In the 1930s, when I was a teenager, I worked in my parents’ shop opposite the Eden Theatre, on the corner of South Church Road at Newgate End.

At that time Rossi’s was a traditional ice-cream parlour, not at all like the continental-style coffee bar it became in the 1950s. Times were different then, and in some ways, life in Bishop Auckland hadn’t changed much since medieval times. Livestock was bought at the auction mart opposite the Grand Hotel by South Church, then herded up South Church Road and slaughtered in the town. The Co-op slaughterhouse was the main destination but most butchers killed their animals in the back yard behind the shop. Gregory’s, a well-known business, was next door but one to our shop. Cows and pigs were herded through a passageway behind the café, through a wooden gate and into Gregory’s yard, where they were slaughtered.

One day a cow panicked, poor beast, and blundered from the passageway through our back door which opened off it, and got into the cafe. Eventually, after much shouting and crashing about, it was shooed out of the front door and into Newgate Street, leaving chaos and cowpats behind it.

Another time in the passageway, a terrified pig bit the slaughterman’s wellington boot, tearing it off his foot, and the slaughterman shouted to me to corner the animal. So I grabbed a sweeping brush and confronted it, but then it went on the offensive and chased me back into the shop.

One of the herdsman was a man called Nick the Bullwalloper. Nick also worked in the Eden Theatre as a handyman and stagehand, where he was engaged in a long-running feud with the stage manager, Baggie Lawlor, who was called Baggie because of the cut of his trousers. Nick was getting the worst of it, and wanted revenge. His chance came during pantomime when Baggie was required to ‘fly’ a character above the stage. Nick tickled Baggie, who loosened his grip, and the actor hit the boards. This caused much laughter in the audience but panic among the cast.

One of the Eden Theatre’s most famous performers was the film star and melodrama actor, Tod Slaughter, best known for his performance of Sweeny Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Tod Slaughter would swagger into the shop every morning in black cloak and matching wide-brimmed back hat to take coffee. I was in my late teens and quite impressed by this exotic character, and when he asked me my name I said, “Edmund but everyone calls me Eddie.”

“Then I shall call you Edmund,” replied the great man. “Excellent coffee! See you tomorrow Edmund.” He then walked off – as he did every day – without paying for his drink.

Later, after work I called in at the Theatre Bar, where Bob Ainscough was landlord. As I walked in Tod Slaughter, who was drinking with his cronies, shouted, “Do you drink, Edmund?” This caused much amusement because no one knew I was called Edmund. I stood at the end of the bar talking to Bob Ainscough, and told him how Tod Slaughter never paid for his coffee. Bob Ainscough shrugged and said that he was still waiting for him to pay for his first beer…

In the 1950s, Julie Andrews occasionally sang at the Eden Theatre. She used to come into the shop to buy ice cream, and once said that it was the best ice cream that she had ever tasted.

The Eden Theatre was also a boxing venue. One night, two locals fought in the ring – one was called Hector Moyle and the other had the wonderful name of Gunboat Smith. Moyle had a habit of clearing his nose during fights, and Smith slipped on some mucus and was declared out by the referee. Smith protested and there was a near-riot in the auditorium.

After the War the Theatre Bar was run by Kitty Watson whose husband, Seaman Tommy Watson, was a successful boxer. The Bar was a popular venue with local shopkeepers and business people. When Tommy won a fight, he liked to use the prize money to buy jewellery for his wife.

Later, the Eden Theatre became one of Bishop Auckland’s four cinemas, and that in its turn was killed by the coming of television. The Eden was a vast, hump-backed building, brick-built but with an attractive frontage of decorative stone. When it was demolished - as was Rossi’s coffee bar - in the early 1980s, a way of life died with them both. Now, it’s a traffic island.

