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Spion Kop memories

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Memories of Nottinghamshire

Shops

High Street c1955
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I can distinctly remember visiting Marsdens with my gran, she used to buy loose butter and loose lard, it was cut from a large block. Te guy who worked there had been there years, I think his name was Geoffrey. Greens shoe shop, where I was measured and fitted for new school shoes, was run by Mrs Green, that was the shop next door (the other side of the jitty). Pure simple times, pure memories.

Cobblers

The Market Place c1955
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The shop on the corner of the market place was a cobblers, A very small shop, ran by a Mr George Green as I can recall. Mr Green had a bad foot and had to have one shoe built up. He used to work with a dirty apron on.

Evacuees

My brother and I were evacuated to Mansfield Woodhouse in 1940 from Southend. We came with our school, London Road Primary School, and some of our teachers including the wonderful Miss Whisker.
We lived with various families - the Cookes at Sunnydale Poultry Farm, the Marchants at 6, Coke Street, the Owens in Tennyson Avenue and the Colliers in Stainforth Street. All organised by the redoubtable Mr. Hudson
I went to the National School and my brother to Oxclose Lane School. I remember walking along the long lane from Sunnydale to school and later along 'Bedstead Alley' to Oxclose Lane School.
Our memories are very vivid - and not altogether happy. Our mother joined us in 1940 and was soon taken to Ransom Sanatorium where, eventually, in 1942, she died. Our grandparents also came to MW but they fairly shortly after returned to London. Our father, who was working on munitions elsewhere visited us once or twice while we were there.
At Christmas 1941 we returned to London.
Amongst... Read more

Welbeck Colliery Village, Now Know as Meden Vale

My Grandparents moved to Welbeck Colliery Village about 1926, when my mother was 10 years old, and stayed in the same house at the bottom of Elkesley Road until they went into care in the 1970s.
My parents did their courting round Carburton Lakes in the 1930s and got married in Warsop Church in June 1945. I was born in January 1947, and my mother was stranded at her parents' house for a few weeks because of the snow with me sleeping in a drawer.
During the 1950s I sometimes went to Welbeck School for a week or two if my mother was ill. Grandma would turn my cold school milk into hot Horlicks, passing it through the railings as their garden adjoined the school playground.
We always spent Christmas at Welbeck, coal fires, side oven, saucepans on the fire, a cold pantry under the stairs with a "meat safe" (they didn't get a fridge until the mid-60s), a freezing cold outside toilet next to the enormous... Read more

School Days

I lived in Ridgeway, Langwith Junction. Mum would give me a shilling to go to the pictures matinee at the Empire on Saturday morning. It cost 7 pence to go in and 5 pence for sweets, it would be packed with kids, you coudn't hear the film for noise, but what fun. Then out of the pictures and up to railway loco on Eland Road to watch the wagons go up the tipper and emptied into the engines below. Then home, to put on old cloths and get swimming trunks on, a bottle of water, bread and drippimg sarnies and go up to the railway station, on to the bridge and watch trains go under the bridge, and we would stink of smoke. Then into the quarry for a swim, we would make a raft and dive in off it. There would be newts in the water and frogs, but we just played, ate our sarnies and had loads of fun.
Graham Launders

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