Jackie Bambrick came across an unexpected find when looking for information the New Clarendon, the North Shields pub managed by her mother, Eileen Gallagher.
A Mystery Unravels
When I wrote an article about my late mum Veronica’s tape recordings of singalongs at the New Clarendon, the North Shields pub that was bought by Amber Film & Photography Collective in the 1980s, it was like piecing together a puzzle from the past. Listening to the old cassettes, some voices and names started coming back to me but others were lost in time, consigned to the memories of people who are all probably long gone. Or so I thought.
The tapes instantly convey the sense of community and convivial atmosphere in the old pub on Appleby Street, and among the songs and banter there is one constant holding it all together: the compère. The mystery lady leading the proceedings was unknown to me and remained unnamed in my article, but she was obviously the driving force behind the entertainment. With her larger-than-life personality, this formidable woman was evidently well placed to manage the often unruly and unpredictable crowd of punters.
Jackie Bambrick happened across my article when she was searching for information on the North Shields pub her mum used to run. At first she was not sure if her mum was mentioned, but then she spotted her name in a section quoting some friendly banter between a man called Taffy and a woman called Eileen. Jackie thought it had to be her so she got in touch and I invited her to come to my childhood home to listen to the recordings. Jackie arrived in anticipation of hearing her mum’s voice again, 27 years after she passed away. She recognised Eileen’s humorous quips on the mic straight away, and when she launched into the comedy song, ‘Hipso Calypso’, there was no denying it was Jackie’s mother: “She always used to sing her own funny versions of songs, like, Are you lonesome tonight, is your corset too tight…”
Eileen had been a barmaid in Wallsend and Walker all her life, before going on to manage a series of tough Tyneside pubs that even the breweries were reluctant to touch. She had three children: Henry, Jackie and Shaun, who spent their formative years living in these unconventional homes. When Henry was 14, Jackie was 12 and Shaun was 9, they moved from Neptune Road in Wallsend to the Dutch bungalows around the corner for a few months, and then into the Victoria Hotel. ‘The Green Bar’, as it was locally known, was an isolated pub surrounded by nothing but an industrial estate. After that, they moved into the Wincomblee Hotel in Walker, named after the old village that had once existed there: “Mam used to have the pints and pies all lined up ready for the ship workers.” In 1981, Eileen took over the Lord Clyde pub in Byker, where she came into contact with the Amber Film & Photography Collective. Members of Amber used to drink in the pub and in 1986 they approached Eileen about managing a pub they had bought in North Shields, the New Clarendon.
The New Clarendon
The New Clarendon was similar to other pubs Eileen had run – out on its own on the edge of town, with nothing but wasteland between it and another lone pub, the Woolsington House. “It was a lonely life, very isolated. Nobody could understand why she took over these places. But she always injected life into the area – she got the singalongs going, started the darts teams. She put on fundraising events and trips to Blackpool, which only involved a quick look at the lights before hitting the pubs!” With the help of her good friends, Cath and Terry, and the talented pianist Alan Deeming with his wife, Mavis, Eileen hosted regular singalong evenings at the New Clarendon. She also put together the pub’s darts team that features in the 1991 Amber film, ‘Dream On’, which follows the lives of local women and their struggles against the backdrop of the pub darts league: “Mum played in darts teams for both the Clyde and the Anson (another Wallsend pub). The Clarendon darts players came from there. She would have put together the darts team anyway, even if there wasn’t a film.” Jackie recalls the film’s powerful portrayal of the importance of darts in asserting women’s independence, allowing them one night off a week from the pressures of their sometimes troubled home lives: “Without fail, Tuesday night was always darts night.”
Film Stars
Eileen features in the film ‘Dream On’, as does Jackie’s brother, Shaun, “The good-looking lad who’s chalking the darts”. Jackie remembers how they weren’t allowed to move anything in the pub from one day to the next to ensure continuity for filming: “We weren’t even allowed to touch the kettle!” Eileen also appeared in other Amber productions including, ‘Shields Stories’ (1988), ‘In Fading Light’ (1989) and ‘From Marks & Spencer to Marx and Engels’ (1988). I still have the latter on VHS and I put it on for Jackie. In one of the film’s final scenes, Eileen is rounding off the evening’s singalong with a rendition of ‘To You, Sweetheart, Aloha’, with my own mum dancing by her side. The women could not have known that 40 years later their two daughters would meet and watch them in this way.
Time moves on
None of Eileen’s children followed in her footsteps into pub management. Shaun became a taxi driver, Jackie a PE teacher and Henry is the current Lord Mayor of Newcastle! Nobody took over the New Clarendon after Amber left, the building eventually fell into disrepair and was pulled down. This makes my mum’s tapes all the more precious, along with Amber’s films, a lasting record of the lively and creative community that came together down that little Shields street.
Our conversation comes to a close as we listen to the familiar sound of the old-fashioned last-orders bell ringing and Eileen’s voice booming out: “Right, will you put your hands together for all the singers in the room tonight? A big hand for Alan on the piano! And Tilly behind the bar!” Just before leaving, Jackie says: “I still have that last-orders bell. You can have it if you like!” My eyes light up, although I’m not sure where I’d put it. Perhaps next to my mum’s old Victorian pub tables, rescued from the Clarendon before it was demolished. Enduring reminders of a special time.
All photos provided by Eileen Gallagher’s family
Read more about the New Clarendon singalongs here: Singing The Songs of Their Lives | The Lost Voices of North Shields | North Shields News, Events & Community | I Love North Shields
Find out more about Amber’s five-year residency in North Shields in a series of future articles by former Amber archivist, Robert Hollands.
We also have an upcoming interview with Amber founder and acclaimed photographer, Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen, who has just launched a fundraising campaign to republish her iconic book, Step by Step, a study of girls and their mothers at the Connell-Brown dancing school in North Shields: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dewi-lewis/step-by-step-2?ref=discovery_category&total_hits=3729&category_id=280
