Graythorp village had a social life with whist drives, beetle drives, domino handicaps and snooker and billiards in the village hall. The Social Club was at the entrance to the village. It sold alcohol and had entertainment. My parents did not go to the club because my father was a non-drinker – not that he disapproved of other people drinking. Also we had sports days with sandwiches and cakes and games. I always looked forward to the school Sports Day because I liked to run in the races and if you won a race there was a small prize. The ladies of the village also had a Women’s Institute meeting once a week.
Christmas Day was always a big day. We would go off to bed early on Christmas Eve after hanging up our stockings over the mantelpiece. We usually received an apple and an orange as well as some toys made of wood – tanks, ships and cars etc – courtesy of the shipyard’s joiner shop. My mother would make Christmas cakes and Christmas puddings wrapped in muslin bags ready for the big day. My father’s proud boast was that most of the food on the Christmas lunch table was his own homegrown produce.
Tuesday, 4 August 2015
The War Years
During the 1939–1945 war, Graythorp had its fair share of events. In 1941, when I was six, two landmines were dropped on the village, fortunately falling in the school playing fields. The resulting damage was to the school, the church, the village hall and several houses that backed on to the school field including our house, No. 13, which took the full force of the blast, blowing out all the windows and all the tiles from the roof.
We had made our front living room into an air-raid shelter - the windows had sandbags in front of them - but the room also doubled as a bedroom for the five **check** boys. The night of the air raid, the blast of the bomb sucked the wall above our heads out into the kitchen. If it had blown inwards, it would have dropped onto our heads. Fortunately, no one was hurt. We were moved into the village air raid shelter, which was not very comfortable, and then Mr. Hutchinson from Greenabella Farm came and took us into his farmhouse. I remember walking across the fields to the farm in the dark and the sky was lit up with tracer bullets as the anti-aircraft guns fired on the German bombers. We were finally rehoused in No. 46 where we remained until moving in 1950 to Haverton Hill.
Early in the war a lone German bomber dropped a stick of incendiary bombs down our street but they didn’t do any damage and were quickly extinguished by the Home Guard and Fire Watch men. The only time I felt really afraid was the night a dive-bomber dropped a whistling bomb and it hit the local electrical sub-station. I can still hear that loud scream from the bomb dropping. One of our favourite pastimes was watching the dogfights between the Hurricanes or Spitfires and the German bombers, especially on sunny days when the sky was full of vapour trails making patterns in the sky. Graythorp lay between the coast and ICI Billingham. The German bombers had to cross us to bomb ICI. To fool the Germans, smoke fires were lit in the fields around the village so the Germans dropped the bombs on us thinking we were ICI – we must have been expendable!
Uncle Dan worked at ICI. One night when cycling home in thick fog he heard a loud rattling noise behind him. Not knowing what it was, he cycled faster but the sound kept getting closer until it eventually caught up with him. He was very relieved to find it was only a barrage balloon dragging its chains along behind it. The balloon had come loose from its moorings near ICI. These balloons were a device to protect ICI from the German bombers. One summer day my mother and I were in the garden of No. 46 when a German bomber came over the River Tees flying very low. The guns opened fire and the plane was shot down. It crashed on the south bank of the river. Many years later, a wreckage of a German bomber was found there with its two pilots still in the cockpit. I wonder if this was the same plane that we watched being shot down.
The Graythorp shipyard was used during the war to build two concrete pontoons for the Mulberry harbours that were constructed to help the D-day landings in northern France; the remains of the harbour is still visible near the village of Arromanches. This project was kept top-secret during the war and the folks of Graythorp thought that they were constructing ships from concrete because of the shortage of steel.
When the war came to an end in Europe on 8 May 1945 the village celebrated with a party and large bonfire on the green. one of the Coles family played the accordion and we sang with gusto all the war-time songs: Roll Out the Barrel, Hang Out the Washing on the Siegfried Line, Bluebirds over the White Cliffs of Dover and We’ll Meet Again, to name but a few.
We had made our front living room into an air-raid shelter - the windows had sandbags in front of them - but the room also doubled as a bedroom for the five **check** boys. The night of the air raid, the blast of the bomb sucked the wall above our heads out into the kitchen. If it had blown inwards, it would have dropped onto our heads. Fortunately, no one was hurt. We were moved into the village air raid shelter, which was not very comfortable, and then Mr. Hutchinson from Greenabella Farm came and took us into his farmhouse. I remember walking across the fields to the farm in the dark and the sky was lit up with tracer bullets as the anti-aircraft guns fired on the German bombers. We were finally rehoused in No. 46 where we remained until moving in 1950 to Haverton Hill.
