Childhood Memories

A Memory of Sheriff Hill.

I grew up in Sheriff Hill. My great-gran Margaret Jackson lived on Hewson Street and I lived with my parents in Leeming Gardens in the flats. I used to be sent to the corner shop on Hewson Street. It was called Robbies. We would buy broken biscuits and if my mam was hard up you could run up 'tick' and pay at the end of the week.

I used to go to Sheriff Hill School opposite St John's church on Church Road. We had a teacher whose husband was a vicar I think. She wasn't very charitable becase she would grab your cheeks and shake your head from side to side.

I then went to Glynwood school. The headmistress was called Mrs Young and my teachers were Miss Burrows, Miss Henderson, Mr Bagley and Mr Waddington. We used to learn maypole dancing and the boys learned sword dancing on the fields at the back of the school. There was an old 'lollypop' man to take us over the road beside the Travellers Rest. We would go to Charnwoods for sweeties on the way to school.

The park was our main haunt. We used to go into the entrance on Blue Quarries Road and play hide and seek in the bushes. There was a police box outside the Sodhouse Bank entrance and the local bobby would give us drinks of water out of his pint pot on hot summer days. We would spend all day there with our jam sandwiches and bottles of water.

I used to play with Gloria Keith whose family lived in Leeming Gardens. We used to go the the Zion Chapel for Sunday School, and I was in three of their pantomimes which were held in the larger church hall at the bottom of Sodhouse Bank. We had to go round the strets to sell the tickets. I was one of the Babes in 'Babes in the Wood'. (Doll) Gloria played Danny. A lady who lived at the top of Sheriff Hill bank made our costumes and we used to go to her house for fittings. The church had its own theatre upstairs and I can still smell that 'old book' smell when I remember having our make up put on. We could choose to have Red Indian or OXO drawn on our faces with the stage make-up before it was rubbed in. Curtains separated the men from the women. I loved it.

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