Queens Road

A Memory of Nuneaton.

My family live at the top of Fife Street and always have. I really started to notice the town when I was about 7 (1968). The places I would go to when I was young (mainly with my mum) were;, The Beehive wool shop on the corner opposite The Palace Cinema, Reg Haddens bookshop on the corner of Dugdale Street, Dee Di's ice cream parlour in Queens Road, Home And Colonial supermarket in Abbey Street (with my gran,) Tesco's supermarket in Queens Road and Yoxall's cake shop in Abbey Street. My brother and I used to go to either The Palace or The ABC on a Saturday morning and afterwards, my Dad would take us to Pickens for a sausage and tomato batch. I eventually gave up going to the flicks in favour of learning to dance at Abbey Dance Studio above the old Liberal Club in Stratford Street. I also used to love browsing around the market on a Saturday. My favourite stall was a lady outside Woolworths in Queens Road who sold 'seconds' shoes out of big cardboard boxes. When I was about 14, I paid two pounds for my first pair of high heeled shoes (which I still have and have spent close to a hundred and fifty pounds in repairs on!) I think my most profound memory of Nuneaton was when the film crews hit town to use the area by What Records and Coggans in Dugdale Street and some other bits of Nuneaton to film an episode of Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em. I also remember the fatal train crash in June of 1975. I now live in Florida, but come back every year to spend some time in Nuneaton. It has changed such a lot since I was young and, might I add, not always for the better - but such is progress.