Displacement activities…….

……I should have been cleaning the bathroom……

The backstory…… this morning a lady researching her family tree posted on a local Facebook group asking whether anyone knew where a long-gone street (called simply Hammer Bank on the 1871 census) a few miles away in North Shields was…..well of course that was just like a red rag to a bull ;-) Needless to say, once I'd found a possible match I then felt the need to find out how it got it's unusual name in the first place…..turns out it was named after a local ghost no less……

From "The Northern Tribune; a periodical for the people.. (Volume 1)", 1854.

Jack the Hammer is another of these mysterious beings. He is quite a modern myth, his living prototype having walked the earth within the recollection of many persons yet in Shields. He is remembered as a tall, fine-looking old man, with a slight stoop, white hair, a Roman nose, a high forehead, and quite an intellectual cast of face. He went about the country mending pots and pans, and was not remarkable for anything that I know, except it might be weather wisdom. He lived alone in a house on the bank next Henderson the pipe-maker's, and in that house he died. The separation between soul and body was perhaps not witnessed by any mortal eye, for the poor man had no known relations. The corpse may have lain unstretched as the death-struggle left it, till the neighbours became curious to learn what was come of Jack, and broke open the door. That any hidden treasure prevented his spirit's rest seems unlikely. That he had a secret load of guilt on his mind is equally so. But, at all events, Jack came back. His appearance was invariably the sign of a gale of wind and loss at sea. With his hammer he used to strike the end of the house with such force that it was heard over the whole bank, and the stronger the gale was to be the harder he struck. Nobody would live in the house after Jack's death, and it consequently stood tenantless for some time. At last an old man of the name of Bowles, constitutionally impervious to the dread of ghosts, and insusceptible of any more spiritual influence than that of a glass of brandy, was put into it by the landlord to redeem it from its bad character. And this man affirms that there is no ghost, and that it is all stuff and nonsense. But Jack has taken too secure hold of the place ever to be dislodged from it, for the bank is known to all and sundry as Jack the Hammer's Bank, and it will figure so in future Shields directories. The boys and girls in the neighbourhood make the ghost an excuse for not going unpleasant errands at night ; and not a few of their elders — sailors or sailors' wives — still hear Jack thumping on the house-end before north-easterly gales. Poor fellow ! he doubtless does it from a benevolent motive, which fools misinterpret. Sitting up aloft, he discerns the signs of the times before they become visible to our dull eyes, and hears Eolus unchaining his winds, while to us the air is calm ; and he does his best to warn us, and put us on our guard. But his warning is unheeded by all but a select few, who will not set their foot on board a heavy-laden ship for seven tides after hearing Jack's hammer sending forth its dull, unearthly sound through the silent night-Watch.


Still haven't done the bathroom…………………...