11/11/2025 – the group viewed many photographs of Highfield and Highfield School back in the 1950’s. They identified many of the children in the photographs including themselves! They sorted a photograph which was thought be Highfield but was really Busty Bank! They also identified the road where Jazz Bands were marching and noted they were not local children., – a band from another part of the North East attending a Jazz Band festival.

The following was agreed

To create photo montages of shops in Rowlands Gill over the years and ask for them to be displayed in the appropriate shop!

That Pipebridge and the New estate are one and the same thing!

That The Bellway houses above the shop on Smailes Lane replaced Semis which were demolished. 

Because we had only covered the east side of Smailes Land the next meeting will focus on the west side and down to the LOY works!

9/12/25

Today we talked about Highfield to the west of Smailes Lane along Highfield Road down to the Loy

We talked about Highfield Road and the terraces are long Highfield Road and we thought that they had been built in 1889 or 1890. An 1895 map did not have any properties on the map at all so we presume they were built after 1895.  Recollections were of Billy Harrison, a butcher, Mrs Cotard had a shop and Fred Alan who had a post office. There was also Lily Whitfield who had a shop. The Loy works or the alloy works produced things like red lead for the Royal Navy pre-World War.  Next to those were the Coke works and apparently we had the best coking coal in the world from Victoria Garesfield which closed in 1962.  The Methodist Chapel on Highfield Road is now two houses. The photograph we have is of the front and the back of the Methodist Church as it was. We also talked about a wooden bridge over the line which was ran from Victoria Garesfield to Rowlands Gill. We also talked about the primary school and there were fond memories of Miss Stanton, Mrs Barkley, Joan Gardner, Mrs Turner, Miss Brown, Mrs Gray and Mr. Harry Swan who is the headmaster. He was a small man but very hard. He was the headmaster of the senior school around about 1945 to 1955. He was at Rowlands Gill previous to that. Mr Stadden was apparently a very good teacher.

At our next meeting we will be showing all of the photographs that have been gathered together on a screen for everyone to see and discuss to see whether there are the description is accurate 

13/1/26 and 10/2/26 – The group started to look at the photographs that had been collected over the last few months and agree that the description with each photo was accurate. The group also added to the description if there was some knowledge of it. We also noted whether there were photos that we did not have. Eventually we will draw up a list of photos we need to complete the history of each shop on station road.