Remembering the Shields bike shop which lost £2,000 stock in a pre-Christmas blaze
There were 12 days to go to Christmas when a South Shields bike shop faced the worst possible scenario.
Christmas stock worth more than £2,000 was destroyed when fire broke out in December 1960.
999 crews worked all round the clock at the scene
Fire crew worked around the clock to get the blaze under control at John Hornsby’s shop, which could be found on the corner of Westoe Road and Alfred Street.
A Shields Gazette report at the time said: “Firefighters had to use breathing apparatus because of the dense clouds of smoke.”
As well as fire crews at the scene, there were engines pictured on standby as Hornsby’s Christmas stock went up in smoke.
Much to admire at Mason’s Chemists
Another shop sharing space in the Gazette that year was Mason’s chemists which had branches in King Street and Westoe Road.
It had a range of men’s cosmetic Christmas gifts on offer including the ‘busy man’s bar’ for 22/6.
It contained after shave lotion, hairdressing cream and cologne in a set of three bottles.
Or there was a 9/9 gift called a ‘book on good grooming’. It looked like a book but it opened up to show a bottle of after shave lotion, deodorant cologne, hairdressing cream and a bottle of shampoo.
Merry Christmas - from 1910
That same year, workers uncovered evidence of a South Tyneside Christmas past.
Seasonal greetings written by a workman half a century earlier came to light at the town hall in Westoe Road.
A tiler called WG Gallantree was repairing the floor in the building’s main corridor when he spotted an unusual slab underneath it. It was a festive greeting from 1910 contained on a huge slab.
The broken marble slab said ‘A Merry Christmas’ and was thought to date from the era when the corporation moved from its previous home in Market Place decades earlier.
Three big stars in one mega movie
And here’s one last piece of 1960 news from South Tyneside.
Three showings of the film The Apartment were on at The Odeon in South Shields, starring Jack Lemmon, Shirley Maclaine and Fred McMurray.
Tell us if you remember the fire at Hornsby’s - or perhaps you would rather share your memories of another South Tyneside Christmas from years gone by.
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