Joan, the eldest of my two sisters, had an accident with a car on
Church Street on her way to school one afternoon. The car was parked
near the cemetery gate and as she crossed the road in front of it
the driver set off not seeing her. She said years later the car
bumped into her, she ended up sat on the front bumper bar, someone
shouted out and she was thrown off as he braked suddenly on to the
road and luckily sustained only bruises and grazed knees. The driver
took her to our house where Dr Gardner saw her. To this day I
remember being told in school about this accident but I do not
recollect understanding the seriousness of the situation. Were there
many vehicles through the village? You may ask. Some it is possible
to remember but certainly not all of them, as we were not there to
see them all. Every Tuesday a stream driven lorry from a Sheffield
brewery came up Barnsley Road and through the village delivering to
public houses in the South Kirkby area. It carried two men, a driver
and a stoker and as it passed there was the wonderful smell of hot
oil. It was noisy and the solid rubber tyres on solid steel wheels
thundered along the street. Five evenings a week, Masons and Myatts
heavy Leylands loaded with ten tons of machinery etc made their way
through the village towards the Great North Road to London via
Doncaster passing through every town and village during their
journey—there was no A1 motorway.
In the
autumn and spring the threshing engine would visit various farms for
a day or even two days threshing. Steam operated, it had two very
large wheels with solid tyres at the rear and two chain operated
smaller steering wheels at the front. Mounted on the rear of the
boiler was the flywheel, which transferred the power by means of a
large belt to the machine, which actually threshed the corn. We
children loved to watch from the stackyard wall as the corn was
threshed but it was a very labour intensive operation using from ten
to fifteen men and older boys. A chap named Crookes owned the
threshing machine and he lived at Ackworth.
Ernest
Watson, who lived next to Grange farm, had a Bedford 3 ton lorry
with which he contracted to the local council doing various jobs
especially in winter when heavy snowfalls had to be cleared from the
roads. His lorry was used to dump huge quantities of cleared snow on
to the common near Pudding Hill. It also came in useful when the
staging for the Hospital Sing was moved from the barn at St Paul’s
Cottage ready to be erected in Walter Burton’s croft ready for the
choir to sit on. This was a very well attended venue
every July; there was always scores of people not only from Brierley
but also from South Hiendley and Shafton. Money was collected in two
clothesbaskets at the entrance to the field from Peartree Croft
(Patey Croft). As it was held on a Sunday evening everyone turned up
in his or her Sunday best, gents with caps and trilby hats and the
ladies in their best hats and coats. A scent of mothballs was always
present but this was normal. Next day Ernest returned the staging to
its home in the barn, where it remained for anther year.
Edward Watson, who lived at the top of Ket Hill Lane in the old
police house just off Barnsley Road, led coal in his lorry, which I
think, was a Ford. The back was divided into three sections, which
held one ton each, an economic method of delivery. He also delivered
coke from Cudworth and sold logs made from old pit props.
Easter was
a pleasant time of the year as there were Easter eggs to look
forward to. We nearly always had an egg made of chocolate and stuck
into an eggcup in the shape of a chicken or a rabbit. Woolworth's
sold them by the thousand at sixpence each but money was scarce so
we had what we could afford. Where our mother came from in County
Durham, it was a popular tradition to hard boil an egg and then dye
the shells different colours and give them at Easter, so we always
had one of those too from her sisters, our aunts.
Having
mentioned Durham it might be a good time to write about holidays –
the “going away” type. For us this meant travelling up to a little
village about six miles from West Hartlepool called Hutton Henry
where our maternal grandmother lived. She was a widow and had been
so since 1907 when her husband who was in the Durham Light Infantry
Militia, became ill whilst this unit was in camp at Barnard Castle.
His chill became pneumonia and he died at the age of 27 years
leaving grandma with four girls the eldest of whom was four years
old. She couldn’t afford to bring him home so he was buried there.
If you think that living in Brierley was black in those times: -
forget it. The village had a main street, a back lane,
a green, a small church, a smaller chapel and a few farms. On the
main street was the Post Office, Davidson's shop and the school
where grandma was the caretaker. The houses had no water on tap, no
electricity, no gas; a huge black range in one room and a stone sink
in the other, which was the scullery (kitchen was too grand a word).
Upstairs there were two bedrooms. The only lighting was from
paraffin lamps in each room, cooking was by coal fire as was the
means of hot water. Water has to be carried from one of the pumps in
the main street. This was our job, grandma had two white spotlessly
clean enamel buckets, pails she called them, and carrying one each,
two of us would cross the road to the pumps and put the buckets on
the iron grid. After pressing the handle a quantity of water shot
out under pressure and into each bucket partially it and at the same
time filling our shoes if we stood too close. Most of the holidays
were spent locally, walking with our parents on the fells but we did
manage to get a couple of days by the sea, Blackhall or Seaton
Canew? The former being the best as there were rock pools to fish
and play in and coal to pick. Not a very exciting holiday by today’s
standards but it was different and we were happy. Unfortunately it
all came to an end in 1937 when grandma died on the same date that
her husband had died 30 years previously. We went up once again two
years later and visited relatives in a nearby village but it wasn’t
the same atmosphere as before, perhaps we were older, we arrived
home on Saturday September 2nd 1939. Do you recognise the date?
