Rowlestone Rise

A Memory of Greengates.

I was born in Laisterdyke but moved to Greengates when I was about 4 years old, this would have been in 1962. I can remember walking up Redcar Road with my dad and brothers towards our new home on Rowlestone Rise. My first school was Brookfield, we lived opposite the school gates, then up to Eccleshill North.(Mr.Butler was the headmaster, he always had a cane stuck down his pantleg!). I can remember cows in the fields where the swimming baths and childrens home would later be built, a steam train crossing the bridge up The Bank (think this was the last one on the Idle line in 1966, I would have been 7 or 8). There was always something to do round Greengates when we were kids, we'd be in the woods looking for birds nests, climbing jackdaw quarry or up at the golf course pinching golf balls. We'd walk down to the canal or up to Yeadon Tarn or the airport, calling into the bakers on the New Line for some penny loaves, my brother Rick always had to ask "How much are yer penny loaves Mrs". Who can remember the little shop in the Oddfellows pub where you could get pop and crisps, after Halloween or Christmas caroling that's where all our money went. I can still remember Sargent Snazell giving me a telling off in the back of a police van after they caught me and my mate inside Brookfield school trying to pinch the biscuit tin, and the gardener from the park following me home with a load of geraniums I'd pinched from the flower beds. I'm sure it was always sunny in Greengates when I was a kid, every day it would be football on the corner or the school playground and at weekends we would be in the woods or wherever. The funny thing is though, when you walk around those places today it's hardly changed, just the fields behind Robin Mills have gone and Holybrooke Mills has gone. I live in Idle now and i can still visit all the places I used to play in , some shops and mills have gone but it is basically the same as 40 years ago. Greengates is just in a great place with woodland, a river, canal and a golfcourse - they'll always be there.