Early in the war a lone German bomber dropped a stick of incendiary bombs down our street but they didn’t do any damage and were quickly extinguished by the Home Guard and Fire Watch men. The only time I felt really afraid was the night a dive-bomber dropped a whistling bomb and it hit the local electrical sub-station. I can still hear that loud scream from the bomb dropping. One of our favourite pastimes was watching the dogfights between the Hurricanes or Spitfires and the German bombers, especially on sunny days when the sky was full of vapour trails making patterns in the sky. Graythorp lay between the coast and ICI Billingham. The German bombers had to cross us to bomb ICI. To fool the Germans, smoke fires were lit in the fields around the village so the Germans dropped the bombs on us thinking we were ICI – we must have been expendable!
Uncle Dan worked at ICI. One night when cycling home in thick fog he heard a loud rattling noise behind him. Not knowing what it was, he cycled faster but the sound kept getting closer until it eventually caught up with him. He was very relieved to find it was only a barrage balloon dragging its chains along behind it. The balloon had come loose from its moorings near ICI. These balloons were a device to protect ICI from the German bombers. One summer day my mother and I were in the garden of No. 46 when a German bomber came over the River Tees flying very low. The guns opened fire and the plane was shot down. It crashed on the south bank of the river. Many years later, a wreckage of a German bomber was found there with its two pilots still in the cockpit. I wonder if this was the same plane that we watched being shot down.
The Graythorp shipyard was used during the war to build two concrete pontoons for the Mulberry harbours that were constructed to help the D-day landings in northern France; the remains of the harbour is still visible near the village of Arromanches. This project was kept top-secret during the war and the folks of Graythorp thought that they were constructing ships from concrete because of the shortage of steel.
When the war came to an end in Europe on 8 May 1945 the village celebrated with a party and large bonfire on the green. one of the Coles family played the accordion and we sang with gusto all the war-time songs: Roll Out the Barrel, Hang Out the Washing on the Siegfried Line, Bluebirds over the White Cliffs of Dover and We’ll Meet Again, to name but a few.
School Days
The school had three classrooms: one for infants, one for juniors and one for seniors. The first Headmaster was Mr. Fenny, who lived in the village and whose daughter ran the village newsagents. Later teachers were Mrs. Jamieson, Miss Cook and Mr. Jewson. The school usually had a staff of three teachers at any one time. When the school was bombed in 1941, the children were sent to Port Clarence and that, in turn, was bombed out. After that, the school was a house in the village where the children went to classes in half-day shifts.
The next school in the village, erected in the latter years of the war, was a wooden prefabricated two-classroom building. This proved too small, so at 11-years-old the children were sent to Haverton Hill. I remember the prefabricated school being built and this became another thing for us to play on. One day, Arthur Beard and myself were playing hide-and-seek in the attic space of the school, which had a ceiling made from plasterboard. Suddenly, the board opened up like a trap door and we fell through the ceiling, which was some 12 feet high. We landed on some ladders. Fortunately for me, I landed on top of Arthur who cushioned my fall! We both managed to walk away unharmed but I learned my lesson not play there again.
I was friendly with the Hutchinson family who owned Greenabella Farm. David, the son, and I were pals and in the summer-time I liked going to help with the harvest because I was allowed to drive the tractors, which was great fun. The other great treat was when Mrs. Hutchinson brought picnic baskets to the fields full of good food, which we ate with relish. On a Sunday I was often asked to stay for tea with them in the farmhouse and it was always a good spread, which was appreciated.
Our favourite games in the village were Monokitty, Knocky-Knocky Nine Doors, Hide-and-Seek, Tee-Mac-a-Nallyo. Also, we had gangs that made camps in the bushes that surrounded the village, usually made by digging deep holes and covering them with branches. In the corner of hole there was always a fireplace in which we burnt wood. We would cook potatoes in the fire and they always came out with the skins burnt black but we still ate them. The different gangs in the village had battles between them and this usually meant making wooden swords, bows and arrows.
On Saturday mornings we would go by bus to the picture houses in Hartlepool to see cowboy or Tarzan films and then come home to act them out. In wartime it was difficult to buy sweets so we made do with cinnamon sticks and liquorice roots that we bought from shops near the cinema. Sometimes we could buy peanut butter, which was always a treat. When some of our friends didn’t have any money, we would open the fire doors to the cinema and let them in to see the film. Usually the Manager would discover this and we would be thrown out!