At 8 years
old some of us boys were recruited into the church choir, which was
an all male concern of twelve boys and usually eight men. The
choirmaster was William Sharpe, former school head, who sometimes
sang a discordant note and was inclined to spray a little. Practice
was every Thursday at 6.30pm where we were taught to sing hymns,
psalms and responses with the bread and Gloria. We must have looked
quite angelic on Sundays in our cassock and surplice with shiny
faces and hair held down with brilliantine. When the chancel lights
were dimmed during the parson’s sermon, there could be heard the
rustling of toffee papers as they were unwrapped and popped into
ones eager mouths to the annoyance of Mr Sharpe who missed nothing
from his perch behind us. Every year the choir trip to the coast was
something to look forward to, it was always Scarborough or
Bridlington but one year it was Blackpool by special excursion
train. Members of the congregation could go on these trips if they
so desired and for this Blackpool trip my grandparents hired John
Oates to take several adults and some boys to Grimethorpe Holt to
board the train and to bring us home at night in his ice cream cart.
The men and boys stood, holding on to anything firm, and the few
ladies in black hats and best coats had a chair each. Imagine the
journey in this open vehicle before the sun rose and in the darkness
of late evening when we returned. It was all part of life. We always
had Taylor's “Ideal” coaches for the trips to the east coast. The
Scarborough trips went via Tadcaster, York and Malton through every
town, city and village. There were no bypasses, but the dual
carriageway between Tadcaster and York had recently been opened. The
Bridlington route was via Knottingly, Goole, Market Weighton and
Burton Agnes. Both journeys took about three and a half hours. We
boys each received five shillings (25p) pocket money from the choir
fund, which, when added to what we managed to save ourselves, made
us feel disgustingly rich. On one occasion I ought a single spring
cricket bat for almost my five shillings and used it for many years
after oiling it and binding the face. On the journey home there was
always a singsong of the usual kind “lkley Moor Baht Hat”, “One Man
went to Mow” and other popular pieces. The trip didn’t exclude us
from Sunday school treat on Whitsuntide Monday. This event began
with a tea in the Institute—sandwiches, buns, tea or squash and
prize giving for attendance. Then we all went into Fox’s field for
races and games, French cricket and s on with the leftover food to
end the day. We were once taken to Burntwood Hall for the tea and
games by courtesy of Mr and Mrs Dymond. We could explore the walled
garden by using the tunnel under the road and in the greenhouse was
a banana tree which none of us had seen before.
Part of the
Coronation celebrations of 1937 included a free visit to the cinema
at Grimethorpe. This was the first of many visits, which I made in
the coming years to see a sort of matinee show of short films. I
think that it had some sort of influence on me because Walter
Deighton and myself thought that it might nice to have a cinema in
his parent’s garden. We began making bricks from the rather
clay–like soil but after he first dozen we decided that time wasn’t
on our side, end of project.
It wasn’t
very often that we played together with girls but we did learn to
play hopscotch and certainly the art of skipping by joining in with
them. A piece of scouring stone usually marked out the squares for
hop-scotch and anything that would slide along the squares was
suitable to throw and pick up, by hopping only from each numbered
square and back again. We skipped singly or, with a long rope, in
groups as long as someone could keep turning it. Then we reached the
stage of two ropes being turned alternately but in opposite
directions - very tricky. Normally boys would be seen with a hoop or
an odd scooter or maybe tin-walking, always a pocket bulging with
glass marbles but definitely climbing on anything anywhere.
It was in
1937 that we moved to number 20 Hilltop, as three was now four of us
plus parents and number 5 Hodroyd Cottages had only two bedrooms, no
bath and no hot water other than what was heated on the black range.
