MARY Lucas McCormack admits to shedding a sentimental tear or two when she spotted a nostalgic contribution on this page from pensioner Edith Carter.

Miss Carter, now in her eighties, had supplied a splendid word-picture, featuring one of her favourite childhood haunts, the Mill Dam and its man-made waterfall. Its once neatly-kept grassy banks were a magnet for local kids who loved to picnic there.

Mary, now living at Shiremoor, near Newcastle-upon-Tyne, has the Star posted to her by Will Sharrock, a friend from Clock Face.

Of Miss Carter's childhood memories, she writes: "It brought tears to my eyes. I came from the once lovely Clock Face Road, near Whitfield's Farm." She remembers collecting plot-grown vegetables and fresh eggs; and buying home-made jam and cut flowers locally for her mother.

"Now," she writes,"my brother tells me that nearly all the land is built on. He still fishes in what's left of the dam where I have memories of sitting on a big slab of stone at the top of the steps." She loved to dip her toes into the cold waters and watch the lads splashing and swimming about until the local bobby ("I think his name was Wigglesworth") arrived upon the scene. Then they would scramble away down the grassy slope.

Mary remembers the well-trodden path from Mill Lane to Leach Lane, where an overspill stream ran out of structures she used to call 'the giant's bakehouses.'

"There was a cave-like opening to the side of these. My mum used to tell me that the fairies lived there and came out at night to dance around the trees.

"Then, when I was older, war broke out and the Bevin Boys (recruited to work at the collieries) went to live in a hostel at the back of the Mill House hotel."

The lads invited the local young lasses to their dances. "And on the way home we would pause on the bridge where the water from the steps used to send a spray through the railings."

Mary also recalls the arrival on the scene of Yanks based at Burtonwood."They were facinated by our dam and the lovely village areas which existed at that time." On a more tragic note, she remembers a US plane crashing at a local spot known as Battery Cob.

But her most cherished memories are of the sense of neighbourliness and simple pleasures that were once the hallmark of life in the Sutton area.

WHAT a lovely little look-back contribution from Geordieland...

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.