Andrew Gilhooley's Blog

I originally wrote this in 2020 for Norman Dunn’s excellent Hebburn and Our Neighbours discussion board. It was subsequently posted on the Hebburn.org website which sadly no longer exists. This version has been updated with a couple of pieces of new information.

Another little shopping area close to me when I was growing up was the row of shops on Birtwistle Avenue. Looking back on them makes me realise that I grew up in an era when the small, independently owned local shop was still relatively common; the out-of-town megastore was still years away.

Robinson’s Butcher was a regular Saturday morning stop for my mother to buy a piece of beef or lamb for Sunday dinner and other meat for the week. I remember the butcher, Norman Robinson, with his striped apron and the big walk-in refrigerator where he kept the carcasses ready to be cut up. I also remember his sausage-making machine, and how he would push the sausage meat into the top with a wooden plunger and hold the empty skin on to the nozzle where it would be filled to make sausages.

Mr. Robinson was, I remember, a lovely man. I found out recently that he passed away in August 2024 aged 101, and also that he served in the Royal Navy during World War II. His shop is still a butcher’s, as can be seen in the photograph below (all images courtesy Google Maps):

Next door to Robinson’s was a hair salon called Rosalind’s, where I think I may have had my hair cut a few times, as one of the employees was a friend of my mother’s. She went on to open her own shop in the Newtown, so I would have gone to that one after that. My memories of Rosalind’s are quite sparse, therefore, though a do remember the wallpaper had swirling silver patterns on it that reminded me of seashells.

Looks like there are two separate shops in this 2015 photograph, though I recall it being one big one when it was Rosalind’s:

Next shop along used to be a little general dealer (possibly a VG?) that we knew by the name of its proprietor, O’Rourke. I think there may have been a Maggie O’Rourke who was the owner, but the person I remember was Pat O’Rourke. Maggie and Pat were, I believe, mother and son, and I remember him as an imposing figure behind the counter. Tall and heavy-set with a florid face above his brown shopkeeper’s jacket, he was rather scary to my young self. I remember being told that he was drinking whisky out of his ever-present coffee mug, but whether or not that was true, I don’t know!

The Google Maps photograph shows the current convenience store, Best-One, as occupying both the O’Rourke’s site and the one next door:

Next door to O’Rourke’s when I was growing up was a greengrocer’s shop, which was either called Danby’s or Fishwick’s. I don’t have a lot of memories of this shop other than my mother buying vegetables from there; I remember the shopkeeper pouring potatoes from the weighing scale into a paper bag, but not much else.

The final shop on Birtwistle avenue was a favourite when I was growing up – Pope’s fish and chip shop. I can remember getting fish and chips there, wrapped in newspaper, for dinner, or just getting a bag of chips with “scranchions”, scraps of batter. Always a treat, and they always tasted better, for some reason, when eaten straight out of the newspaper.

Pope’s is long gone, and I believe this occupant of the space is now closed too. I hope a new take-away restaurant opens there soon.

As a final note on the Birtwistle Avenue area, I also remember there being a cut on the corner of Crawley Avenue and Birtwistle Avenue that led through an open green space to Johnston Avenue. It was a regular short-cut for me when I walked to St. James’ Junior School. I noticed now that the Crawley / Birtwistle entrance is now closed off:

though the Johnston Avenue entrance is still open:

This leads me to believe that the green space enclosed by Birtwistle Avenue, Crawley Avenue, Johnston Avenue and Burn Heads Road may be the only space in Hebburn where they will not be able to build houses!