Hallo Edie,
I was a German POW at the General Hospital in the fifties and know very well the Rossie's. I wonder if Mary Di Palma has had also an Ice cream shop in the Street?
I met a man in the forrest with his Di Palma ice cream van. I would be very pleased for an answer.
Chers, Peter Hoentsch

Eddie is not well at the present time, so I’ll try to help you, Peter...

The ice-cream shop in Newgate Street which you asked about is probably the Marina Café (now renamed Red Square). The Marina was owned by Josie di Palma. I do not know if there was also a Mary di Palma. Around 1950, my great-aunt, the late Teresa Biagioni, bought the property from Josie.

The man with the ice cream van was possibly Josie di Palma’s husband. Or perhaps Frankie Trapani, a Sicilian who was brought, I think, as a prisoner-of-war to the Bishop Auckland area. Frankie liked Bishop Auckland so much, he never went back to Sicily!

Thanks a lot for your message. I as a POW met Mary very often. In 1991 while my first reunion at Bishop Auckland we met again as she is living there with his second husband as the first diet in a coal mine. It wasn't trapatony as he told me his name
I do noi remember. I only remeber that Mary was a very good girl as she has had helped us German boys vera much- not at the way of a dirty love- what BA-People records me at this days!

Oh I remember Rossi's so well. I used to work as washer-up after tech on a Monday night. I worked there the day decimal coinage arrived, and the hilarity of Benny Rossi and his customers working out the money. Lucy Rossi used to leave as I came in to go and have her tea. I worked from 6 to 9 for 15 shillings. I'd love to know what Benny and Lucy are doing now. Benny had a flat above Rossi's and sometimes used to pay me and my friend to tidy his record collection. I don't think he ever put a record back in it's sleeve! We were knee deep in records and covers, and spent hours sorting them out. With the pay we received we would then jump on the bus and go to the Top Hat in Spennymoor! There was a little cafe belonging to Rossi's just round the corner on the way to the Grammar School. It had a very popular pinball machine. I think it closed before the main cafe.

Dear Mr Rossi
I was very interested in your reminiscences about the actor/manager Tod Slaughter. I have long been interested in writing his biography and would welcome any personal recollections of seeing him on stage at your theatre.

A long time ago, there were traffic lights in the middle of Newgate Street, not the ones that are there now but an earlier set. The Town Service bus, a red single-decker from the United garages, stopped there. Conductors usually called out “Eden Thee-ayter!”, and every passenger on the bus knew that that meant.

The building that carried this name, the Eden Theatre, stood on the corner of Newgate and Princes Street. On the ground floor were the theatre entrance, pit stalls and a bar, which was really next door and belonged to the hotel which formed the other part of the complex. The whole lot backed onto the railway, running here along a high embankment to the level of the upstairs windows.

This theatre was one of three houses of entertainment in the early thirties, the others being the King’s Hall cinema (and restaurant) and the Hippodrome. This last was the only one without some other function. All three were owned and run by a man called Drummond, the nearest thing to bourgeois capitalism that most of the locals had ever seen, and complete with cigar and personal transport when neither was commonplace as it is today.

The Eden Theatre had a colourful if patchy history. It still produced live theatre of a kind when it could, and fell back on films when it could not, because it was equipped with projection facilities as well. I didn’t go there very often; the place was scruffy and unkempt, the seat covers were torn and there was a good chance of picking up a flea. But I do recall being taken on two occasions to see the travelling repertory group from Nottingham, the company created and led by the aptly named Tod Slaughter. I never found out if this was his real name. It may well have been but it always sounded as melodramatic as the man himself.

The stock-in-trade of his company were the Victorian melodramas. I remember especially seeing “Sweeney Todd - the Demon Barber of Fleet Street”. I imagined there was some connection between the barber’s name and the actor who played him. I also saw “Maria Martin and the Murders in the Red Barn” but it left no lasting impression.

