Women of Cornforth

Voices, memories, and lives from Doggie

Voices, memories and photographs from the women — and men — who shaped life in Cornforth, the County Durham village locals know as Doggie.

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Introduction
Julie's welcome to the archive

I grew up in the High Street in West Cornforth. Like all children home was the centre of my world. I had a good idea of where the village ended. As a child that was more significant to me than where the start of the vil…
All the women's stories
Individual biographies collected from family, friends and neighbours.
Doggie's Tales
Essays on everyday village life: housework, marriage, pennies, smells, Mondays.
Photographs
176 photographs from around the village and its families.

Annie Blackwell
Annie was born on March 7 1915 and grew up with her elder sister Margaret and their parents in a house in a street behind the High Street. When she left school Annie, like many girls from the village, went into service.…
Beryl Walker
Beryl and her twin sister Margaret were born in 1946 at their mother’s mother’s house in Park Avenue Coxhoe in 1946. Shortly after their birth Beryl and her sister went home to live with their mum and dad; John and Moll…
Det Stephenson
Det was born in West Cornforth in 1899; the youngest of six children. Det had four sisters, Bella, Annie, Lizzy, Ellen, and one brother Jimmy.
Doris Crawford
Doris was born in a house in Ferryhill Market Place in 1933 where her father was a skilled carpenter and undertaker. Doris’s father, Edgar, made the carved furniture in St Luke’s Church and the Masonic Lodge in Ferryhil…
Doris Stapleton
Doris was born at 2 Commercial Street Coxhoe and came to live in Windsor Terrace West Cornforth when she was two years old.
Florence Smith
We alighted in West Cornforth from Wheatley Hill in about 1955. My family had lived in my great grandmother’s house until her death, and it was now that my mother was to fulfil her ambition of opening a baker’s shop. So…