Burslem Baths And The Wright's Pie Shop After (Top Of Nile St)
A Memory of Burslem.
My memories start around 1946 and go on 'forever' - but the years I want to mention here are those of my Cobridge schooldays and the Burslem connection to those schooldays.
I lived on the Cobridge side of Burslem, at the top of Elder Rd ... Elder Place opposite the Park, a little row of 'two-up two-down' cottages built in 1852 (demolished circa 1966).
I lived in one of those cottages from 1940, through the war years 'til 1953, growing up there during my schooldays at St Peter's RC Cobridge -on Waterloo Rd.
The Burslem connection re those school days was on two counts. Firstly we had our School-Dinners there, firstly in William Clowes St -in a Church Hall, before it being transferred to the Methodist Church Hall on Swan Bank - sometime around 1950.
Secondly, our school swimming lessons were held at Burslem Baths - directly opposite the railway station.
Mr Kelly, our teacher (Peter Kelly), used to escort us there, using the shortest route from our school, which was to cross over Waterloo Rd immediately and go down Hawthorn St and onto Elder Rd, and head down that road to Nile St (at the bottom of Hot Lane).
Then after a few hundred yards along Nile St -we'd turn right into Hobson St, at the top of which we'd turn into the bottom of Lingard St - where a narrow alleyway (footpath) led alongside the iron-railings of the embankment of the railway-line, coming out on Moorland Rd at the side of the Baths.
When we went to Burslem Baths on Saturday mornings, paying for a public leisure swim, on coming out we'd always head - ravished, straight to the Wright's Pie Shop at the top of Niles St .... for a hot meat and potato pie. Magic days.
I actually learned to swim in the canal at the bottom of the Grange with my mates - aged around 8, at the end of the war. We didn't seem to notice the dead dogs floating, half-submerged on the surface of the black water that changed to a yellowy glow when viewed from beneath the surface.
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You were, I think, further down, either between Grange St and Grove St -Or you could have been below Derby St (Kirby St)?? Were there red heads in the family -or am I confusing you with another perhaps?
But back to Cobridge -the lads of my age who lived on Elder Rd (as against Elder Place) who I played with -were Billy Warburton and his younger brother -whose house was on the corner of Grove St -and their dad ran his own haulage business. Then for a while, there was Brian Morris who lived a door or two down from Nellie Hambleton's shop on the corner of Hawthorne St.
Below Brian Morris's house were two sisters, one of whom married Terry Briggs from Charles St (now Crystal St) -he was in my class at school -St Peter's RC.
In Hawthorne St -I also played with Leslie Smith and his younger brother Brian. And Matty Morrison, next door to Mavis Condliffe... or Cunliffe? But I spent a lot of time up and around the Church Terrace area -playing with kids from that end too. And I knocked about with Georgie Wilshaw -going out on the pony and trap to Stockton Brook on Sunday mornings. There's lots to say; lots to mention.
I'm a bit late joining this thread but here goes.
I was born in 1947 at the bottom of Sneyd Street directly opposite Heath Garage and lived there until 1970. I also went to St Peter's RC.
One of my many, many memories of the mid-50s from that area is Percy Barton's blacksmith shop sited opposite the Jug Inn.
Percy was the most friendly and helpful man that my friends and I regularly visited after school and weekends. He let us watch him shoe horses in the shoeing shop next to his blacksmith shop. After a few years of loyal service from us, he used to take me and Billy Whalley to the riding schools of Keele and Endon at weekends. Halcion Days.
Bernard Wood