tyneside:
Carl Williams:
How many people remember Rex Preston & Preston PowellHim Carl
Rex Preston & Preston Powell were our insurance brokers for most of the 60’s through to the mid 80’s.
IIRC Rex retired and then the remaining directors sold out to a larger company.Tyneside
Talking about Rex Preston
Talking about Rex Preston of Preston Powell our insurance brokers in the late 60’s -70s ,it was Rex who helped me stop my Grandfather driving.
My grandfather seen on photo standing outside no 14 Marmaduke Street,Spennymoor in 1965 with one of the nineteen Rover cars he ran during his driving life. outside the house where he was born in 1891 and lived all his life, was driving his 2nd Rover 2000 when my Grandmother died.
Traditionally he went every Thursday to Stockton On Tees mainly to get his Tripe & chittling from Wilies Tripe stall in Stockton Market. His tailor H& M Martin who at the time had a shop where the ‘new’ shopping centre is now. Nearby Clinkards shoe shop (Their first) where Mr Clinkard fixed my grandmother u with shoes she could walk in ( In her mind he was the only man that got her shoes she didn’t fall over in. Then onto see Mr Winpenny where he bought his shirts. That shop is still marked as Winpenny house.
Then on a Friday it was Newcastle day when he went to vehicle parts suppliers like Thompson & Brown Bros & Bridges both in Cariol Square then round to Associated Engineering In the early days to pay in cash his weekly bill. In these days its hard to realise but we would ring in for parts and they went round to the bus station where the OK bus ran from to Bishop Auckland and gave the drivers the parcels and an hour later we met the bus outside ‘The Tivolli Cinema’ at Spennymoor and picked up the parts. I can remember when I was young walking down from Marmaduke Street to the Essoldo as it was then to pick a parcel of gaskets off the OK from Associated Engineering.
When my Grandmother died this ritual continued apart from by then we paid monthly by cheque but he still collected the few bits & pieces as we knew he went to Newcastle every Friday hail rain or snow.
A chap called Frank Wilkinson who lived at the top of Marmaduke Street then went for a ride out with him (He also called down each evening to share my Grandfather’s medicical nightly bottle of Whisky) Anyway one day Frank confessed to my dad that he had had to get out of the car to ‘Watch’ my Grandfather as he’d not seen the roundabout at Chester Le Street as he reversed back onto the road.
We told him he had to stop driving but those who knew him would know how stubborn he was & he took no notice. So I took Rex Preston round to meet him at Insurance renewal time & got him to say he couldn’t get insurance unless he took a driving test (My grandfather never had taken a test as when he started driving there was no such think) and so he stopped driving.