Neither I nor any of the other kids in the village passed the 11-plus exam for the grammar school, so we all had to go to Haverton Hill Senior School. My mother, however, decided I was to go to the catholic St. Cuthbert’s school in Hartlepool. I used to ride on my bicycle four times a day (a distance of 20 miles in total) because I wouldn’t stay for the school meals at lunchtime. These meals were usually made from ‘smash’ potatoes and nondescript meat; the dessert was usually sago pudding, which everyone called ‘frogspawn’.
I saved up to buy my bicycle, a brand new BSA (British Small Arms) with a three-speed gearbox. To raise the money for my bike I delivered newspapers, and lit the village streetlights, for which I was paid 7 shillings and 6d a week by the rent collector Mr. Atkinson who had the nick names ‘Captain’ or ‘Lord John’. (I think he had these names because of his military bearing.) Next door to the Atkinsons lived Mrs. Wales the school caretaker. To me she seemed always to be an old lady, dressed in sombre clothes. Perhaps she was a widow; I don’t know.
The only time I left the village on an excursion was a day trip to Redcar, which to me was somewhere far away. A special train came into the sidings next to the village to take all the children. The only thing I remember about that day was that my brother John overturned a canoe on the lake and fell into the water.
The next school in the village, erected in the latter years of the war, was a wooden prefabricated two-classroom building. This proved too small, so at 11-years-old the children were sent to Haverton Hill. I remember the prefabricated school being built and this became another thing for us to play on. One day, Arthur Beard and myself were playing hide-and-seek in the attic space of the school, which had a ceiling made from plasterboard. Suddenly, the board opened up like a trap door and we fell through the ceiling, which was some 12 feet high. We landed on some ladders. Fortunately for me, I landed on top of Arthur who cushioned my fall! We both managed to walk away unharmed but I learned my lesson not play there again.
I was friendly with the Hutchinson family who owned Greenabella Farm. David, the son, and I were pals and in the summer-time I liked going to help with the harvest because I was allowed to drive the tractors, which was great fun. The other great treat was when Mrs. Hutchinson brought picnic baskets to the fields full of good food, which we ate with relish. On a Sunday I was often asked to stay for tea with them in the farmhouse and it was always a good spread, which was appreciated.
Our favourite games in the village were Monokitty, Knocky-Knocky Nine Doors, Hide-and-Seek, Tee-Mac-a-Nallyo. Also, we had gangs that made camps in the bushes that surrounded the village, usually made by digging deep holes and covering them with branches. In the corner of hole there was always a fireplace in which we burnt wood. We would cook potatoes in the fire and they always came out with the skins burnt black but we still ate them. The different gangs in the village had battles between them and this usually meant making wooden swords, bows and arrows.
On Saturday mornings we would go by bus to the picture houses in Hartlepool to see cowboy or Tarzan films and then come home to act them out. In wartime it was difficult to buy sweets so we made do with cinnamon sticks and liquorice roots that we bought from shops near the cinema. Sometimes we could buy peanut butter, which was always a treat. When some of our friends didn’t have any money, we would open the fire doors to the cinema and let them in to see the film. Usually the Manager would discover this and we would be thrown out!
Neither I nor any of the other kids in the village passed the 11-plus exam for the grammar school, so we all had to go to Haverton Hill Senior School. My mother, however, decided I was to go to the catholic St. Cuthbert’s school in Hartlepool. I used to ride on my bicycle four times a day (a distance of 20 miles in total) because I wouldn’t stay for the school meals at lunchtime. These meals were usually made from ‘smash’ potatoes and nondescript meat; the dessert was usually sago pudding, which everyone called ‘frogspawn’.
I saved up to buy my bicycle, a brand new BSA (British Small Arms) with a three-speed gearbox. To raise the money for my bike I delivered newspapers, and lit the village streetlights, for which I was paid 7 shillings and 6d a week by the rent collector Mr. Atkinson who had the nick names ‘Captain’ or ‘Lord John’. (I think he had these names because of his military bearing.) Next door to the Atkinsons lived Mrs. Wales the school caretaker. To me she seemed always to be an old lady, dressed in sombre clothes. Perhaps she was a widow; I don’t know.
