born was a prominent feature of a picturesque landscape lying between the ancient town of Houghton-le-Spring and the Warden Law on the east, and the still more ancient town of Chester-le-Street on the west, with the well-wooded valley of the Wear between. One long row of low-roofed brick cottages, with a few other rows standing apart, formed the street, which faced a meadow through which ran a clear burn or stream. Some distance down the stream stood an old mill, at the entrance to a series of delightful woods, clothing the steep banks of the burn. In spring, multitudes of primroses grew here and the spot still bears the name of Primrose Hill. Beyond this lay some pleasant lanes, passing near the domains of Lumley and Lambton Castles, with fine woods on either hand; so that even in the life of a pit village, beauty and variety of interest were not lacking..........

......... The oldest and most familiar mental photograph in my memory is that of a square, red-tiled brick building at the end of a long row of miners' cottages in my native village. This structure, being somewhat higher than any other building in the place, had a prominence which naturally attracted attention where there was little else to notice. Two large windows in front and a projecting porch covering the doorway between, marked it out as a special building both in structure and purpose. Though void of ornament and without architectural pretensions, that little unassuming Methodist chapel was the only place of worship and its Sunday school the only place of education in the village for more than sixty years of its history. During those years, the services held and the lessons taught within those rough brick walls won many souls for Christ, changed many lives and many homes, turning evildoers into workers in the Master's vineyeard and helping to form Christian characters to carry on the work in years to come. Thus the little chapel, with these associations and memories of families and friendships from childhood to old age, became as sacred and as much revered by the people of the village as St. Paul's Cathedral can be by inhabitants of London or St. Peter's by the citizens of Rome.

The only place for social gatherings or recreation was a public-house, formed by uniting two cottages, which with a fenced cockpit and a quoit ground at the front and a quiet place for pitch-and-toss just round the corner, provided opportunities for votaries of these sports, which, with the tap-room as their centre, were often accompanied by drunken brawls and fightings, with all the demoralizing influences arising therefrom.

Beside the chapel, the nearest places of worship were the church at Houghton-le-Spring about two miles off to the east and the more ancient church at Chester-le-Street, three miles away on the west. A chapel-of-ease at Penshaw, two-miles-and-a-half in another direction, was the parish church. From none of these, however, was any pastoral visitation conducted, nor were any religious services held for the people of New Lambton, who, like those in many other places, were literally left to sit in darkness and in the region and shadow of death.

George Parkinson returned to New Lambton on his seventy-fourth birthday in 1902 and describes it thus:

---- the next train found me a passenger to my native village - New Lambton, near Fence Houses station, in the county of Durham. In a short time I stood once more amid the scenes of my boyhood and youth. As my eye wandered hither and thither over the well-remembered landmarks of my early life, it naturally rested on the picturesque view of Houghton-le-Spring which, with its streets and cross-streets, covered the long slopes of the old Quarry Hill. More especially, however, it dwelt on the colliery in the foreground where I narrowly escaped from the effects of that terrific explosion in which twenty-six of my fellow toilers were suddenly swept from the natural darkness of the mine into the still deeper darkness and silence of death......

........such memories combined to make Houghton-le-Spring Colliery the most impressive landmark in my history and the eleventh of November 1850 the most eventful day of my life.

The landscape before me, with the hills of Warden Law on the south east and Penshaw Hill with its special prominence on the north-east, the farmhouses with the fields and colliery villages spread over the plain and the long stretch of hills rising on the north and west from the valley of the Wear - each had its own particular story to tell. Directly in front stood my native village, the special object of my visit, in and around which some of the old environments of life as it was in the days of my boyhood still linger, recalling scenes and incidents, forms and faces, with a vividness and sense of reality which no cinematograph ever could rival.

At one end of that long row of red-tiled houses before me I could see the miner's cottage in which I was born and, at what used to be the other end of the row the old Methodist Chapel in which I was 'born again' whilst between these two birthplaces of mine were the homes of my forefathers, in one of which my father was born close on a hundred years ago. On the other hand, some seven or eight minutes' walk from the chapel there still stands the dear old home with its forty-seven years of family memories, in which my brother and myself developed into manhood and where father and mother ripened into old age and into saving faith in Jesus Christ, passing thence in hope of eternal life. They were known to those around them simply as Willie and Mary Parkinson, with hearts to feel for and hands ever ready to help their suffering neighbours in any time of need.

After this brief survey of the scene, I rambled through the fields on the west, which still live in my memory as the 'green pastures beside the still waters' of my youthful days.

There were no mines working then in that locality, so that the clear, pellucid stream rising in the hills on the east, and meandering through the vale, retained its purity and formed a rather long stretch of comparatively deep, still waters above the mill-dam. It silently flowed through the meadows lying on either side and in spring-time looked like a long silvery streak of azure, fringed with the richest living green, falling over the dam in a thin sheet, unbroken from bank to bank, glittering in the sunshine and breaking on the uneven slopes below into scores of tiny ripples and gurgling hollows where the bubbling brook often murmured its sweet and soothing music to me in my teens. I sat down once more on the sheltered slopes, between the footpath in the fields and the stream in the valley, in the 'solitary place' of my youth, with pleasant memories of old companions who frequently joined in that spot for reading, conversation and prayer. They have all long since gone across that other stream at the call of the Good Shepherd and into greener pastures where living waters flow on for ever.