South Shields

As I mentioned in my previous blog, my grandmother (my mother's mom) was born in a coastal town about an hour and 45 minutes away from here called South Shields. My grandmother was born there in 1905, and moved to America with her family when she was two. My mother had always wanted to visit South Shields, so she brought the actual address where my grandmother was born, as well as a few other names and addresses from my grandmother's hand-written address book.

I typed in my grandmother's birth address (yes, she was born in her family's house) into my GPS. The GPS couldn't find Regent Street, but it did find a Regent Court. We thought we'd give it a try. The GPS led us beautifully from my driveway, all the way to Regent Court, South Shields. From the look of the buildings on the street, it looked like we were in newer development. There was no 55 Regent Court, but we found number 54, and took a picture of my mom in front of it. On the way out, we noticed that where #55 would have been, there was now a horse stable. So, the on-going story will forever be that my grandmother was born in a stable!

We then put another address into the GPS from Granny's address book that my mom believed were friends or relatives of hers (the Holts). When we reached the address, we found a woman gardening out front. My mom struck up a conversation with her asking if she knew the Holts, and the woman said that she did know them, but the last that she had heard, they were living in a nursing home. We were still quite satisfied that we found a person, who knew some people, who knew my mom's mom!

We spent some more time in South Shields in the town center. We found the South Shields museum, and learned more about the city. We then walked along a pedestrian walkway with shops and even a flea-market. You can imagine my delight when I found this shop:That's right... Pound World... the British equivalent of the Dollar Store!!! I went in with Maddie and let her pick out any one thing she wanted. It's nice to know that it exists over here.

We really had a lovely day. We didn't quite know what to expect, but we suspect that Granny Ethel would have been proud of us for taking the time to explore around her home town.