Stafford

Brine Baths

I remember as a child and teenager going to the Brine Baths with my brother and friends, what a wonderful building it was, swimming was never the same after the new baths were built, another fine old building was lost.
Contributed by Elizabeth Harrison

Swimming Saturdays

I received a half-crown (2/6d) pocket money per week. This enabled me to travel from Gnosall by train every Saturday (8d return), pay for entrance to the brine swimming baths for the afternoon, (wonderful memories) and have enough for either a cup of hot chocolate, or use of the dryer for my (long) hair, afterwards. The hot chocolate usually won!
Contributed by Penny Trueman

Happy memories

I was born in Foregate Street, the home of my grandparents, in 1951. I left Stafford in 1953 and returned in 1960 to live in the north end of the town. I well remember playing on the 'Witches hat' with my friends, paddling in the childrens pool, I spent some very happy times in Victoria Park. Mum used to take us down to the park on a fine sunny day, jam sandwiches and a bottle of pop, Happy Memories. I now live in the Lake District and love it but Stafford will always hold some very special memories for me. Does anyone have a picture of old Foregate Street?
Contributed by Elizabeth Harrison

The Music Library - Pride of Stafford!

The music library was in Friars Terrace until 1994, when it moved to the top floor of the library at the Green, which had been the Art Gallery before that moved to the Shire Hall.

By 1994 the LP collection was little used - it had been the biggest in any library in the UK. By 1994 we had the biggest CD collection in the UK, covering every possible kind of music. Stafford was the first library to lend CDs in the country, starting in 1983.

The Music Library moved to the Shire Hall in 1999 and is still one of the best CD collections in the UK (or world some say), priding itself on getting pretty well ...read more here
Contributed by Andrew Baker

Public Disaster!!!!

This photograph is taken from the Lichfield Road.  Veering off to the right in the distance is Greengate Street, and to the left, round the far corner of the library, the Newport Road. I used the library often. It had an annexe a little further up and 'off' the Newport road, past the Odeon Cinema, containing the library's music collection.  I spent an even greater amount of time there. It was wonderful. Everything from Scarlatti to Lead Belly. What an education! (This was in my mid-teens.) You could actually borrow these records, take them home and play them on your Dansette if you wanted to, and/or listen to them in cubicles, rather like a 'language laboratory' as we used to call ...read more here
Contributed by Penny Trueman