The Police Station & Cinema Advertisements

A Memory of Goldthorpe.

The memory from 1948 reminded me of my first and ALMOST ONLY experience of a cell. My parents were friends of Cliff Hayward of Bolton on Dearne and his family. Cliff was a Police constable on the Goldthorpe strength and when for some reason my father took me to meet up with Cliff at the Goldthorpe Police Station I, being aged 12 or 13 at the time, naturally wanted to see "the prison". This resulted in my being put in a cell for a few minutes, an experience never forgotten. When, years later, I was regularly Guard Commander on night duty at Tidworth barracks in Wiltshire it was the practice, unapproved of course, for the sergeant to catch a few minutes sleep by lying on a bunk in one of the cells and I always remembered my Goldthorpe experience and found it difficult to relax. The moral is beware of the memories you give your children I think.

Cliff Hayward's hobby was sign writing, which he did with flat knibbed pens varying in width from a couple of mm to 10mm or so, together with the most wonderful selection of brightly coloured inks. One of his side lines was to create the posters for the Goldthorpe Cinema, a place already mentioned by a previous contributor. I suppose before the days of the big chains, all showing the same picture, this was a cheaper way of producing an eye catching poster than getting a "one-off" print.

I think Cliff's wife's name was Hetty and they had a son Clarence who had lost a leg in WW11. They drove a red Standard 8 motor car whose registration number was CWR 166!

Terry Flinders