08/09/17 - Day 33 / Week 5: Alison and Two Margarets

Alison works here part time. After watching our video of Joan and her 'Skypewalk', she wanted to talk to us about some other residents - people she had got to know and really like, some with interesting and some with ordinary life stories. Our project and the open-ness of the blog has encouraged staff to see it as a place to share stories about residents and possibly themselves and to be excited about the potential for the blog to reach lots of people. It has been interesting for us to hear so much more about the residents lives. She wanted to show us paintings by one woman, Margaret Hall, who had died just a few weeks ago and whose belongings are still at Northbourne, including a lot of her artwork. Alison wanted to have Margaret and her work be on our blog, and be remembered.

'Margaret worked as an art teacher for a few years and lived with her mum, dad and brother. She basically devoted her time to her art and to her religion, she was a very religious woman. As a child her most treasured memories were between her and her brother. She remembers playing on a beach with him, with a red ball. Later in her life she used to send money abroad to orphanages, she would you know, respond to the kind of leaflet you or I might ignore - you can see in her stuff, she has thank-you letters from families all over the world. She was in The Gateshead Art Society and did an art degree in London before coming back up here to teach art for a few years and she was funny - a real character. Everybody here knew her, she was loud and nosey - she liked to know what was going on.
There were more paintings but I think a cousin in Scotland has taken a few, I don't know, I'll have to check. They're good though aren't they -strange. She said her mum never smiled. The paintings of her mum and dad weren't hung up, she had the drawing of her brother above her bed.
And I want to say it for posterity because I think it is wrong that the church didn't come and sit with her. For all the years she gave to the church, I think it's a shame nobody came to be with her at the end. I don't think anyone should die by themselves. We stay with them, for an hour at a time, even when we're short staffed. You shouldn't have to be alone.'




Margaret had lived in Gateshead all her life, and her wish had been to give her work to The Shipley Art Gallery after she died. We are going to try, along with Alison to get someone from there to come over and take a look at them. Many of the people living here knew her and still love coming into the annexe to look at her paintings. I spent an afternoon with a different Margaret and we looked through and talked about Margaret Hall's paintings.



Margaret Naylor discussing Margaret Hall's mapintings