ANGRY public meetings are being held in south Durham to discuss the future of the dales ambulance service, but Maurice Blackett in Bishop Auckland is one of the last ambulancemen who remembers the days when his nick of the woods was ringed with ambulance depots.

“I started in 1971 at Fishburn, then at Crook and then into Bishop Auckland, which was next door to the police station,” he says. “Then there were stations at Barnard Castle, Middleton-in-Teesdale and Newton Aycliffe.”

Maurice started off as a National Coal Board chauffeur at Howlish Hall overlooking the Dene Valley before moving to Lincolnshire with his wife, Dorothy, to refuel aircraft for Freddie Laker. He returned to County Durham to work in transport and became a summer relief ambulance driver. In 1971, he attended a two-week training course in Newcastle and was passed as proficient to be an Accident and Emergency driver – the equivalent of a paramedic today, although things were clearly very different then.

“The first ambulances I drove were big square Commers, like travelling shops with a Perkins P4 diesel engine,” he says. Then they moved onto BMC ambulances with fibreglass bodies.

“The county insisted that the tyre pressure should be 90psi, as if the ambulance were a seven ton lorry loaded with coal, and so it gave a nasty, hard ride,” he says. “I let my tyres down to 40psi, and I remember taking some ladies from the Chilton area to Newcastle hospital and they said it was the nicest ride in a Durham county ambulance – of course, the next driver to have the ambulance put the pressure back to the recommended level.”

There were three shifts so there was round-the-clock cover at the stations, with the drivers covering their neighbours’ area when they were called out on an emergency.

“It really was like a bus service for people,” says Maurice. “South-west Durham was very well covered.”

AMONG Maurice’s collection of photographs is the magnificent Edwardian view of Church Street, Shildon, reproduced on this page – a view treasured by his mother, Georgina Baxer, who hailed from the town.

In the distance is the Red Lion Hotel and on the right, nearest the camera, is the Bishop Auckland Industrial Co-operative Society store. Originally this shop belonged to the Shildon and Neighbourhood Co-operative Corn Mill, Flour and Provision Society which in 1883 was bought out for £6,644 11s 2d by its bigger Bishop Auckland rival.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the picture is the gaggle of Sunday-best youths behind the young girl in the foreground. There looks to be an altercation going on between two of them who, despite their cloth caps, seem to be going nose to nose with one another as if they were 21st Century Premier League footballers.

MAURICE’S grandmother, Hannah Blackett, was an enterprising individual. Aged 21, she was landlady of the Blacksmith’s Arms in Hamsterley. She then took on The Engine in South Church where her husband, Gilbert, set up a general dealer’s store. He drove a mobile shop as far away as Seaham Harbour, selling eggs, milk, rabbits and poultry.

They had several sidelines, including in the 1920s owning a 14-seat Atlas bus which they ran on between Eldon and Bishop Auckland.