Many years ago, when I was a child, the ice-cream man came around the villages with a horse and cart.

Looking back, it was never a hygienic way to sell icecream what with all the horse droppings. But did anyone care in those days? I doubt it. Most things in those days came in a horse and cart. The Co-Op shop at Coxhoe had a stable full of horses for delivering groceries to villages in the Durham area.

The stables were at the rear of the shop.

I think most items in those days were carried by horse and cart including coal from the collieries.

The fish monger delivered fish from an open top cart to the estates, too.

I think they were happy days in the 1940s and 1950s because life was lived at a much slower pace to what it is today.

We all had nothing together. We were all equal.

Jimmy Taylor, Coxhoe.