📍Ashington, Northumberland NE63, UK
1937 – 1953“I was born in Ashington, Northumberland, in October 1937, a coal-mining town north of Newcastle, and I grew up in a terraced colliery house at 114 Beatrice Street with my parents and three brothers; we four boys shared a bed. My father, Bob, was a miner who worked underground at the pits all his life, and my mother, Cissie, came from the Milburn family, the most famous footballing family in the North East: four of her brothers played professionally, and her cousin was the great Newcastle centre-forward Jackie Milburn. My mother was the real football coach in our house. She would go out into the back lane and kick a ball with us, and she even coached the boys at school. My older brother Jack and I played endlessly in the streets and in Hirst Park, where the miners' families gathered on summer evenings. Ashington was a hard place of pit heaps and pit wheels, but it was a proud, close community, and football was its passion. I went to Bedlington Grammar School, and in February 1953, Manchester United's scout Joe Armstrong came to watch me play for East Northumberland Schools and signed me up. At fifteen I left Ashington for Manchester, and I made my debut in 1956. I survived the Munich air disaster in 1958 and went on to win the World Cup with England in 1966, playing alongside my brother Jack, and the European Cup in 1968. Ashington is proud of the Charlton brothers and Jackie Milburn, and football has returned to the Hirst Park where we all learned to play.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today