Sodom

Sodom was a huddle of shabby houses where I often walked / rushed past with my Uncle Dick who lived on Rock Road. I clearly remember a large old tree, spending additional shade to the drab fronts of the dust-darkened windows, adding a blackened veil of mystery to my childish fears, as a result of the macabre-stories which I had been told. Naive, and unware of the truth I grew up in the so-called Christian Community of Pontlottyn from Greenfield Street .... afraid of persons like "Billy Gig" ... The Cochlin's ... the people from Sodom , filled with many other ignorant and discriminatory prejudices. As a child I knew no better, believed the grown-ups. As I matured and grew in confidence, I recall rounding the black pitch-painted corrugated fence surrounding the old football-ground and the Blast-Tip which I climbed, and made friends with a bare-footed Dennis Cochlin, who I gave him my new shoes to out of empathy. He fell to his death some weeks later from the railway- viaduct still wearing my/ his new prided shoes. If there's a Heaven let him be eternally happy. It is now some forty-years since I made my exit from Ponty, memories become vague with time, but on occassion I reminisce ... feel a warm sadness ... Despise the austerity that some members of our community suffered back in those post-war days but gratful for the wisdom of retrospective objectivity.
Friendly greetings from afar,
Gerald Perry born November 1945

Hi Gerald I have just read and enjoyed your account of Sodom and Ponty.
I lived part of my childhood in King St Pontlottyn and I remember my older sister speaking of the boy who must have been Dennis Cochlin falling off the viaduct.I remember going to the cochlin family home at the bottom of King St I must have played with someone there around my own age. It was difficult to understand the meaning of poverty at that young age in those streets everyone was in the same boat, although looking back I do remember feeling I was lucky compared. My uncle Billie Davies lived at the bottom of Greenfield St he had a daughter Christine.My family moved away to Blackpool 1962 when I was eleven and I have lived in Yorkshire since I was 18yrs.
But despite the poverty of the times it was "good grounding"as they would say in yorkshire " character building stuff" and I may be looking through rose coloured spectacles but in spite of it all I still have fond memories.
Best Wishes
Tanya

I lived in 3 picton terrace and remember billy gig lived with my Nan olive thomas and grancha Ivor the picton hotel pub right in front and the lord nelson opposite sodom was across to the left was born in 1951