A Long Line Of Pennies

A Memory of Royston.

I'm Not sure whether that was the actual date but as a child of five I recall my mother standing on the top step of our home where she would watch me go over the brow of the bridge on Midland Road on my way to school: as I got out of the door and began to walk on the causeway I noticed that there was a glinting on the Kerb and when I focused my eyes, I could see a whole line of pennies which were touching each other, they were to stretch over the brow of the hill, I looked in amazement and was gobsmacked where I could not find words to express what I was seeing. Mother in her broad Yorkshire dialect said "thee leave them alone!" and that's what I did. You must understand, for a child like myself whose parents hardly gave me as much as a penny for sweets and the like, even then I did not as much as take a penny from off the Curb. These pennies, if my memory serves me well, were on both sides of the road where they stretched from Royston Station and well past the Infants School on Midland Road. If one were to count both sides of the road, at a guess there were as much as two miles of pennies. Except where there was an entrance to a street, they were a continuation down the High Street. What I'd like to know for what purpose were they there for? I assume they were there to be collected by some charity? Me thinks that in this day and age, from what I have seen with the amount of drug addicts and homeless people about, me thinks that these coins would have long since vanished. Anyway, is there anyone that could shed a light on why and who benefited from peoples hospitality?

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