The file below is my transcription of the first entries in the 1921 Census, estimating around 4,000 entries, so if I work away at a minimum of say 100 a day that will be around three months work (plus holidays and such like), giving a final entry date in July 2025.
Does anyone know the location of the social club in 1921, just one of the entries is Beatrice Victoria Emmerson, aged 21, and born in 1900 in North Shields. She is recorded as being a bar maid at the West Allotment Social Club, living as a boarder with the Routledge family at 8 Prospect Hill.
The completed 1921 census returns from the old Tynemouth Borough, tagged as being local, more may exist and will be added if found. West Allotment itself was in Longbenton for administration purposes, so those many records will be added in phases later.
Note that the census enumerators did make errors and we have transcribed what they recorded for accuracy, some house numbers have been used twice, the missing addresses give us some clues, also the census forms have been heavily edited at the time, old location names crossed out, not legible and posted as the administration district, so beware of Longbenton and Tynemouth as being places of birth, they might just be the municiple registration district. More than one enumerator working on the 1921 Terraces forms and the quality and local knowledge of street and village names varies considerably. A few houses have almost 20 occupants recorded to the same house number, which cannot be right? but the overall numbering sequence looks OK. then we have at least one family recored as being C/O a house number, so not living there, or anywhere else in the village, a mystery.
1921 Census Allotment – Tynemouth Borough – Complete Set
The old map below gives some idea of the1921 municipal boundaries © NLS
Tagging 1921 places to a modern map
We need some help in tagging places named in the 1921 census with what we know today, most buildings will be gone and it is a fair challenge asking people to think about places from over 104 years ago, some may have been there until more recent times though. Old maps are not very helpful when you are trying to go down to this level of detail.
Finlay’s Buildings – Recorded as being in West Allotment, not the Allotment. Home of the Finlay family and a few boarders
Grosvenor House, West Allotment – The home of the Jones family
Normanton Houses, Allotment – The home of the Watson family
Joiceys Cottages, Allotment – Several family homes
Tates (Taits?) Buildings, Allotment – Several family homes
If you can help just email admin on admin@johnsmancave.org
Allotment Row
Allotment Row © WALHG 2025
The Impact of World War One on Births in the Allotment
My number crunching of what data I have from 1921 will make professional statisticians cry, but this is local history and not research and I wanted to see if there was any obvious impact on births from 1914 onwards, common sense said yes.
We have the small hamlet of Prospect Hill and the Allotment slowly growing from 1839, 1921 captures the first two decades of the Terraces, which had younger families and more children (the first flaw as I have only used approx 30% of the Terraces data). The red dotted line is the trend, the solid red vertical line marks 1914. Once we have 100% of the 1921 data it will be easier to make meaningful comments. One factor to bear in mind is that you need to look back 9 months to the date of any child being conceived to judge the possible impact of what was taking place in the world at that time, including World War One and the 1919–1921 depression.
How Far Have We Got? – Completed Streets In Red
For anyone curious, Prospect Hill Farm was at what is now Bayfields, there was even a railway station on the Blyth & Tyne Line (This ran from Blyth and places North to the Tyne and served a station at Percy Main). North Tyneside Council has a high level ambition to reactivate this section of track to form a Metro cross link between Northumberland Park and Percy Main. The motivation was the ever expanding Cobalt Business Park, which would have its own station. Given the number of empty office buildings and changes to ways of working, it is difficult to see how the significant cost to reinstate this line can be justified in the foreseeable future.
While the line was rope hauled it had a steam haulage engine at Prospect Hill, the incline was levelled out later to allow steam trains to work the route unassisted. Hence we do not see any significant hill today. Old maps show that Prospect Hill was 7 meters at the summit, a real mountain in railway terms.
Prospect Hill Station 1861 OS Map © NLS
1921 Completed Streets
The remaining few addresses will take a while longer, census forms located in obscure areas in the Tynemouth Borough, some duplication and trying to locate an actual address or location, ie Normanton Houses. Most of the houses on Benton Road East will be post 1921, the main exception being the original COOP store (ex sunbed / video rental shop) and the adjoining houses.
The Institute (now community centre) would not have a census entry.
Taits Buildings seems to be the present Taits construction yard and the adjacent house?
Transcription Queue
We found dozens of entries still to transcribe, Allotment, Low Allotment, Allotment Farm and a few others. Having a short break, so no updates for a while.
The map below shows the known houses we have yet to record in yellow. The red line is what we know today as Turners Street, except it did not exist at the time of the map (1888), Turner Street was a result of the terraces being built, it may be what was called “Turners Buildings”, hence the road name when it was built around 1899.
The map also shows that the new petrol station does not disturb any historical features, the creation of the Cobalt access road and the areas previous use as the Tynemouth Borough refuse dump did that.
A 1940’s map gives us some clues to the house numbers in the Allotment & Allotment Square.
