In The Shadow Of The Steel Works.

A Memory of Stocksbridge.

It is indeed Hunshelf Bank, and the school was probably Stocksbridge County Primary, although there were a couple of church schools as well.
I spent my first 17 years on Unsliven Road, Stocksbridge. It wasn't until I was 11 and stepped off the 'Barnsley Bus' into the silence of Silkstone that I realised just how much 'Sammy Fox's' was part of my very existence. Home was in a beautiful wooded valley on the edge of 'Toy Town' with freedom to play by the river just accross the road and in the old air raid shelter with its tricky secret entrance, in which we found diagrams of doodle bugs. We weren't really aware of the constant hum of round-the-clock production of steel, and when the sky turned crimson as another load of slag waste was dropped, the accompanying boom only added to our sense of adventure, although it meant our mums would be grumpy as the boiled, dolly blued, and starched sheets on the line would be covered in big black specks and have to be rewashed. My brother and I planted a hawthorne tree opposite our house to commemorate the coronation, and I never understood how the two boys next door got to plant a beautiful pink-flowering cherry tree. The steel works are now silent, the little houses have grown upwards, along with the trees, but I hope the children growing up on the road with the strange name still enjoy the freedom of the woods and river on their doorstep and the wild moors which can be explored on a long day's walk.