Wardley As Was

A Memory of Wardley.

Well, I was born in Lingey Gardens (at my grandparents' house, John and Ethel Holdsworth) in 1948, but I best remember Wardley when I was about 8 years. I remember the NCB coal waggon tipping coal in the road outside the houses of men who worked at the pit. I would then help to carry it in buckets to the coal house which was built into the side of the house, boards where put up in the doorway as the coal got higher. Next door was Mrs Goldsworthy, she had a daughter called Barbara. I remember going to the pit head with my grandfather (no H & S then) and watching a cage and men with dirty faces suddenly appear out of the ground behind a mesh gate, the gate was opened and they would stream out with bait tins, lamps, knee pads, and all manner of things hanging from belts, and a helmet made of compressed cardboard, I think. I remember the old Co-op near to the pit, with sacks of food on the floor, blue sugar bags, things that whizzed by just over your head with money and change in them. The NCB railway line ran across the road just below the post office, a man would stop traffic (what bit there was) and pull by hand two gates across the road. The allotments were great, I went there with grandfather and chatted with his friends, I remember warm greenhouses, and leeks. When the wireless stopped working I would unscrew the accumulator and carry it up the main road to the garage at the top of the hill and return with a fully charged one so we could listen to 'Round the Horn'. I had a good time there, shame it had to change so much.

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