John Nelson
My father, Wilfred Nelson, joined the army in 1926 aged 16. He was a Corporal with the DLI Regiment and fought in the North Africa campaign during WW2. After the war my father got a job as builder with Lane Fox. They were awarded the contract to build the first houses in Peterlee. We lived in Haswell Plough back then and. I still recall the day that we were taken to see the new houses in Thorntree Gill. I was amazed that they had indoor toilets and radiators. I didn’t know what a radiator was until then.
Like today, building firms had to tender for contracts, so there were various firms involved in building different parts of Peterlee. Milton Hindle was another of the building firms that comes to mind. They built the early phases of the south west area, which is the part of Peterlee that Anne and I later moved to in the mid-1960’s.
I left school in 1954 and went to work with Lane Fox as a joiner’s apprentice, starting off in Little Eden and the streets thereabouts. Over the next few years I helped build the Fulwell Road area, Dunn Road, and Dunelm Road, and the north part of Acre Rigg (Cambridge Road, York Road, and a section of Lowhills Road). My final job in Peterlee came in 1960, building the small row of shops on Burnhope Way, located next to where they later built Ridgemont House. I remember the hardwood staircase in the end unit, which I think was a bank. It was very different to the other units. The staircase required very precise measurement. I’d say this was the finest piece of work I’d done as a joiner up to that point in time. I also remember me and the lads stopping work to watch the Queen and Prince Philip driving by in their Rolls Royce from the first-floor windows of the shops.
We moved from Haswell Plough to number 40 Helford Road in Peterlee in 1966. Our boys loved the fact we lived so close to the Dene. They played there all the time. The Dene is so beautiful. It’s one of the big attractions that drew us to Peterlee. In 1977 we moved to Dart Road, where we’ve now lived for the past 46 years.
When we first moved here, our address was 50 Dart Road. They demolished most of the houses around us in the early 1990’s and built a private housing development on the land. Our address was subsequently changed to 56 Lakemore.
Of the ten cantilever style houses they built off Southway, ours is the only one that remains. We feel very lucky, because there is so much green open space around us, front and back. It’s one of the reasons that we’ve never wanted to leave.