Teesside Iron and Steel Memories Interview: Peter Nightingale

Family Background & early work:
Father born 1911 & started work at 14yr in 1925 at Warrenby
Both sets of grandparents lived in Dormanstown, built by Dorman Long for its workers at the end of WW1. Both Grandfathers also worked at Warrenby, one in the offices & the other as a joiner until retirement in the late 1940's.
Father worked as a steel smelter on shift work
Badly burned on two occasions knocking the furnace tap-hole out - skin peeling and swathed in gauze & cotton wool, looked after by mother at home.
Still regarded Dormans as reasonable employers & preferred them to State ownership (even as a strong Labour trades union man).
In the early 40's, Mother recalled pushing PN in his pram down the road in Redcar and watching a German bomber very low, seeing the 2 crewmen and the aircraft went on to drop a bomb on the blast furnace, killing 28 people.
Lived in a Company house on the green in Dormanstown - an ex doctor's house, so it had a bathroom upstairs instead of a bath under the bench in the kitchen.
Rent was deducted from wages (about £5/wk in the 50's)
Cycled to work every day at Warrenby
Reasonably prosperous times in the late 50's - the family had TV & a car
Dad was on the committee of the Union 'sickness club', taking out money to people who were ill & unable to work
Mother took a job as Warden of the Sir William Turner's Almshouses at Kirkleatham, so they moved there in the mid 60's
Father ended his working life at Lackenby in the Research Laboratories until his retirement in about 1975.

PN Background & Working Life:
Born 13/10/1939 in Dormanstown
Had one brother after WW2, 8yrs younger than himself, who died aged only 3 weeks - never knew the cause.
Passed the 11 Plus & went to Sir William Turner's Grammar School
Few pupils from Dormanstown, South Bank etc went there then and they met with suspicion and some hostility from some masters
Then on to Hull University, studied French & secured an Upper Second Class degree
Took summer jobs at Elsie Hinds scrapyard in South Bank, sorting rags & stripping out old cars etc.
Then on to PGCE at London University and went into teaching French for 35 years
First position was in Sunderland at Red House Comprehensive, then had an offer from his old Grammar School in Redcar where he worked until retirement in 2001
In the mid 80's, took a year's secondment to Durham University & did an MA in Foreign Language Teaching
After retirement in2001, went to York University and the National Railway Museum and took a Master's Degree in Railway History
Thesis on Railways of the Loire Valley
Now a member of the 'Association de Chemins de Fer en France' - the French National railway institution.
Continuing a long-standing association with France stretching back over 50 years
One of his wife's relatives worked in the French steel industry on the blast furnaces