Elizabeth Griffiths

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Elizabeth moved to Lingdale when she was 18 months old with her family, she should have left school at 14 but her parents paid for her to stay on an extra year until she was 15. She then worked in what is now Bells shop at the end of Davison Street, but it was a grocers shop when she worked there in 1910. After a while she left Lingdale and went to work as the housekeeper for the Bishop of Ilkey, at one point she began training as a deaconess in the Church of England, but with the First World War she became a nurse, first in a naval hospital in Hull, then moving on to do midwifery and district nursing in Edinburgh, before becoming assistant matron of a nursing home in Norfolk. She and Reg were married in 1936 and she moved back to Lingdale. Among other things she was the "nit nurse" at the village school and held first aid classes for the Red Cross. 

Reg Simons

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Reg owned the butchers and what is now the post office but was a grocers shop when he had it, he was also a JP and councilor on Skelton and Brotton District Council, as well as being an auctioneer and owning a number of properties in Lingdale and Boosbeck. He also owned a garden on Cockburn Street, next to the old school - part of this he leased to the school for their allotment, the school dining hall was also on this land - the kids having to cross the road for their school dinner. He also donated another plot of this land to the Silver Band to build their practice hut on (they still practice there today), the village air raid shelters were also on his land - they are still there too.

Photographs and information kindly contributed by Susan Griffiths.

Leonard Frankland

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Leonard and Ann lived in Davison Street in the first house of the terrace on the hill, I don't know when they first arrived in Lingdale but Leonard was the Schoolmaster and maybe Headmaster at the Lingdale Council School for 27 years. He was a keen gardener and was secretary of the Beekeepers Association in Cleveland. 
I remember visiting them every weekend during the war years and always went with him to visit his hives near Lockwood Beck and his allotment behind the High Street on the side of the shale heap. The smell of homegrown tomatoes and raffia hanging in his greenhouse will stay with me. 
I recall there used to be a procession on Whit Sunday when all the little girls were donned in new summer dresses, always with white socks and a pretty bonnet. We then walked from the Lingdale Mission to Boosbeck Church and it always seemed to be a lovely day. Another memory is of the milkman delivering milk in his little cart and the milk being ladled from the churn into a jug which my grandmother covered with a beaded cloth, and the corner shops with their wonderful smells and all manner of household goods hanging from hooks in the ceiling.

Kindly contributed by Elaine Bradley (nee Frankland).