5 Comments

• At 2010.10.08 22:28, alf stone said:

  I used to be a regular visitor with my grandchildren when they were younger and we all thoroughly enjoyed our visits. A couple of years ago I was entertaining two of my Geordie friends who now live down south and they both expressed a desire to visit the Discovery. I was expecting it to be a bit dull without the kids but I was quite surprised to find we were all enthralled. It is also a lovely building and from memory built by the Co-op. I think it was part of the CWS officially known as the Cooperative Wholesale Society but locally remembered as Copper Wire and String.

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• At 2010.10.08 22:30, alf stone said:

  I nearly forgot to mention the green twiddly bits especially for Mrs. K.

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• At 2010.10.09 10:27, mrs K said:

  That building is just so what I like and as Alf says I also remember it as Copper WIre and String one of the wholesale building’s (another one on Quayside still stands and has CWS Wholesale on a parapet).

  I also flew on a Copper, Wire String plane - you have to guess what its proper name was.

  And I still remember Mam’s cheque number - 141748.

  Alf, when I went to other cities in the UK, I used to look out for ‘green twiddly bits’ - I never found as many as there were in Newcastle. I love them.

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• At 2010.10.10 17:48, alf stone said:

  Mrs. K. you have got me with the plane. It rings a vague bell but the only airline that comes to mind is Dan Dare or as it was sometimes known Dan-Air.

  I remember me mam’s check number though - 19526 and my granny’s was 2648. We had to help sorting all the checks and adding them up to see how much divi we would get. When we were kids we were sent the “the stores” it was never called the Co-op which resulted in an embarrassing moment many years later. I moved my family to Yorkshire and on the first shopping trip in this strange land we asked for directions to “the stores” to blank looks from the locals. It took about 15 frustrating minutes for it to dawn on us that we had to ask for the Co-op.

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• At 2010.10.10 22:33, mrs K said:

  Dakota - Co-op travel abroad (Isle of Man and Channel Islands where there first destinations offered for flying). Hence, Copper, Wire and String and that first flight had a canvas door between the pilot and the passengers and the runway was grass at both ends.

  Like you, we made the same mistake, asking for directions to ‘the store’ and that was in Leeds.

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