browseField's Chip Shop
Dean Chapman (Photographer)
Text for original exhibition at Durham Miners’ Gala, 2003:
When Old Bill Field trekked over to Delves Lane, near Consett, with his pony in 1926, he was intending to find work. Lack of money in the community because of the miners’ strike had made his small fish & chip hut unviable. Little did he realise that the two pounds, his takings from hawking around Cornsay Colliery, bet on a horse called Light Dragon would change the fate of his family for generations. The horse romped home at 100 to 1.
In 1931, Old Bill exchanged his fish & chip shop at Cornsay Colliery, for one in Esh Winning, at No. 4 Durham Road. As an agent for coal-fired fish-frying ranges made by Frank Ford of Halifax, Old Bill installed the range that is used to this day. At that time, Old Bill’s son Tom and his wife Doris took over the running of Field’s Fish & Chip Shop.
During the Second World War, Field’s remained open on Tuesday and Thursday nights, partly due to the fact that fish and chips were not rationed. On a night, they would sell 25 to 30 stone of fish. Behind huge blackout curtains, six customers would be allowed in the shop at any one time, while others queued outside. Two small girls with large wicker baskets would come down the Deerness Valley and buy vast amounts of fish and chips, then take them back up the valley to Waterhouses.
Tom’s son Harry took over Field’s Fish & Chip Shop in 1958, then Harry’s son Geoff took over the business in the eighties. Geoff and his wife continue to run the shop.