Childhood

A Memory of Bolton Upon Dearne.

I lived opposite the Angel Hotel from 1940 to 1955. There were several farms in Bolton and most of the farmers had children my age, so I spent many happy hours in the farm yards and country lanes. My best friend Anne Beaumont was a farmer's daughter. I remember her dad offering us a shilling each if we would hoe the weeds down in one of his fields. This we did and he transported us home on his tractor, sitting on the mudguards. Health and safety was unheard of in those days. I also have a memory of walking down Station Road with Mike and John Palfreman when they were taking a herd of cows from the farm to the fields. I also remember the Nissen huts down Station Road, and squatters living in them after the war. Those people must have been desperate to live in those conditions. I wonder if they were there in the icy cold winter of 1947.

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