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Haughton
Haughton maps
Historic maps of Haughton and the local area, hand-drawn by Ordnance Survey and Samuel Lewis. View all Haughton maps
Haughton photos
We have no photos of Haughton, although we do have photos of these nearby places:
Gnosall| Aston| Stafford| Norbury Junction| Wheaton Aston| Shallowford| Penkridge| Eccleshall| Weston-Under-Lizard
Haughton area books
Displaying 1 of 4 books about Haughton and the local area. View all books for this area
You can read extracts and browse photos from these books.
Memories of Haughton
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Staffordshire memories
Mason''s Lawn
We moved from the hamlet of Moreton/Bromstead to Gnosall, where my Dad worked, (based at the council wharf) in 1958, and Mason's lawn wasn't built then! We used to have our bonfires on the site and, if 1963 was the year it snowed really heavily (and I believe it was) - we were still building snowmen and rolling massive snowballs there!
Norbury Junction!
This is Norbury Junction, not far from but, definitely not Gnosall.
The boys in the woodwork class at school (Gnosall) built a canoe as a project which was afterwards stored in the old Mill on the opposite side of the canal to the Navigation Inn. (The Mill was the first in the area to be steam powered, I think). The canoe could be hired out for 6d, and it was very popular with me amongst others! (in the summer months I virtually 'hogged it'.) I used to paddle up and down the canal, sometimes reaching Norbury junction.
The Boat
The Boat is the name of the Inn on the left of the picture. As children we used to walk across the top of bridge wall and, as a further dare, across the pipes which ran just below the parapet, above the water.
Once, when I was serenely paddling the canoe back from Cowley Tunnel, a loaded barge came up behind me 'out of no-where'. It was MUCH BIGGER than I would have thought a barge could be, even if I had expected one, which I hadn't. I don't know who was the more horrified: me or the bargee!!!!
I Now Live in Gnosall Mason Lawn...
I now live in Gnosall Mason Lawn after living on the cut for a number of years when I was forced off due to ill health. I was born in Brineton about 3 miles from Gnosall. I have lived on Masons Lawn now for about 4 years and it's ok.
Swimming Saturdays
I received a half-crown (2/6d) pocket money per week. This enabled me to travel from Gnosall by train every Saturday (8d return), pay for entrance to the brine swimming baths for the afternoon, (wonderful memories) and have enough for either a cup of hot chocolate, or use of the dryer for my (long) hair, afterwards. The hot chocolate usually won!
Public Disaster!!!!
This photograph is taken from the Lichfield Road. Veering off to the right in the distance is Greengate Street, and to the left, round the far corner of the library, the Newport Road. I used the library often. It had an annexe a little further up and 'off' the Newport road, past the Odeon Cinema, containing the library's music collection. I spent an even greater amount of time there. It was wonderful. Everything from Scarlatti to Lead Belly. What an education! (This was in my mid-teens.) You could actually borrow these records, take them home and play them on your Dansette if you wanted to, and/or listen to them in cubicles, rather like a 'language laboratory' as we used to call them. Then guess what? They moved the public library to the Shire Hall area, and when I asked where the records were, was told (somewhat disparagingly) that the collection had been AUCTIONED OFF!
The Music Library - Pride of Stafford!
The music library was in Friars Terrace until 1994, when it moved to the top floor of the library at the Green, which had been the Art Gallery before that moved to the Shire Hall.
By 1994 the LP collection was little used - it had been the biggest in any library in the UK. By 1994 we had the biggest CD collection in the UK, covering every possible kind of music. Stafford was the first library to lend CDs in the country, starting in 1983.
The Music Library moved to the Shire Hall in 1999 and is still one of the best CD collections in the UK (or world some say), priding itself on getting pretty well anything for anybody. It is one of the only county council services which is at the top of the government charts.
LPs were sold off in library sales because they were not wanted and were no longer being manufactured. We had no complaints.
