i became interested in local history at an early age … · web viewgirls wore dresses, skirts...

LOOKING BACK

I became interested in local history at an early age. Both from listening to Mr Cranswick, the Headmaster at Airedale Junior School, telling stories of Fryston Wood, Old Sheepwalk Lane, which we knew as Gypsy Lane, and other places. Also from hearing my father tell of happenings when he was a boy in Fryston and of his ramblings around the district. We lived in Townville that, at the top of Sheepwalk Lane, merged with Airedale and Glasshoughton and so formed part of our familiar territory. There were not so many houses in Townville in those days as now and they did not have numbers, only names. ‘Bella Vista’, ‘ Lynwood’, ‘Old Ridley’, these names were as familiar to us as the occupants of the houses. In Roundhill Field, on the left hand side of Sheepwalk Lane going up towards Castleford from Ferrybridge, a farmer, Mr Hall, discovered an early Bronze Age tumulus. Lord Houghton, of Fryston Hall, and the Rev.Canon Greenwell investigated this tumulus in 1877. Two urns, the larger one ten inches high and tastefully decorated with lines and zigzags. Pieces of flint, bronze pins and two skeletons were discovered. Beneath these skeletons was a huge slab of stone concealing another skeleton. This was of a large adult male with perfect teeth. My imagination was constantly fired! Holmfield was a favourite place for a walk and most Sundays during the summer, after tea, we would set out. We would meet other family groups on our outing but rarely saw any traffic. It was only such people as doctors who had a car. There was no television to keep people in the house, not all had wirelesses and those who liked a drink couldn’t very well take their children, so ‘going for a walk’ was a recognised pastime. And all the time we were walking we would listen to stories of what had happened where and when. We learnt that most place names had a reason for being so called, that there really had been a gallows on Gallows Hill at Hillcrest. It was the gallows for Pontefract, replacing one that had been in a different location. It is thought that the site of Pontefract gallows was moved during the Middle Ages. There are four charters from the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries which make reference to the site as being to the north of the town of Pontefract. The details given are not sufficient to identify the site or to know with any accuracy whether one or two gallows are involved. One, dated around 1190, mentions land in the fields of Pontefract ‘which lie between Ralph’s Cross and the thieves’ gallows’. (It has been suggested that the name ‘Ralph’s Cross’ refers to Ralph Grammaticus, the holder of Knottingley at the time of the Domesday Survey). A portion of the decorated cross shaft was found in an outbuilding during the demolition of a barn at Bubwith Farm and another was found in Darrington Church. They are hewn from grey ashlar limestone and on one is depicted a figure on a horse whilst the other shows a seated figure. These fragments are now in Pontefract Museum. They have been carbon-dated to the eleventh century. Ralph’s Cross is now known as Stump Cross. It is situated not far from the Nevison Inn in the direction of Ferrybridge. Not all place names that incorporate the word ‘cross’ imply a religious connection. Some crosses were boundary markers – of towns or parishes. In cases where the upper part of the cross shaft was missing, through destruction or general wear and tear, the cross would become known as ‘stump cross’.The gallows is believed to have been on St. Thomas’ Hill where St. Thomas’ Chapel, which was erected at the site of the execution of Thomas of Lancaster, stood. The fourth charter, dated around 1200, refers to land which ‘lies near the gallows (furce) next the way (via) which leads to Fryston’. This is thought to be the area that is still known as

