Nostalgic memories of Ashby-de-la-Zouch's local history

Share your own memories of Ashby-de-la-Zouch and read what others have said

For many years now, we've been inviting visitors to our web site to add their own memories to share their experiences of life as it was when the photographs in our archive were taken. From brief one-liners explaining a little bit more about the image depicted, to great, in-depth accounts of a childhood when things were rather different than today (and everything inbetween!). We've had many contributors recognising themselves or loved ones in our photographs.

Why not add your memory today and become part of our Memories Community to help others in the future delve back into their past.

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Displaying all 6 Memories

Form 1a 1958 to 1962
The ruins of Ashby Castle also hold memories. Some are of sitting at school, gazing morosely out of the window while well-intentioned teachers attempted to impart the joys of adding up using letters. At the ripe old age of 10, I felt that algebra was an unreasonable confusion of reading letters and understanding mathematics to make incomprehensible jumble of otherwise meaningful ciphers. Another ...see more
Still on my travels on Memory Lane I browsed past St Helens. This was always a place of seasonal visits: Christmas, Easter and Harvest Festival. I must admit that Easter visits do not live long in my memory, and Harvest Festival seemed to be an exercise in pyramids of tins of things your mum didn’t need urgently. The Mayans would have been proud of our ironically, heathen ziggurats of Spam, tuna, ...see more
As a young lad in the “swingin 60’s”, the swingin’ rather passed me by … and no regrets there. But the word puts me in mind of the swinging we did do. Just down the lane from Allsopp’s garage – the hallowed source of petrol sold in gallons for shillings and pennies, and Shell’s collectibles such as Roman coins and football cards, was a playground and sports field. This playground was inevitable site ...see more
Willesley Close was the centre of the universe for the first twelve years of my life from 1959. The garden enclosed twenty yards of the old railway embankment and featured a natural spring, the source of much entertainment in summer, as well as fresh watercress. The house we lived in was on the edge of development so the afternoon ritual of milking the cows was part of my everyday. The farmer from ...see more
I was born and bred in Ashby-de-la-Zouch, the eldest of three children. My memories of Ashby itself are snapshots from a time which now seems so old-fashioned that it as nostalgic as a Herriot novel. As a young lad, I was a pupil at North Street Infants School (1964), a delightfully small, Victorian building that still had air raid shelters in the playground. It was in these dank, musty ...see more