The only time I left the village on an excursion was a day trip to Redcar, which to me was somewhere far away. A special train came into the sidings next to the village to take all the children. The only thing I remember about that day was that my brother John overturned a canoe on the lake and fell into the water.
The Allotments
The Graythorp allotments were a central part of our lives, especially during the war years when they were our main source of food, supplying us with fresh vegetables as well as meat from the pigs, hens and rabbits. The pigs were the mainstay of the enterprise giving us pork, sausages and brawn. My father said, "The only part of the pig that’s not eaten is its squeak!" Pork was also used as a currency on the black market where it was exchanged for tea, sugar, etc.. The ships coming into the docks for repairs had Indian crews who would come to the village and barter for live chickens usually with tins of condensed milk. All this enterprise was illegal but my parents were never found out, more by good luck than anything else.
We had three horses. The first was called Prince. He had a quite nature and would let you ride him. He used to pull our flat cart that was painted red and yellow and always looked smart. We would take the pigs on the cart to Stockton market to sell as ‘porkers’. To me, going out on the cart was always an adventure. We went out in all weathers – me with a flour sack over my head and shoulders to keep out the cold and rain – to collect pigswill from the local army camps at Greatham. My father or uncle Dan drove the cart and, if the road was quiet, they would let me drive, which I always thought was great. (Interestingly, we drove the cart sitting on the left-hand side and not the right as we do in a car.)
Prince lived a long life but I was sad the day I found him dead in his stable. The next horse we bought was called Peggy. My mother, uncle Dan and myself went to Barnard Castle horse market to buy her. (This was the very first time that I went into a public house. I had lemonade. Uncle Dan was very fond of Bass beer.) Peggy was a large horse and very skittish; she would not let you ride her and she was hard to handle when pulling the cart. One day she bolted whilst pulling the cart and I recall my brother Danny chasing after her to try to stop her, but she ended up back at the allotments before she stopped.
The third horse was called Major. He was brought to us from Salthome Farm by my brother-in-law Joe (Lily’s husband) who worked on the farm, which was owned by ICI. We used Major to plough the allotments into one large field in which we grew potatoes for the fish-and-chip shop. The fish came from a wholesale warehouse in Middlesbrough, just across the Transporter bridge. My brother Jimmy and I went on the bus two or three times a week to collect the fish and bring it back to Graythorp. The bus conductor made us put the fish under the stairs at the rear of the bus because of the smell. One day we were refused permission to get on the bus with the fish and we had to walk the three miles home carrying two stone of fish.
On a Sunday, all our cousins from Hartlepool came for tea and my mother would sit them down to homemade food, which she baked every day. I can still smell the bread and teacakes being baked in a wood-stoke oven and I remember watching the large bowl of dough rising in front of the fire … there was no going to the supermarket in those days. On sunny days my mother brought picnics to the allotments and we would eat in a wooden cabin that was always known as ‘The Tea Cabin’. The day of my parents’ silver wedding anniversary in 1945 **or 1946? Do you know the date and year?** we had a meal outside the house in the lane that ran between No. 46 and No. 69 (the houses were not numbered in consecutive order). I think most of the villagers were invited to it.
We had three horses. The first was called Prince. He had a quite nature and would let you ride him. He used to pull our flat cart that was painted red and yellow and always looked smart. We would take the pigs on the cart to Stockton market to sell as ‘porkers’. To me, going out on the cart was always an adventure. We went out in all weathers – me with a flour sack over my head and shoulders to keep out the cold and rain – to collect pigswill from the local army camps at Greatham. My father or uncle Dan drove the cart and, if the road was quiet, they would let me drive, which I always thought was great. (Interestingly, we drove the cart sitting on the left-hand side and not the right as we do in a car.)
Prince lived a long life but I was sad the day I found him dead in his stable. The next horse we bought was called Peggy. My mother, uncle Dan and myself went to Barnard Castle horse market to buy her. (This was the very first time that I went into a public house. I had lemonade. Uncle Dan was very fond of Bass beer.) Peggy was a large horse and very skittish; she would not let you ride her and she was hard to handle when pulling the cart. One day she bolted whilst pulling the cart and I recall my brother Danny chasing after her to try to stop her, but she ended up back at the allotments before she stopped.
The third horse was called Major. He was brought to us from Salthome Farm by my brother-in-law Joe (Lily’s husband) who worked on the farm, which was owned by ICI. We used Major to plough the allotments into one large field in which we grew potatoes for the fish-and-chip shop. The fish came from a wholesale warehouse in Middlesbrough, just across the Transporter bridge. My brother Jimmy and I went on the bus two or three times a week to collect the fish and bring it back to Graythorp. The bus conductor made us put the fish under the stairs at the rear of the bus because of the smell. One day we were refused permission to get on the bus with the fish and we had to walk the three miles home carrying two stone of fish.