We had a zinc bath that hung on the wall outside but dad and mother
could have a bath round at St Paul's Cottage and on occasions, we
could too. Our new house was on Frickley Bridge lane and looked
across to the Allen's house on Robin Lane and Mathewmans farm in the
in the field. It had three bedrooms, bathroom, kitchen, living room
and parlour, acres of space inside for four kids to explore. What is
more, there was a gas ring in the kitchen, which could boil a pan,
or kettle in no time at all providing a penny was put into the meter
near the sink. The estate was built in a rectangular of forty two
houses with a grassy area in the centre known as “The Green” where
we spent countless hours over the next few years playing cricket,
football, marbles, hide and seek and so on. Shortly after it was
built a fault in the underlying rocks became active and numbers
4,5,6 and 29 had to be pulled down as the earth movement damaged
them. At the entrance was Mr Hartley's newsagents shop and on the
opposite side, where there are now garages, were the partial remains
of two very old stone cottages, which became another area for
exploring and climbing on. It was quite easy, and dirty, to climb up
or down the remains of the chimneys. We had further to walk to
school but that didn’t matter there was Patey Croft the shirt way or
past the Three Horse Shoes pub of we were not too late. It was as
area just waiting to be explored by inquisitive lads, west towards
Shafton and north to South Hiendley where the Hull and Barnsley
railway passed under the road after leaving the tunnel under
Barewell Hill and the Cow mountains. The bridge was an instant
challenge to myself and my new friends, Peter Sparrow, Jim Bond,
Granville Hodgson and Edwin Jackson, because Frickley Dyke had been
diverted from the North side of the railway to the south by means of
an iron tank, which spanned the tracks, which was about six feet
deep and six feet wide and ending in a brick tunnel. Any water in it
was about two inches deep so it was off with shoes and stockings and
down into the water then through the short tunnel and up the tank on
the other end. It wasn’t long before we were on the parapet of the
bridge and walking across it. When there was no one in the vicinity
of course. On a Saturday afternoon when the signalman had gone home
we would take a look inside the signal box at all the shiny levers
and other means by which signals were operated. To assist with
family finances dad was an agent for a benefit society to which one
could join for a small payment each week about sixpence old money.
Should one be off work due to illness or an accident, the society
would pay them ten shillings per week. It was a kind of insurance
for which many were grateful, as there was no such thing as sick pay
to fall back on. So the front room, or parlour, acted as a kind of
office where he could do his books without interruption.
If the
reader thinks that it was all play in those days - then forget it.
We, and most other children, had jobs to do around the house before
we were allowed out such as washing up after meals, drying the
utensils and putting them away, bringing in firewood ready for dad
to light the fire the next morning, two buckets of coal to be put in
the porch, help with the garden and on. On a Saturday morning one of
us went to the Coop with mother and a trolley to carry the weeks
groceries in as they usually included a stone of flour. This was an
ordeal itself because the shop was always busy and everyone had to
wait their turn to be served by either Mr Brookes or John Perry. In
bins in the flour room there was every kind of animal food
imaginable, Bran, Sharps, pig meal, maize, corn, poultry food,
rolled oats, pigeon peas, grit, oyster shell etc not forgetting the
flour and potatoes for human consumption. Each one had to be weighed
on the large beam scale, which hung from the ceiling, as and when
required, how do I know? I worked there five years later.
A trolley
was mentioned in the last paragraph and a trolley was the in thing
on Hilltop. It consisted of four wheels, two axles fastened to two
pieces of wood, one with a hole in the centre for a steering bolt, a
suitable plank of wood and a length of rope attached to the front
axle with which to steer the thing. With well-oiled wheels and no
brakes, other than the shoes, it would reach a fair rate of knots on
any convenient slope sometimes with disastrous results—skinned
knees.
By now a
cheap Meccano set was available and gave us many hours of interest
in the winter months along with aircraft kits, not like those of
today, but made from Balsa wood, and a plan, and covered with a type
of tissue paper which was painted with a harmless rope to stretch it
on the frame, powered with a propeller driven by an elastic band it
would fly - but only once as the resulting landing crunched it.
As special
treat at the August holiday time was a pair of black pumps to save
wear and tear on our decent shoes or boots. They were made from
rubber and had a sort of canvass upper and cost two shillings and
less for a pair. When worn one could run faster, jump higher, climb
trees at speed, cling to impossible slopes and walk silently
anywhere. They were wonderful shoes as far as we were concerned but
also wore out quickly. One thing is certain there were no petty
jealousies about what we wore because we all wore such similar items
of clothing and footwear. A woollen jersey, vest and trousers, which
ended just above the knees, nobody wore long trousers until after
leaving school. Stockings, again of wool, with a fancy pattern came
just below the knees and footwear was usually shoes or boots, and of
course, the ever popular black pumps. A short jacket finished of the
sum total of clothing plus a gaberdine raincoat for the nasty wet
days and winter. If holes were worn in any garment then it was
patched up with a piece of material of the same colour and continued
to be worn. Stockings were always the first to wear and they were
darned with matching wool. Grandma was an expert at this and mended
all our stockings at our request. Dad repaired our shoes as and when
they began to wear, remember, they were made of leather not the
synthetic stuff of today, and of course his work boots needed to be
kept decent. He also appointed himself the official hairdresser for
us lads, it was threepence at Billy Gouldings in Hemsworth, but
mother insisted that it be cut short for hygiene reasons as not
everyone at school had a clean head. Woe betide us if ever we
touched our heads with finger nails as it was assumed that we had
got something lurking on the scalp that required her immediate
attention. Our sisters had longer and thicker hair and were
subjected to a weekly search before washing, with a fine-toothed
comb to ensure cleanliness. They would have a powder shampoo but we
lads had to make do with fairy soap or coal tar or lifebuoy. The
last two were used to give one a clean fresh look and smell when
combined with the Sunday ration of Brilliantine. There was no need
for fancy designer outfits, expensive trainers, deodorants, hair
gels, jeans, anti-dandruff shampoos, Boyzone and Beckham haircuts
and all the other items considered essential by modern boys. We were
happy with three good meals a day and a supper before bed. We never
went hungry and I don’t think that any other children in the village
ever had cause to complain despite the lean times.
