May 23rd, 2008

11:18am Friday 23rd May 2008

From the Durham County Advertiser 50 years ago.

- As workmen bang away industriously at the walls of two disused cottages on the brow of New Elvet bank, they are watched in hostile silence by people living in the vicinity. No housewife bustles over to the cottages to offer the men boiling water for their tea; no cluster of inquisitive young faces is to be seen around the cottage doors. Children are warned by angry parents, "Keep away from the men on the buildings".

Feeling is running high in New Elvet, for most residents believe that when the old cottages have been given their "face-life", sleep will become impossible because of the roar and rumble of heavy commercial traffic, diverted from the Great North Road to Durham's narrow, twisting streets.

The cottages, which are a link with the days of the stagecoach and the courier on foam-flecked horses, are to be transformed into the city's latest amenity a "pull-in"

for the modern knights of the road, the men who drive the heavy goods vehicles. Bed and breakfast, hot showers, and television will be available for 20 men, and there will be extensive parking facilities at the rear of the cottages.

New Elvet residents are concerned that the noisy "night-life"

of the Great North Road is about to gain a foothold in a pleasant residential district.

Eating Out