Bawtry, Market Place c1955

RAF Camp

I lived here on the RAF camp in a Nissen hut married quarters. I had my first baby in Worksop Hospital. I used to walk from the camp down to the village to collect my weekly RAF wife's allowance further along the road and then pushing the pram would park it outside of the bakers on  the small parade of shops on the right. Opposite was the church where my son was christened.

Watch on the Great North Road

My parents lived at Sprotborough and were great motorcycle and sidecar enthusiasts although by 1968, the Triumph Speed Twin and sidecar had given way to a Morris Minor, later to be replaced with a Triumph Herald.  On Friday or Saturday evenings their favourite outing would be to Bawtry.  Parking in the Market Place as in this photograph, they would simply sit and watch the huge variety of traffic passing on what, until the Doncaster by-pass A1(M) was constructed, was the Great North Road between London and Scotland. A pint at The Crown and fish and chips in newspaper then completed a perfect evening.

My wife and I stayed at The Crown in late 2006 and to the casual visitor, very little seems to have changed in the Market Place area.  Outside the town, the main railway line from Kings X to Edinburgh is now electrified and the roads are less busy because of the loss of through traffic.  The old railway station is long gone and the site is now a housing estate.  Further south, at Blyth, the transport cafe once run by my aunt Gertrude has disappeared from the face of the earth and slightly further south, at the A1(M) junction, a huge, souless ediface filled with metal and plastic tables (the motorway service area) has replaced it.

Staying with Nanna.

This memory goes from 1953 up to the 1960s because our holidays in them days were always at Rossington, staying with Nanna. Me my older brother Alex and my twin brother John loved it. Nanna and Grandad were Jack and Burtha Bird who lived at 57 Haig Crescent. Grandad was a miner like a lot of people in Rossington. One of my memories was watching for Grandad coming home after night shift. My twin brother and I watched every morning for him and his friend (Johnty Wren) walking up Haig Crescent. As soon as he came through the door John and I were down to greet him. He would get his snap box (sandwich box) out of his bag, open his box and Hey-Presto, there was a jam sandwich each for John and I.

When we got a little older and arrived at Gran's (we were told to call her Gran because we were getting to big to call her Nanna) we would have a bite to eat then away we would go down to Gattison Lane where Uncle Jack and Aunty Margaret Bird lived with son John and in 1959 daughter Anne was born. (Aunty Margaret and Anne still live there today.) We would say our hallo's then off we would go, me my two brothers and my cousin John. We had plenty of places to choose from, there was the welfare park, it had a great paddling pool with thick moss on the bottom which was very slippery and made a great slide, or there was Stringy Billies where we would do all sorts of kids' stuff, but what I liked best was train spotting. We would spend hours at the station crossing, waiting for a train to come. We would be playing cricket or football then suddenly we would hear the bell in the gate cabin and everything would stop; our books would come out and our pencils would be poised ready for the train going through. There was one crossing keeper that would let us hang on the gate as he shut or opened the crossing.

Sometimes on our way home to Haig Crescent we would call in to see Aunty Pat Cooke who worked in a shop, and we always came away with some sweets. Pat married my uncle Ron Bird. We loved every minute we spent at Rossington. I could go on and on about the times I remember. But the one person I did not mention was my mother Joan Bird who was only a few months old when she moved to Rossington, lived in Rossington till her 20s then married a Geordie (Alex Wilson) and then went to live in North Shields, Tyne & Wear, raised a family and is now a grand old lady of 83 (widowed).

Memories of my childhood in Rossington.

My story starts on the 1st of March 1950, the date of my birth at Doncaster Royal Infirmary.  My parents Jack & Mary Flather lived in Old Rossington at 65 Haigh Crescent, living with relatives (Guy) until a house became available for our family to move into. We then moved to 57 Gattison Lane one of the many council houses built for mining families in this area.  My father (Jack) worked firstly as a miner and then a deputy at the pit.  My mother did many jobs such as working in the fields picking vegetables which were in season at the time of year, and we as children used to pick peas and beans to supplement our pocket money in the summer holidays, competing with the older women for the best rows which yielded more produce and better weights to fill the sacks which were weighed and a ticket produced to exchange for cash at the end of the day.

I attended Rossington church school with my two brothers Stephen and Jack.  Being a church school we got all of the holy days off of school after attendance for regestration and attending church for a short service, and on Ascension Days we would climb to the top of the church tower for a service before going home.  The church was surrounded by cast iron fencing which my younger brother Jack occasionally got his head stuck in, and it took some effort to release him.  

Sunday mornings was always a circular walk from the village to the Great North Road, and back via another lane past several farms then the school and church, past the old police station, across the level crossing of the station and back home for lunch.  In the afternoon we used to go to church and were given money for the collection, half of which we used to spend at Billy Bonza's garage on the way, and put the other half in the collection plate.

We moved from Gattison Lane to live at The White Rose Hotel which my parents managed for several years before we moved out of the area to live in Barnsley, South Yorkshire.  I have many happy memories of my childhood, spending the long hot summers in the river at Stringy Billies and walking to Waddy Lane to the river there and fishing for sticklebacks with my little net, and, when the water was frozen in the winter, skating on the ice. Going on bike rides to Tickhill with a bottle of water and jam sandwiches to share between five of us, which were always dry, and always found its way into the bottle.  Watching the majestic steam trains passing through the village en route to London and Scotland, waving from the bridge at the passengers and them waving back to these dirty faced little urchins.  

Games played in the street were skipping, with the rope turned by our mums, while we counted in and skipped, marbles which were always popular, whip and top, sometimes using the stone bottle stoppers as a top, and of course decorating them with a chalk design.  Roller skates which were metal and adjusted with a nut in the middle to fit all sizes, and which you could share and have one each.  Hopscotch, and in the Autumn the great conker fights, which you now require safety glasses and gloves to compete if at all!!!  These days can never be recaptured, but will remain with me forever.  Neighbours' names who I can recall were Mr & Mrs Taylor, who had a son called Ian, and whose pram I used to rock for a bar of chocolate every Saturday afternoon, and who were the first people to own a television in the street.  Derek & Myra Dobson, who were friends of my parents and one of the first to have a car in the street.  Mr & Mrs Ashworth, who had a son called Roy (?).  Mr & Mrs Wright who lived opposite and had two children called Christine and Brian, and a family called Moss who lived lower down and had a daughter called Margaret.  We were a family of Five children, Margaret the eldest, Stephen, then me (Sandra) Jack and finally the baby of the family Derek, who is now just turned fifty.

Gattison Lane was in the new village, but we used to go to the little open market in the old village on Fridays and Saturdays to buy produce and spend our pocket money.  The cinema was opposite the market and had a tanner matinee on Saturday mornings which was well attended and exceeded the decibel limit on many occasions.  Films were 'Zorro', 'Cisco Kid', Lone Ranger and Tonto, lots of cowboy films for the boys, and the goody always winning the day.

Days out were to places such as Finningley to the air displays to see the mighty Vulcans, Spitfires and Lancasters flying low over the airfield, all done on a tandem, an old racing bike which my father used for work and a bicycle borrowed from a neighbour.  The races at Doncaster (The St Ledger), where they had an enormous fair and lots of things to do, and a little flutter on the horses.  

Shopping was done locally at the Co-op, but Doncaster was the place for school uniforms, shoes, and special outfits for Whitsuntide and holidays to Skegness and Cleethorpes (Beach-home), very basic, but a change from home and a rest for my mum and dad.