Corby In The 1950s

A Memory of Corby.

I lived with my family in Burns Drive, Corby, until I was about six. Our house backed onto the playing fields of Rowlett Road School and my grandparents lived on the corner of Rowlett Road and Tanfields Grove. I can remember walking down to the Studfall Avenue shops and also some of the shops in old Corby.
I particularly remember an ironmongers with one of those old-fashioned systems for sending the cash whizzing along to the cash desk in little canisters! Also a grocers shop with big tins of broken biscuits!

My grandfather had worked for Stewart and Lloyds and one of my aunts still worked there. I can remember the Corby Candle, and the flames lighting up the sky when they opened the furnaces at the works.

My father was the town's librarian and in the 1950s the library was housed in an old hut. Our neighbours in Burns Drive were the Mears family on one side and the McNulty family on the other. I can recall helping my father in the garden and his battle to dig the heavy Corby clay. My mother worked for the council and was a member of the Townswomen's Guild.

I haven't been back to Corby since my grandparents died in the 1960s but the photos of the town in the 1950s bring back memories of a happy childhood there.

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