Loss Of A School Chum

A Memory of Peak Dale.

I was born in Peak Dale 6.9.40, at which time Peak Dale was very much a limestone quarry village. As it is coming round to Easter it reminds me of the first tragic loss that I vividly remember. While we were in school our teacher asked us to bring some pussy willow for the setting up of our Easter decorations. A boy named Brian Sidall who always eager to please said he knew where the best Pussy Willow could be found but he wouldn't tell any of  us where it was in case we got there first. Brian lived in the first house of a little row of quarry houses just inside the entrance of a quarry. He got up one morning and went to get the Pussy Willow. He hadn't told anyone that it was growing out of a crack on a ledge half way up the quarry face which was brash and bitting and totally unsafe. Brian knew how to get up to it and as he was collecting it he fell tragicly to his death aged approx 8 years old. This is my first real memory of the village where I was born and lived for 47 years. I have hundreds of GOOD memories of this little village which was completly self contained in those days with three Co op shops, two chip shops and numerous front room shops, hairdresser, cobblers, taxi firm and railway station. This memory is not my favourite memory but it always springs to the front of my mind when I think about the old days and the tragic loss to his family and all of us at such a young age. God Bless the memory of Brian.

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