Grimsby Town Dock Station

A Memory of Ledbury.

I was born at 171 Church Street, where the East Marsh flats now stand. My father worked on the docks at New Holland, so when I was a few weeks old my mother took me there to join him in Manchester Square. In 1953 my father - William George John Baker fell from a railway wagon and hit his head on the railway lines. He died a few weeks later, but while he was in hospital my mother took me to stay with my grandmother at 9 Kent Street, Grimsby.
In Railway Street, by the Kent Street corner was the Grimsby Dock Station. At that time the station master was a Mr. Pearce. As a four year old I met his young daughter Sandra. She and her family were from somewhere in Scotland, and had noticeable Scottish accents. I used to play games with Sandra sometimes in the front garden (facing Kent Street), and sometimes we would go inside to a 'toy cupboard', where we could sit and play for hours at a time. We occasionally would go up onto the foot bridge and enjoy the smoke and steam as a train went underneath.
I started at Strand Street infants in 1955, and later the juniors. In 1960 myself and my best friend Peter Newbegin went to Harold Street Secondary Boys. (Peter was two weeks older than me).
It must have been around 1955 that the Pearce family (I was told) went back to Scotland, and for a while I missed Sandra. I had moved to a large terraced house at 57 Thesiger Street about 1956, but when the council were pulling the older properties down in the early 60s we moved to a prefab in Tealby Walk, Nunsthorpe. Several years later we moved again - this time to Tennyson House in Kent Street - a matter of yards from where I had been born.
In 1971 I joined the RAF and only had the most fleeting returns to Grimsby. I can't remember what year it was - but probably early 80s I came back and wanted to get a photo of the Station and House. My heart sank when I got to Railway Street and it was all gone.
If anyone has a photo of the station house I wouldn't mind a copy, also of St. Andrews Church in Freeman Street, which was a church I absolutely loved.
... Leslie Baker (now aged 66, and lives in London).

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