In 1953 when I was about 9 yrs of age my parents , me & my 4 year old sister Marian moved from a 2 bedroom upstairs Flat in 14 Lyon St, Hebburn Quay to 9 Grasmere Rd a brand new 3 bedroom council house with garden back & front situated between Hebburn Lakes & the Slag Heap on land that had once been part of the ‘Golf Links’. I even remember digging and finding an old golf ball in our back garden. It looked like a modern golf ball but was feather filled whilst modern ones are synthetic rubber filled.
Some of my friends such as Lawrence Morton, David Thackeray & Peter Kirtley had all moved onto the Estate and lived just 2 minute’s away in Windermere Cres just yards across the field from the Massive Slag Heap which loomed high above the houses. That ‘mountain of slag’ was where millions of tons of hot molten slag waste from Jarrow Palmer’s Iron Works had been dumped.
Because I had left my beloved Quay area, I now had a new playground at Hebburn Lakes & what we named 'The Dip', a lovely little valley with a burn or stream running through it & sandwiched between Windermere Cres & Cambridge Ave. At the far end of the ‘Dip’ was what we called ‘Bede’s Well’ (pictured below) & then the Slag Heap.
That stream or burn came from Wardley area and was used by the Ellison Family to fill their 4 manmade lakes in the mid to late 1800s. The stream kept the lakes filled and the constant overflow then carried on under what we called ‘The new road' (Campbell Pk Rd) via a large concrete Pipe large enough for us kids to crawl through (which we did) The burn then emerged into the ‘dip’ and continued on through the little valley to the Slag Heap just 20 yards or so from ‘Bede’s Well’ where it then disappeared through an iron grid into a drain that ran under the slag heap. The stream emerged at Pig Sty Ave allotments half a mile away near Field Tce where Jarrow Grammar School was situated. Sadly ‘The Dip’ is long gone, filled in by the Council and ‘Adair Way’ built on top.
Bede's Well in the 1950s was like the photo below, except only the white top of the wall and maybe a brick or 2 were visible by then.
Because the Burn ran alongside Bede’s Well it kept that area wet. As young teens, my mates & I have stood inside those railings & there was no deep well there then. It's possible it had filled up with mud over the years but surely a proper test drilling should be carried out to check if there really was a Well there. When you think about it ‘why would Monks walk a mile or more multiple times each day to fetch buckets of water when that same fresh water Burn flowed into the river Don beside their Monastery? 
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