Growing Up In Weaverham 1951 1963

A Memory of Weaverham.

I lived at 3 Briar Lane from birth in 1951 until we moved to Derby in 1962. I went to Forest Street primary and remember some of the teachers, Palin, Woodward and the evil head teacher Mr. Ackerley who delighted in caning pupils in public for minor misdeeds. He made left hander’s change over at mealtimes in the refectory or he would cane them (would be classed as child abuse today!). We made ice slides in the sloping playground – no health & safety to spoil our fun in those days!

I was in the 1st Weaverham Sea Scouts and St Mary’s choir and remember getting a 3d mix of chips and baked beans on my way home at night. In the winter we used to throw snowballs at front doors until a copper came round to our house and my dad gave me a hiding! In the summer we used to gate lift – swapping the nice front gates of some of the council houses with a rusty one from their neighbours.

Memories are fading now that I am in my 60’s but my best mates back then were Nobby Clark and Colin Bradley and I knew the Wakefields, Preston’s, Eliss’s, Sawacki’s, Gibb’s, Humphrey’s, Barnardo’s, Fox’s etc. all from the area where I lived. We played in the pits building dens and went on the railway lines over the cornfields to put pennies on the line! Often saw the Deltic and all the famous steam trains of the 60’s – Silver Fox, Bittern, Mallard, Britannia, Royal Scotsman, Sir William A Stanier FRS etc. We used to fight with the Gribb’s gang and anyone else who crossed our ‘turf’. I remember a few of us destroying a rotting horse box in Billows Field at the top of Briar Lane before they built the Green Park houses. One of my dinky toys still lies in the cavity of one of those houses when we used to play on the scaffolding!

I remember the sad day Paul Cretney died of polio and although I was too young to really know what had happened. Many hours were spent in Owley Wood and Beech Wood picking bluebells and playing ‘dens’. I was only 7 or 8 and my parents had no thought of paedophiles back then. Also going to the pictures in Northwich to watch Zorro and coming out to go down to Pop Hornby’s for a sarsaparilla with our balaclavas on back to front and our garberdine macs buttoned at the top as a cape!

There were hardly any cars and I recall the local women of Weaverham being picked up by a tractor towing a flatbed farm trailer to go potato or strawberry picking for pin money.

A coal fired steam roller did the tarmac on Briar Lane and we made ‘trucks’ (soap box carts) out of old bits of wood and pram wheels. We loved the fairground that used to come to the field next to the Forest Street School. I recall the first Fine Fare supermarket opening and once got thrashed by my mum for pinching some sweets from Bills’ shops age 7 having been put up to it by my brother Graham!

We looked out for each other, skinned our knees, laughed cried and I had a great childhood without any technology whatsoever excepting for a black and white TV showing the Flowerpot Men, Popeye and the Woodentops, which my dad got when I was 11!

I could go on for hours.......Happy days!

Stephen Sutton (Little Sut)