Barbara Stewart © 25/05/2023 1

Gallows Hill at Townville. It is not known which road is meant as being the one to Fryston but from the direction of All Saints Church, Pontefract, along Bondgate,Water Lane, Mill Hill, and Holmfield Lane then up Fryston Lane was one way that led to Fryston. The old Roman road that passes through Monkhill and is now known as Spittal Hardwick Lane skirts close by the now concealed St. Ives’ Well and continues up Old Sheepwalk Lane (now known as Gypsy Lane). Northward along what is now Poplar Avenue and, until the area became built up, continued in a straight line towards the River Aire at New Fryston. A bridle path halfway along Poplar Avenue runs eastwards to Gallows Hill. The moving of the gallows site to a position further away from the township and the Cluniac Priory of St. John would have become necessary as the town grew and prospered. Between St. Thomas’ Hill and the castle is the site of the Cluniac Priory of St. John which was founded by Robert de Lacy, son of Ilbert, around the year 1090. The Priory owned large tracts of land and properties in various parts of Yorkshire. Bequests of many kinds enlarged the Priory’s already extensive acreage and tithes and revenues increased its wealth. For example, at some time between 1154 and 1158 the income from the ferry at Castleford was granted to the Priory by Henry de Lacy. In 1244 the Prior was named Dalmatius. Hugh, Fulk, William, these are some of the names of the once powerful priors who are long forgotten. Only the ghostly remnants of foundation stones lie beneath a veil of green. The precise location of the Priory was unknown until 1932 when the field, known both as Robson’s Field and The Grange, was being prepared for use as a recreation ground. The site belonged to Pontefract Corporation and the venture was part of a job creation enterprise. A professor from Leeds University and Sir Charles Peers, the Chief Inspector of Ancient Monuments, were called in when the foundations of buildings were exposed. They stated that the foundations were those of an octagonal chapter house. Suggestions were made that the site could be investigated as part of the work-creation project, but the Unemployment Grants Committee refused funding. The foundations were re-buried under loads of refuse and soil. The local branch of the Workers Educational Association in co-operation with the Extra-mural Department of Leeds University began a partial excavation in 1957. Mill Dam Lane, Ferrybridge Road, Box Lane and Bondgate form the boundaries of the field. From the bumpy, overgrown northern side the field slopes downward. A steep six feet high bank bisects the field and the two lower terraces are fairly flat and end some six feet above a stream. The cloisters are situated on the upper terrace and the foundations of the church are under the overgrown northern part. Many interesting artefacts were found. Pottery, glass and metal objects such as coins and buckles. Skeletons, with and without lead shrouds were discovered. It is known that there was a chapel in Grange Field around the year 1645. Robert de Lacy gave the church of All Saints, which was recorded in the Domesday Survey of 1086, to the Priory. The partially ruined church that exists today was probably built around the beginning of the fourteenth century. Beneath Wilkinson’s Furniture Factory, on the opposite side of Mill Dam Lane to Grange Field, is the millpond. A hidden reminder that once a quite different activity took place there. St. Ive’s Well is situated on the Orchard Head side of Ridgedale Hill. It has been there for one thousand years at least. It is set several yards back from the main road at the top edge of a field known as ‘Sourbottoms. Unfortunately the well has been covered up and is no longer visible, the water having been drained across the field to the beck. The water flowed from a pipe into a shallow stone basin and has been a constant source of clean water that in earlier times was greatly relied upon by the local residents. The water


was reputed to have healing properties and people often filled bottles from the spring to take home. Mrs Beard, who lived in the house next to the spring, told me that whenever the water supply was cut off she was sure of being able to fill her bucket at the well. Some fifty years ago her father, Wilf Brookes, sent a sample of the water to Leeds University to be analysed. The results showed no particular mineral content – just clean, pure water. The purity and icy coldness of the water would be beneficial for soothing sore eyes and other ailments. Mr Beard, returning from Wembley in 1952, had such sore feet by the time he reached Pontefract that he took off his shoes and walked home from Monkhill Railway Station in his stocking feet. As soon as he reached home he went straight to the well to soak them in the frigid water. ‘The relief was marvellous’, he said. ‘Sourbottoms’ used to be owned by Mr Condor who lived in a caravan and built a kitchen and other essential facilities close by. He quarried sand from the area and a short railway track carried wagons to the edge of the cart road where the sand could be loaded onto carts that were pulled away by horses. When the quarrying ceased the field was left untouched until recent times. It is thought that the name ‘St. Ive’s’ is derived from St. Hiva/Heiu and was associated with early northern Christian conversions. North of St.Ive’s Well and Townville, behind Gallows Hill and the recreation ground lay Ferry Fryston. In the middle fifties a large housing estate and school complex was built there where previously it consisted of fields and woodland. At Ferry Fryston Mesolithic flints were found in a low-lying ploughed field. The flints included eight scrapers and three microliths. Because of the high proportion of scrapers found it is thought that the site may have been a base camp. Also in Ferry Fryston four Bronze Age burials were found, one associated with a cremation. The Ferry Fryston barrows, located as they are on the trans-Pennine route into the Aire and Calder valleys, suggest traders following a long established route may have constructed them. Building developments erased both of the barrows but crop marks in the vicinity reveal possible further barrows. The only Henge site so far discovered in West Yorkshire is at Ferrybridge. Although it has been levelled it shows as a crop mark. The Henge is opposite the 2,000-megawatt power station and the owners, Powergen, granted 330,000 towards the investigation. The Henge was unearthed in 1991 by West Yorkshire Archaeological Service. It is a circular earth construction and only the postholes remain to show where the wooden timbers would have been. The Henge was built around 4,000 years ago. The fact that Henges were usually associated with population of a considerable size suggests that the barrows and crop marks of Ferry Fryston may have formed part of a large settlement. Whilst preparations were being undertaken in the construction of the A1 (M) road works at the Holmfield Interchange near Ferrybridge, in 2003 an Iron Age chariot burial was discovered. Carbon dating on the bones of the skeleton suggests that the burial took place more than 2,000 years ago. Further investigation showed that the chariot was meant for the interment only and not normal usage. In 1086, at the time of the Domesday Survey, the hamlet of Ferry Fryston was recorded. Names both of people and places usually have a logical origin. Many surnames reflect occupations. During the Middle Ages harps and fiddles appear to have been popular in West Yorkshire. Players of these instruments were known as ‘the harper’ and ‘the crowther’ and these names gradually evolved into surnames. In 1366 a grant of land in Ferry Fryston was made to a tenant referred to as ‘Robert de Burcot of Fery, pyper’. The names Water Fryston and Fryston indicate a settlement of Frisians – Frisians’ tun. They were a trading people of Germanic origin, some of whom are known to have lived in York. They were expelled from that city in the year 773. During the Middle Ages the


