Hemsworth

A Memory of Hemsworth.

I was born in Barnsley in 1950 and lived in Hemsworth. I use to go to the pictures on a Saturday morning with my pals and ride my pretend horse home afterwards. I don't know the name of our street but you could walk out of the front door, cross over and go down the dirt path to the main road. I think the market was there and on the other side was the picture house with chippy close by. My dad, who was Polish, worked down the pit and on some Sundays would take me to church which would have been Catholic, some where at the back of the pictures. I also remember there was an old air raid shellter down the dirt track where we would all go in to play. I got burned on me knee one time after setting alight to a plastic shuttelcox holder to use as a torch just like Flash Gorden did when he went into caves on the flicks, only he never got burned. Each year they would have the fair on the waste ground in front of the house, which was three to four doors up from the corner shop. I remember me and my mum walking to the railway station to catch the train to Barnsley, or maybe Wakefield, to go shopping, and sitting in the station waggon at the end of the train getting warm by the pot belly stove before setting off. I remember there was a library close to the police station where me and my sister would go. When I was older I went to the school at the side of the parish church and at times we would go with the class there to sing. I would sit there in a trance and look at the stained glass window which had St. Goerge slaying the dragon. I do remember a girl in my first class who lived in a sort of farm which was between the school and church and her dad would some times bring the cows through the back end of the playground. To get to the back of our house you went through a small archway which I think was conected to the corner shop and my pal, who I think was called Norman, lived on the next block. We had outside toilets which were in a row a distance from the houses, and a gas light to the kitchen, yet electric to the rest of the house. I remember mum giving me baths in the metal tub in front of the fire and me with my Popey pipe blowing bubbles. I used to sit in the afternoon with our 14" Bush telly and love to see Watch with Mother - my best liked being Bill and Ben. Christmas was always the best and we had the tree with candles on that you lit. I also spent many a day in the park playing in the paddling pool or flying my kite as we walked everywhere in those days. When I was 6-7 years old we moved to Fitzwilliam, just across from to pit where my dad started to work. We lived at no. 9 Rockingham St and I went to a newish school not too far away. My dad had an allotment close by and on the way home from school I would climb over the fence to pinch his radishes. On Saturdays me and my sister would go to the pictures at the top end of the railway station and I think it was the Co op at the end of the front street where my mum would shop. There was also a wet fish house on my street and my mum would 'Donkey stone' the front door step one day a week with her hair tied in some sort of turban. I would play on the waggons in the goods yard up at the end of the pit and also the rail lines. I moved after just a year or so to live in Manchester and then to settle in Oldham, Lancs. I now have lived in Yorkshire and only returning twice to Hemsworth and Fitzwilliam. Once in 1972 when they had just knocked down my old house in Hemsworth after I had got there and once in 1994 when taking photos for my collage in Oldham as part of my training. I will go back soon again but will never be able to have the happines and warm feelings I had for those few years as a young boy with a loving mum whose maiden name was Chambers. Going back to Watch with Mother I now have Bill and Ben Puppets sold by the BBC for children in need. What more could you ask for.