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Corby
Corby maps
Historic maps of Corby and the local area, hand-drawn by Ordnance Survey and Samuel Lewis. View all Corby maps
Corby area books
Displaying 1 of 8 books about Corby and the local area. View all books for this area
You can read extracts and browse photos from these books.
Memories of Corby
Displaying a selection of personal
memories of Corby.
There are 25 shared memories to read.
Add your memory of Corby
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My Working Days on Corby Market
This is a rare photo for me because I worked for about five years on the end stall on the left - third row in from the corner. I worked there on Friday mornings before going to the Grammar school, Friday evenings to pack everything up and all day on Saturdays. I was paid 2s 6d for the weekend's work. The stall was rented by Leslie Stevens - a grocer from Northampton and when I was 17 I passed my driving test and was allowed to drive his green van around the town to deliver everyones groceries. I met loads of wonderful people on my rounds. I also worked with interesting people on the stall - Mary Flood, her daughter Janet Flood amongst them. I remember the prank played by some students on the mural wall just opposite and next to the cafe. They dressed up in white and were spraying the wall keeping everyone away. They pretended that there were dangerous acid fumes coming off the wall. This... Read more
Young Corby, Once Called Corbie.
This photo must have been taken early in the morning because that play area was always packed with wee yins in the 1960s. I know because I was one of them. There were lots of what I used to call swing parks in Corby in the 1960s. Corby was a very young place in 1965, not just the new town but its people as well. The expanding steelworks attracted thousands of young migrants, mainly from Scotland. I remember I was on a bus with my mum travelling to Kettering, the nearest town to Corby. I was about four. I remember this very strange woman getting on the bus who had lines and wrinkles all over her face. I stared and stared till my mum told me off for being rude. The woman smiled at us. She said, in what I was to come to recognise as the local Northamptonshire accent, that I was to be forgiven. She remarked that I probably had never seen an old person before. She... Read more
Time to Climb
Goodness, I used to climb those frames above the walkway!
Samuel Lloyds
We came to Corby in 1956 from Staffordshire and I attended Samuel Lloyds girls school. We used to spend our dinner money in Tipaldis. My dad, Ted Simmons, was the groundsman for Stuarts and Lloyds Recreation Club and we lived on Thoroughsale Road (which was hard to spell when you were small). I remember dances at the "Bin", Thoroughsale Woods, which I thought were huge, the Saturday Morning club at the pictures. I remember going to Studfall shops when we first got to Corby and couldn't understand anyone because they all had scottish accents. I thought the town centre was large and that's when it ended at Woolworths, and loved the market. My school uniforms were bought at the Co-op in the town centre. I went to Corby Tech and thought myself very grown up. Those days seem a long time ago and even though Corby was fairly large we kids were allowed to walk everywhere by ourselves.
Corby
Hi, I was born in Kettering in 1954 and lived there until we moved to Weymouth in 1963. My grandparents lived in Corby and I remember a fair bit about Corby, especially around where they lived in Studfall Avenue. Grandad worked at Stewarts and Lloyds as a truck driver, and my Nana worked at Smiths crisp factory. My Dad, Derrick Samways, was the manager of the Odeon Corby in the 1950s. He has many memories (and photos) of his time there. I remember he always dressed in evening suit for the job. I liked going to the Saturday kids club there.
West Blebe
I have a vivid memory as a 9 year old of coming across in West Glebe a large circle of men one Sunday morning, who were laughing and shouting. They were playing an illegal game of 'pitch & toss'. A lookout must have sent a signal for suddenly the men ran off before a policeman arrived. The grass had all disappeared leaving a large bare circle littered with cigarette butts. Later I noticed a similar scene in the grounds of the Welfare Club on Occupation Road. 70 years later I've never seen or heard of this game again.
Bollard
Just to the left of the picture, the junction of Elizabeth Street with Cottingham Road had a bollard in the middle. Coming home from band practice by bike (Corby Silver Band used an old stone building, perhaps once a barn in the 'old village'), I witnessed a low-slung open top sports car turn sharply into Elizabeth Street and knock the bollard over. Upright, I went to the police station - on Elizabeth Street at the top of this picture. Thinking I had seen a major offence, I was dismayed by the officer's almost total lack of interest.
Burnt to The Ground in The Late Seventies.
From what I can remember a very good library.
I lost a lot of my course work when it burned down. I had been finishing my essays off and forgot to pack them in my bag before leaving to retire to the Corinthian. This was the days before computers and saved electronic data.
These went up in flames with the rest of the library.
I got my extension but my tutor said it was the best lie he had heard for late esays for a decade.
