This photograph is of the Wellfield gym team in the sixties and there is at least one Wheatley Hill lad on it. There are 3 from Thornley, including me and the rest are from around the county; I'm not sure where, although I think the lad on the left in the back row came from Wingate. I'll name the ones I can remember and, as before I'll designate those I can't remember by ?.

 

Back row: Keith Naylor; Chris Ellis; Peter Taylor; Bob Fenwick; Geoff Corner; Dave Clark; ? .

Middle row: ?; ?; ?; Barry Hodgson; ?; Peter Wilkinson; Paul Stradling.

Front row sitting: Ron Beaney; Ken Orton (me).

 

Peter Taylor was a Thornley lad; he lived right at the bottom of the village - Ashfield Grove, I think it is called. Peter Wilkinson lived somewhere near, or actually in, School Square. And I, at the time, lived in Thornlaw North, now, sadly no longer there.

 

The Wheatley Hill lad was Barry Hodgson. He was a marvellous gymnast, much better than the rest of us and, some time in the early days of Tyne Tees TV he appeared on the regional news, along with a lad called Barry Hammond (we called him "Batchy" Hammond) who was also from Wheatley Hill. I think he was a pupil at Wheatley Hill Boys School. They were interviewed in their gym kit and did a couple of moves for the camera and they were the first people I actually knew who were on TV. I can't remember why they should have been on the news: probably, they had won a competition, or something; I'm not too sure, but I clearly recall making a point of watching the news in order to see them because all the gymnasts from our area knew one another and were mates.

Update of names from George Galloway...Middle Row from Left the missing names are Robert Robinson, Kenneth Madison, David Jameson, Brian Goodrich.