The Rec!

A Memory of Little Sutton.

Ah yes, The Rec!  Scene of many a battle and many a cup final, in later years there was romance!  You could get through the hedge and down onto the railway line to put halfpennies on the line that got flattened by trains as they ran over them. At the End of Heath Lane, or more accurately at the junction with New Chester Road, a bobby did point duty at busy times.  I can remember one day going to school and making a dash across the road and the bobby grabbed me before I went under a car!  Probably wouldn't have been fatal - cars didn't get up to much speed in 1959. When my father was a boy he and a friend were playing in The Rec and Dad got a swing seat thumped into his face that drove his front teeth right through his top lip.  He still has the scar at the age of 80! Also at that junction there used to be a shelter that had toilets on either side.  The rockers used it as their meeting place in the 1960s and it was affectionately know as The Town Hall.  I ended up married to one of the rocker girls!
When I was 16, to impress a girl called Kerry from Connahs Quay, I climbed up onto the railway bridge and jumped down onto the roof of a train as it went under, pulling in to Little Sutton station.  As it neared the station I jumped up and grabbed the trellis of the footbridge and hauled myself up onto the walkway.  I sometimes lie in bed at night and break into a cold sweat thinking of what might have happened.  I don't think Kerry could have been that impressed.  Had I been her, I wouldn't have been impressed by that kind of stupidity either...Such a great place in those days.

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