Shirley Park

A Memory of Shirley.

I spent many hours in the park, not just playing, but the Scout Hut was there too. It was a wooden building with gas mantle lighting and a coke stove for the winter. In the summer the windows, which had metal bolted shutters over them, were opened to let natural light in. During the winter, you would arrive and it was like being in a freezer until the coke stove warmed the place up. We had a lot of fun there. Eventually, vandals burned it down and a number of years later a brick building was built behind shops on Stratford Road.

One of our classmates was killed in the park, he climbed a tree behind a factory on Stratford Road and fell onto the wall that surrounded the park at that end. Regrettably, I can't recall his name.

There was a very tall slide in the play area and we used to take wax bread wrappers, sit on them and slide down a few times. It somehow polished the metal, (well it would, friction, heat and wax), and after that everyone would fly off the end of the slide.

Happy times in a less complicated world.

Andrew Taylor
Light Hall High School for Boys until 1969
now aged 62!