Somehow or
other we heard of Hemsworth park and that it had a paddling pool so
sometimes we were given tuppence as bus fare to Hemsworth and return
in order that we could go and paddle. We had great fun and were
always wet through but to us it was a great afternoon out and cost
nothing other than the bus fare. I wonder if it is still there?
My reading
habits changed, I hope for the better. I now bought boys papers with
far-fetched but readable stories each one with their particular
hero. My pocket money had been increased to tuppence with an extra
penny from my grandparents so one penny paid for sweets and the
other for a paper. The papers had names with appeal to lads such as
Wizard, Rover, Hotspur and Champion and ach one was exchanged with
pals many times so that we all read each other’s paper for the
one-penny. Later I changed to a boys magazine paper named “Modern
world” which presented articles and exploded diagrams of the latest
aircraft, liners, Royal Navy ships, submarines, tanks and commercial
inventions such as “Mallard” “Royal Seat” etc. Did you know that the
forerunner of the Boeing 747 was the Boeing B15 bomber built and
flown in 1938! Or that a French submarine” Surcouf” carried a small
aircraft! It was an impressive magazine for growing boys and worth
the tuppence, which was the cost.
Bird
watching was a common pastime, which we pursued with interest. If
you can imagine the large fields around the village being divided
into smaller fields each divided by an hedge it will give you some
idea as to how many species of birds there were. Every hedgerow had
several nests in its length some high up, some very low, others in
the impenetrable gorse or brambles but we managed to find a large
percentage and knew what bird had built them by its eggs or by its
construction. A Kestrel always built in a large thorn tree in Fox’s
field year after year. A Magpie used a nest at Vamplew’s farm near
Hemsworth similarly. Sadly modern farming has driven most of them
away—no habitat no birds.
January and
February were the months when one could expect snow and plenty of it
- out came the sledges home made of course with help from dad who
always managed to supply the iron runners which gave it the
necessary speed as they became polished by friction. I was now
considered capable of going down to Tom bank on my sledge and so was
given permission to go with my pals, there wasn’t a better run
anywhere it was so steep and well used but the stream at the bottom
was a hazard - too fast and one was in it - but we learned quickly.
It was great fun.
I remember
1939 for one or two reasons, first, it appears that the IRA were
active somewhere or other and dad and his workmates had to check
that the powder magazines down the tramway was not being broken into
by these people. They were given a drain rod tipped with brass to
deter any visitors. I don’t think that it gave the defenders much
encouragement. This was also the year of Walt Disney’s “Snow White
and the Seven Dwarfs” his first full length animated film. It was a
must for all children and, quite a lot of adults too, so we three
older children were taken to the Empire, as it was then, in Barnsley
to see the epic in glorious Technicolor. I must admit it was worth
every penny.
By now I
was almost 12 years old and one particular Sunday late in the year
grandfather told me that he had got a new job for me at Bob
Butterwood’s who had a shop at the end of Park estate. Every
Saturday morning at 9am he and I were to clean out all the hen huts
in the orchard and field behind the shop. The stock was free range
but the huts, some of them twelve feet by eight feet, were very well
used as I found out. The perches, dropping boards and floors had to
be scrapped clean with a spade, swept with a hard broom and dusted
with ash from the greenhouse fires. I was kitted out with a pair of
bib and braces overalls, my first long trousers, which were a source
of teasing from lads and older boys who wanted to know who had
breeched me - a common phrase then. For the three hours work I
received one shilling, not much you might say, but to me it was a
small fortune. I could now go to the afternoon matinee at
Grimethorpe cinema if I so desired, buy the Wizard and Modern World,
some sweets and perhaps save a few coppers for the choir trip.
Behind our
house and in the direction of Shafton there were several small
fields and one field of 10 acres and by a strange coincidence there
were two force landings, by aircraft, in that field within a short
period. One was a commercial aircraft an Auro Ensign and the other
an Auro Anson twin engine RAF trainer. There were no casualties as
far as I can remember but we were able to get close up to each as
sightseers before they were taken away.