On a Sunday, all our cousins from Hartlepool came for tea and my mother would sit them down to homemade food, which she baked every day. I can still smell the bread and teacakes being baked in a wood-stoke oven and I remember watching the large bowl of dough rising in front of the fire … there was no going to the supermarket in those days. On sunny days my mother brought picnics to the allotments and we would eat in a wooden cabin that was always known as ‘The Tea Cabin’. The day of my parents’ silver wedding anniversary in 1945 **or 1946? Do you know the date and year?** we had a meal outside the house in the lane that ran between No. 46 and No. 69 (the houses were not numbered in consecutive order). I think most of the villagers were invited to it.
My Family
My father, John Featherstone, came from West Hartlepool and my mother, Beatrice Crilley, from Seaton Carew. They were married in St Cuthbert’s Church, Hartlepool in 1920 **check** and they set up home at Seaton Snooks where my father worked in the local zinc works. Not long afterwards, they moved to a nice modern house at No. 13 Graythorp.
My mother raised 10 children, five boys and five girls: Lily, Peggy, Bea, John, Danny, Joan, Jimmy, myself Charlie, Mary and Brian. Also in the family was ‘uncle Dan’ Coleman, a colleague of my father’s at the zinc works, who had lodged with my parents since they were first married. No. 13 Graythorp was a three bedroom, mid-terrace house with a living room, a front sitting room - which doubled as a fourth bedroom and air-raid shelter - a kitchen and a bathroom, although I can remember having a bath only in a zinc tub in front of the living room fire. The water heating for the house was from a small back boiler, which wasn’t very efficient, so perhaps this was the reason for the zinc tub.
The front sitting room was used only to entertain visitors, especially the priest who occasionally came to see my mother on a Sunday afternoon – not that she was a regular churchgoer in those days. She did start to attend church regularly later when we moved to Billingham. My dad was a Wesleyan and did not drink alcohol but he smoked very heavily and this contributed to his ill health in late life.
After the war we opened a fish-and-chip shop in the village. The frying range came from my aunt Mary Geritz, who lived at the Snooks. It had not been used for a long time but with a lot of love and care my parents restored it to working order. I can remember helping to clean the cast-iron pans with a wire brush until they shone. It had two pans: one for the fish and one for the chips. To comply with fire regulations, the building had to be lined with asbestos sheeting, a job undertaken by my brother John who was employed by the shipyard as a joiner. This later proved to be a wise move because the fish shop did catch fire. It was one Saturday morning when I was 13 years old. I was sent to light the coal fires to heat the oil ready for my mother to open the shop for the lunchtime trade. I had to leave the fires unattended to go and collect the potatoes, which were in large bins at home. By the time I returned, the oil in the pans had caught alight and the chimney soot had also ignited. Mr Moon, who lived near the shop, came in with a bucket of water and threw it over the hot oil causing it to explode into a fireball that rose to the ceiling! Fortunately, no one was hurt and the fire brigade arrived in time to save the building from serious damage. Thanks to the asbestos sheeting and the fire brigade, it was not long before we were back in business.
In 1950, we left Graythorp to live in Haverton Hill where my parents bought a general dealers shop, which was the original ‘Open all hours’. My mother never turned away customers! The shop was a little run down when they bought it but my parents soon had it running as a successful business and later owned two more shops in Haverton Hill. When Haverton Hill was knocked down in the 1960s, due to the pollution from the local Imperial Chemical Industries factory, they moved to two shops in Billingham.
My mother raised 10 children, five boys and five girls: Lily, Peggy, Bea, John, Danny, Joan, Jimmy, myself Charlie, Mary and Brian. Also in the family was ‘uncle Dan’ Coleman, a colleague of my father’s at the zinc works, who had lodged with my parents since they were first married. No. 13 Graythorp was a three bedroom, mid-terrace house with a living room, a front sitting room - which doubled as a fourth bedroom and air-raid shelter - a kitchen and a bathroom, although I can remember having a bath only in a zinc tub in front of the living room fire. The water heating for the house was from a small back boiler, which wasn’t very efficient, so perhaps this was the reason for the zinc tub.
