My Childhood In Hogsthorpe

A Memory of Hogsthorpe.

I was born in 1951 and in April 1953 our family moved to Hogsthorpe. My parents were worried as that was the year of the floods and they had put furniture in our new home. Although the police would not let them through to check on things, fortunately, Hogsthorpe was not flooded. So we moved in and in September of 1956 I started at the primary school. This building, however, was destroyed by fire. It was then a very small village-everyone knew everyone and the school had 60 pupils(it could have been less) in it. My address then was Ashleigh, West End and my late father ran a poultry farm. I did notice Betty Kirkham's name on the Hogsthorpe village website and if you speak to her, I am sure that she will remember us. I used to go to her to have my hair permed. I was at school with some of the Jinks family and Sylvia was the same age as me. Last time I enquired she was still living in the village on High Street but I did not get to see her as she was at work. Some of the other local names that I was at school with were Joyce(Sandra and I still keep in touch at Christmas), Gibert, Askew, Whitehead, Green and Scott. It was a quiet little village but it had several shops, most of which are long gone. There was Farnsworths the grocers, Wings the bakery, Wilkinsons fruit shop, Miss Merriman who sold sweets, Shooters wool shop which if my memory serves me right, was the old post office, Taylors butchers shop which I belive is still there, Dunkerleys the carpenters, a general store on Thames Street, a Co-op and an excellent fish and chop shop. So sad to see that most of them have closed for their various reasons. My brother, Peter Shaw was married at Hogsthorpe Church in 1970 and he too went to Hogsthorpe School. The Headteacher was then Miss Braybrook and the other teachers Mrs. Sharp and Mrs. Mullins. I attended the Methodist Chapel and was married there in April 1981. I taught Sunday School there until my marriage when my husband (who is Yorkshire born) and I moved to West Yorkshire. We did, however look at a couple of properties in Hogsthorpe. We considered the old Midland Bank building to convert and a house in the same yard as The Saracens Head, which in my childhood was owned by a family called Barry. We didn't buy either and the latter was in a poor state of repair then - it had no stairs and a hole in the roof. I still miss some things about village life and I would be pleased to hear from anyone in the village. Memories from Christine Parr nee Christine Shaw. Dewsbury. West Yorkshire gerald.parr@ntlworld.com