Intake Playgrounds

A Memory of Intake.

I have mentioned in passing that Intake did not have the same panache as say Balby, Hexthorpe or Armthorpe in places of entertainment but it did provide some wide open spaces to play in. Over the Armthorpe Road opposite Flint House, there was the disused sand quarry of the Brick Marketing Company which was being used by the local authourity for dumping the Borough's rubbish and this was a goldmine for destitute youngsters. Old bikes or prams were much sought after items and many a trolley or bike was constructed from these treasures, and many happy hours spent playing on them. Another bar of gold were car tyres [or bowlers] and with the aid of a short stick would be bowled all over Intake. If your mother sent you on an errand to the shops or wherever, the first thing anyone did was pick up his bowler. Another place to visit was the Boating Lake [Sandal Park]. There was no road from Armthorpe Water Tower to Sandal Park in those days, it was a cart track with Oak trees on either side of it and the gypsies would park there caravans on it when they wanted somewhere to stay. These were proper caravans, horse drawn and beautifully painted with pictures of plants and animals on them. There they would stay whilst the men would busy themselves making clothes pegs for their wives to sell door to door along with the sprays of lucky heather [though where they found that is a mystery]. Sandal Beat Woods is where we learned our survival skills. Many a school holiday was spent in there bird nesting, blackberrying, chestnutting or simply playing Robin Hood, Soldiers or Cowboys and Indians. Just after the Second World War there were still soldiers training in Sandal Beat but instead of using bullets they used a paper banger, these you pulled apart and it made a bang. If they had any left over at the end of the exercises they would give them to us kids to play with. Then at the back of the Racecourse there was the rifle range and when it was eventually abandoned we would go and dig the old lead bullets out of the sand and when we considered that we had enought we would put them in an old tin can ,start a fire and melt them down and make our own castings out of the molten lead.[ can you imagine letting your own kids do that now]. The Bevan Huts was another playground in a way. They had the first television that I ever saw and the residents would let you watch it, but you had to keep yourself available to run to the shops if anyone wanted anything, but that was no problem because sometimes they would give you a penny for going, There was only one channel then, BBC but to us kids it was free cinema.
Behind the Bevan Huts was Chats Pond which was the watering hole for Mr Chatsworth's cows. This pond was full of tiny fish, tadpoles and newts and many an happy hour was spent there. Mr Chatsworth's Farm eventually became the Green House or Cumberland Hotel.

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