As with all melodramas, the acting and plot were unbelievably hammy. Tod (or Todd) sidled onto the stage with a menacing leer, his face thick with make-up and tinted green from the spotlight that hit him whenever he appeared.. The customers never seemed to notice how threatening he was, and seated themselves unconcernedly in the barber’s chair despite the fact that it was flanked by a huge lever big enough to change the points for the Flying Scotsman. I always felt that open razors were a health risk so it was with little surprise that I watched the victims obligingly present their throats, meet their fate and vanish through the trapdoor into the cellar.

The Theatre still had an orchestra, half a dozen indifferent players who sat out of sight of the audience in a pit. They were led by a gentle-mannered violinist called Zimmerman.

Little else in the way of theatre entertainment remains in my mind except for Al Shaw and his Blue Hawaiians, and a visit by Jane, the original model for the strip cartoon of the same name that brightened the lives of the armed services during the war. There was an age limit for admission to see Jane which excluded me and most of my companions.

The only film I remember at the Eden Theatre was the pre-war version of Hemingway’s ’For Whom The Bell Tolls’ with Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman, one of the first colour films. Seeing it again on TV makes you realise how bad some of the early colour films were, but they had rarity value in those days.

The Theatre served other functions too. It was always the venue for Speech Day for both the Boys’ and Girls’ Grammar Schools. It was at one of these that we heard the redoubtable pitman-councillor, Harry Leedale who was Chairman of the Governors for that year, inform his delighted audience - “Ah’s gonna mak a speech in two parts, win a junture in the middle.” However, as ever on these occasions, he got his full round of applause when he asked our smiling headmaster to give us a half-day holiday.

The first, and until very recently, last political meeting I ever went to took place in this theatre. The year was 1945. It was, of course, to be an address from the town’s very own Labour MP, the Rt. Hon. Hugh Dalton, subsequently Chancellor of the Exchequer. The floor was packed with ranks of the faithful, come to hear ‘Hughie’ reassure them about Labour’s post-war plans.

There was a long wait. Hughie had been detained addressing a similar meeting in nearby Willington, and local workers on the platform filled in for a time. Somewhere behind me, our butcher, exhaling whisky on every breath, kept on standing up and shouting out what I thought was “Good Old Willy”. It was only when he was noisily removed that I realised it must have been “Good Old Winnie”. Since Mr. Churchill was not at the meeting, I thought it was a bit pointless.

The curtains parted, and a huge man with a large oval head strode onto the stage, removing his overcoat as he came. I recognised Hughie from his election pamphlets but I had not been prepared for his eyes, which rolled up into his head from time to time, making him look for all the world like a dead fish. I imagine a dead fish could have made about as good a speech. Not a word about the proletariat, about socialism, about the New World, about the evils of the capitalists and their lackeys, all of which I had been urgently mugging up in preparation for his visit. He ranted on about the bad old days, about the flooded mines and Means Test. The audience loved it - I was disappointed. I thought perhaps Tod Slaughter hadn’t really been too bad after all.

In the event, the tide of feeling was such that year, that Winston went out on his neck, and the Labour Party were left in a position to demonstrate their lack of experience in governing, and finally to be sunk by the insurmountable economic problems left by six years of war.

The Eden Theatre was finally sunk by economics, too. It was pulled down to widen a road, now carrying an increasing number of private cars once enjoyed only by the likes of its former proprietor. But if I stand on what is still called the ‘Theatre Corner’ and close my eyes, I can still hear the ragged newspaper seller calling his racing and football results, and hear the clink of glasses in the Public Bar.

I really enjoyed this article Ken. It must bring many memories for a lot of us. Thank you.

Fantastic article Ken, for someone who can only remember the Theatre as borded up ready for demolition it helped give an insite into it's former glory.

can anyone help,as a child in the 50s i can remember my grandma taking me one afternoon to the eden theatre to see a lady playing the piano for charity,i believe she played it for a week none stop,we payed at the door and walked down to the stage to stand in awe at this brave lady (i thought so at the time).what was the lady called? and what charity was it for?