In the 1860 s a Scottish Company called the ‘Tennant’s Company’ from Glasgow’s ‘St Rollox’ area, set its Works up in Hebburn alongside the river Tyne at the bottom of Prince Consort Rd where the King George football pitches were in later years. They deliberately chose the site for their Works so it would be easy to import and export products by river. The products they manufactured at the works was soda crystals, soda ash, sulphuric acid, salt cake, washing soda and bleaching powders. At one point in its time here its name was changed to the ‘United Alkali Company’ but after 60 or more years in the town they closed down in the 1930s and their buildings were demolished apart from a property called Tyne View Terrace that their Chemists/Managers had lived in. That property was put in the hands of a Hebburn housing agent to rent out to 3 families and because the agent personally knew my great aunt Jane McNeill (a Widow) who had a large family she was given first chance to live in Tyne View which she did. I remember hearing it was posh with an indoor toilet & a bathroom with hot water and a tennis court. How lucky, because everyone else in the Town had outdoor toilets in backyards. Two other families moved into the other part of the Terrace. A family called Sewell was one of them and Winifred Sewell taught the piano there.
One of Jane’s daughter’s Esther McNeill married George Dent, a time served Joiner who worked for JM Black (Building Contractors) in Glen St. George was a tall man and a very good athlete (100 yds sprinter). I always thought he looked like the American actor John Wayne. I actually mentioned that to his daughter Monica a couple of years ago in 2022 and she thought the same, so he really had the size and looks of John Wayne..
In early July 1940 during WW2 Uncle George was in Tyne View garden and heard the ominous sound of a large aircraft coming from Bill Quay area. It was a German Bomber flying low over the river avoiding being shot down. As it flew past level with the garden Uncle George clearly saw the Pilot wave. Thinking about it all these years later the German Pilot was under orders from Goering & Hitler and just doing his job the same as our RAF men bombing Germany. 
To show how close the Bomber was, here is my uncle George’s daughter Monica Dent in the garden 12 or 13 yrs later.
Recently I found that the Luftwaffe Pilot’s mission was to bomb the ‘High Level Bridge’ with a special heavy bomb which would have caused chaos as that Bridge carried not just road traffic but also the main London to Edinburgh railway lines. His mission failed as the bomb hit the nearby ‘Spillers Flour Mills’ instead, killing 13 Spiller’s workers.
The Bomber flew past ‘Tyne View’ all the time evading British guns until it reached the North Sea at South Shields, where guns on the coast shot it down. The Luftwaffe Pilot who’d gave George that friendly wave wouldn’t have known he’d be dead just minutes later.
Four years later in 1944 , Uncle George was now helping install a Mulberry Floating Harbour off the beach in Normandy on June 7th the day after D Day Landings on the 6th .
Three weeks later on the 27 th June I was born and why I was given the name Norman.
Hope you enjoyed this piece of my family history
Norman Dunn 2024
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