The front sitting room was used only to entertain visitors, especially the priest who occasionally came to see my mother on a Sunday afternoon – not that she was a regular churchgoer in those days. She did start to attend church regularly later when we moved to Billingham. My dad was a Wesleyan and did not drink alcohol but he smoked very heavily and this contributed to his ill health in late life.
After the war we opened a fish-and-chip shop in the village. The frying range came from my aunt Mary Geritz, who lived at the Snooks. It had not been used for a long time but with a lot of love and care my parents restored it to working order. I can remember helping to clean the cast-iron pans with a wire brush until they shone. It had two pans: one for the fish and one for the chips. To comply with fire regulations, the building had to be lined with asbestos sheeting, a job undertaken by my brother John who was employed by the shipyard as a joiner. This later proved to be a wise move because the fish shop did catch fire. It was one Saturday morning when I was 13 years old. I was sent to light the coal fires to heat the oil ready for my mother to open the shop for the lunchtime trade. I had to leave the fires unattended to go and collect the potatoes, which were in large bins at home. By the time I returned, the oil in the pans had caught alight and the chimney soot had also ignited. Mr Moon, who lived near the shop, came in with a bucket of water and threw it over the hot oil causing it to explode into a fireball that rose to the ceiling! Fortunately, no one was hurt and the fire brigade arrived in time to save the building from serious damage. Thanks to the asbestos sheeting and the fire brigade, it was not long before we were back in business.
In 1950, we left Graythorp to live in Haverton Hill where my parents bought a general dealers shop, which was the original ‘Open all hours’. My mother never turned away customers! The shop was a little run down when they bought it but my parents soon had it running as a successful business and later owned two more shops in Haverton Hill. When Haverton Hill was knocked down in the 1960s, due to the pollution from the local Imperial Chemical Industries factory, they moved to two shops in Billingham.
Graythorp, my village
Graythorp was built in the 1920s to house the workforce for William Gray and Company’s ship repair dock situated at the mouth of the river Tees in the north-east of England. The village had 76 houses and a population of some 250 people. It was designed as a garden village: each house had a front and rear garden in which most families grew vegetables, especially during the war years. The village had three shops: a Co-op, a newsagent and a fish-and-chip shop. Also, there was a school with three classrooms, and a church and village hall.
The village was surrounded mainly by hawthorn bushes and scrub land. To the north were the allotments; to the south was the main road between Seaton Carew and Port Clarence, to the east was the railway line to Seaton Snooks **have you got this right? It looks to me that the existing railway line is to the west of the village.** and to the west was Greenabella farm.
The shipyard was to the south of the village on the other side of the main road. Not all of the men from the village worked there. My father, for example, was employed as a police constable at the Hartlepool Steel Works during the war where he worked very long hours.
The land next to the railway line once housed RAF personnel who manned the radar station. This became obsolete when the USA built the early warning system for ballistic missiles at RAF Fylingdales on the North Yorkshire Moors as part of the joint UK–USA surveillance of the Russians during the Cold War. The RAF buildings were then used to make a small industrial estate, which is still in use today. With this encroachment of industry, combined with the loss of jobs when Gray’s sold the shipyard in 1963, people gradually move away from Graythorp. The village finally ceased to exist when oil was discovered under the North Sea and Graythorp was chosen as a site for large oil storage tanks. All the houses were demolished and all that remains of the village itself now are the streets.
The village was surrounded mainly by hawthorn bushes and scrub land. To the north were the allotments; to the south was the main road between Seaton Carew and Port Clarence, to the east was the railway line to Seaton Snooks **have you got this right? It looks to me that the existing railway line is to the west of the village.** and to the west was Greenabella farm.
The shipyard was to the south of the village on the other side of the main road. Not all of the men from the village worked there. My father, for example, was employed as a police constable at the Hartlepool Steel Works during the war where he worked very long hours.
The land next to the railway line once housed RAF personnel who manned the radar station. This became obsolete when the USA built the early warning system for ballistic missiles at RAF Fylingdales on the North Yorkshire Moors as part of the joint UK–USA surveillance of the Russians during the Cold War. The RAF buildings were then used to make a small industrial estate, which is still in use today. With this encroachment of industry, combined with the loss of jobs when Gray’s sold the shipyard in 1963, people gradually move away from Graythorp. The village finally ceased to exist when oil was discovered under the North Sea and Graythorp was chosen as a site for large oil storage tanks. All the houses were demolished and all that remains of the village itself now are the streets.
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