Andrew Gilhooley's Blog

It’s funny to think sometimes just how easily pleased we were when we were young. A trip to Carr-Ellison Park in Hebburn was quite the treat when I was a young boy. Unfortunately, I don’t have any photographs of myself at the park, so any pictures that I include in this description of my memories of the park will actually be of other people’s memories!

The park has been a feature of the town for a long time. In 1897, landowner Ralph Carr-Ellison allowed the people of Hebburn to use 20 acres of land around Hebburn Hall for recreation. In 1920, he made a gift of the land to the town, to be used as a public park. By this time, the area had been landscaped and featured tennis courts, bowling greens, a bandstand and even an aviary. This undated postcard shows a view of the park showing Hebburn Hall and St. John’s Church, the Boer War memorial on the left and what looks like a drinking fountain on the right.

This postcard, also undated, shows the bandstand in the park, and one of the Lakes is visible in the background:

Here is a beautiful photograph showing the First Lake and Pump House, looking out towards Campbell Park Road:

This photograph, which is undated, shows the Aviary in the park. We know that it existed in the early 20th Century, but I have not heard from anyone who actually remembers it being there.

By the time I visited the park with my mother in the early 1970s, the bandstand and aviary were long gone and the Lakes had all been drained, filled in and built on. However, there was still lots for my young self to see and do there. There were several entrances to the park on Canning Street and St. John’s Avenue, and depending on which one we went in through we would see different things.

If we had been to the Newtown Shopping Centre, we would probably enter the park via the gate closest to Park Road. This postcard from 1942 shows this entrance, with the park keeper’s house visible on the right.

The entrance to the park is largely unchanged to this day. The park keeper’s house is still standing and I remember it as being in a bit of a state of disrepair, though I did hear a rumour a few years ago that it was going to be refurbished and converted into a tea house or something similar. I don’t know if any progress has been made on those plans.

As we walked down into the park itself, we would see greenhouses and tennis courts on the left and the Boer War (1899 – 1902) memorial on the right, along with a cannon from that war.

As a young boy I used to love to sit on that cannon and pretend that I was firing it. I think a lot of local children over the years would have had their photographs taken sitting on it. I may have done myself, but if I did, that photograph is lost now. Some people have described a cannon photo as a rite of passage for anyone who grew up in the town. Here are some Hebburn youngsters having fun on the cannon.

I remember there being beautiful flowers and trees in this area of the park, and would often see gardeners tending them in the park and greenhouses. There were loudspeakers mounted in some of the taller trees, and sometimes, possibly in the summer, they would play music over the speakers so people could listen as they walked in the park.

I remember there being a couple of cast iron drinking fountains in the park, smaller than the one in the photograph at the top of this article. You would push a button and the water would come out. There were also a pair of public lavatories, again partly built of iron, in the area by the greenhouses and tennis courts. I remember my mother warning me never to go into them, for fear of “funny men” hanging around inside. Even though I was young, I knew she was not referring to comedians! As a teenager, on a couple of occasions I was desperate for the toilet and did venture inside. I didn’t encounter any strange men, but the graffitied sexual boasts on the walls, along with crudely-drawn penises and vaginas, hinted that there might have been something to my mother’s warnings.

Another part of the park that I was cautioned against visiting when I was very young was the Dene. Surrounded by trees, this always looked quite dark and mysterious, and all the more enticing for it. The depression in the ground was originally created when sandstone was quarried for the construction of Hebburn Hall. The Dene must have been a nice feature of the park in earlier years. It had a bandstand and hosted musical and dramatic performances that were popular with the local residents. This photograph shows the First Hebburn Boys’ Brigade Band performing in the Dene in 1954.

Again, as a slightly older child I remember playing in the Dene with my friends, and it was a fun place to play. The photograph below from 1961 shows the Dene looking much the way I remembered it, although by the mid-to-late 1970s the bandstand was in a worse state of repair and there would have been more rubbish lying around. I also remember there being a couple of rope swings strung up in the trees by older children.

Last time I visited Hebburn Park in 2019, it looked like some landscaping work had been done in the Dene and the walkways had a better surface for walking on, that would be less slippery in damp weather.

Of course, for a young child, one of the biggest attractions of the park was the play area. I can remember there being at least two sets of swings, plus a roundabout, a climbing frame, a “shuggy horse” and a banana slide that seemed dizzyingly high. This photograph, possibly dating from the 1960s, shows all of the things I mentioned, and actually shows three sets of swings.

This photograph from 1972 shows children playing on the banana slide. You can see from the ladder up to the top just how tall it was!

This photograph, which looks to be from the 1970s, shows children playing on the green, cast iron horse. You could give it a push and it would rock back and forth on some kind of track. You can also see the swings and the climbing frame in the background. A fall from the top of that climbing frame would have been straight down on to the concrete! Not so much thought about Health and Safety in those days!

The play area looks quite different today, and perhaps does not hold the appeal to modern children that it did to my generation. This photograph shows the play area in 2020, and as you can see the taller, more dangerous-looking attractions have gone, replaced by more modern (and presumably safer) equipment.

Across from the play area in the park was a large playing field, which I remember as having at least one set of goal posts on it for football. A path ran alongside the field, around the outside of the Dene, leading to the memorial to the servicemen lost in World Wars I and II.

Heading back towards Canning Street and St. John’s Avenue you could see the bowling greens, where groups of older men could often be seen playing lawn bowls, and there was a little club house for them. I remember the bowling greens used to be beautifully flat and green, and were very well-maintained. This photograph shows men playing bowls in the park in 1979.

Carr-Ellison Park is still a beautiful green space in the middle of Hebburn. The bowling greens are still going strong. In recent years the park has started hosting a number of events including the annual Hebburn Carr-Ellison Carnival in July, an event featuring fairground rides, food, live music and other attractions. It is even home to a flock of wild parakeets. I am sure that the Carr-Ellison family would have been pleased to see their gift to the town still being enjoyed by people over a century later.

Do you have any memories of Hebburn park? Any photographs of it from the 1970s or 1980s? If so, I would love to hear from you. Please get in touch via the comments!