river Aire was navigable by sea-going vessels only as far as Ferry Fryston. As there was also a ferry at that point it would have been an ideal place for trading people to settle. During building work at Ferry Fryston a few stone remains were found indicating that there had probably been two small buildings on the site. Charred grain indicated that one of the buildings might have been a barn. Roman pottery was found in V-shaped ditches. Some coins which were also found, together with the pottery, dated from the early second century to the late fourth century. Sometimes on our walks we’d go further than Holmfield; to Ferrybridge. Where at a much later date than that of our childhood walks, during the construction of the power stations, two eighth century spearheads were discovered. They may have been interred as grave-goods at a burial but it was not possible to be sure because no bones were detected. On the high ridge between Ferrybridge and Pontefract there used to be a windmill. It was called Wentcliffe Mill after the hill on which it stood. It was said that from the mill, on a clear day, it was possible to see York Minster. It is thought that Wentcliffe Mill may have been erected on the site of a much earlier one that is recorded in the Inquisition post mortem of Alice Haget in 1247.

Person Sheet

Name Alice Haget2698

Birth abt 1164, Wighill, Yorkshire, England2698

Father Bertram Haget (~1145-)

Spouses

1 William II de Friston 2698 Birth 1160, Friston, Yorkshire, England2698

Father Robert de Friston (~1135-)

Children Alice (1186-1247)

Last Modified 6 Sep 2002 Created 2 Dec 2007 by Reunion for Macintosh

Our favourite walk though, was past the cottages, the first one of which had been a Dame School, and through the water meadows beside the beck – the shallow trickling beck calling to us to take off our shoes and paddle and wiggle our toes in the soft black mud at its edge. Paddling was not allowed on Sundays, too indecorous, so we had to content ourselves with imaginings and promises of what we’d do on future occasions. We’d follow the beck as far as the stone church of St. Andrews where our parents were married then through the Willow Garth and across the wooden bridge to Ferrybridge. We’d stand in one of the embrasures of the stone bridge across the River Aire and gaze down at the black water.


http://www.childsfamily.com/reunion/PS58/PS58_086.HTM


http://www.childsfamily.com/reunion/WC_SRC.HTM#C2698






Walking home from Ferrybridge, pussy willow twigs or buttercups, depending on the season, clutched in my hot little hands, seemed a long way to me but I never thought of that when we were strolling along on the outward journey. It was only when we turned in Ferrybridge Square with its tall old houses and pubs that I would realise that it was all uphill to home. There were personal connections with Holmfield so far as our parents were concerned. They had married on Easter Monday, April 1929, in the old church of St. Andrews. The one that was moved, stone by marked stone, to be re-erected on a new site in Ferrybridge and re-consecrated in 1952. Rescued from the marsh to make way for the giant cooling towers of the Power Station. Now it stands safe and secure on sturdy foundations amidst the houses of its parishioners. In those days it stood alone. Slowly sinking into the swampy ground. Isolated with its ancient tilting tombstones at the junction of Holmfields meadows and the Willow Garth. A wooden bridge across the beck linked the churchyard with the lane from Ferrybridge. The wedding party could have approached it from a different direction. Through the water meadows where the trees which fringed the beck and clustered in copses on the drier ground would be bursting into new growth. Avoiding the swampy areas that they knew so well they would arrive at the small square-towered church with its neatly railed churchyard and enter through the arched doorway of the porch. On the coldest days of the year a fire was lit beneath the church, its flames visible through the gratings in the floor of the aisle. The church of St. Andrew was built at Ferry Fryston around the year 1170; later the Saxon church at Wheldale (reputedly situated on or near the site of the ruined and now vanished Wheldale Farm) was used as a chapel of ease. Fryston, Queldale and Ferry Fryston were ancient manors of the Lacy fee. Ferrybridge was a much newer village and was incorporated with the above in the parish of Ferry Fryston. Ferry Fryston was subinfeudated by Ilbert de Lacy to a man named Hamelin. He built a water mill near the Church of St. Andrew. It was known for several centuries as ‘Hamelin’s Mill’. Early in 1929 after her mother died my mother had left her hometown of Jarrow. She stayed with her sister, Leah, at Holmfield Cottages. The cottages stood in a terrace of five and were approached along a rough path leading from the direction of Hobman’s farm that stood on the corner of Stranglands Lane and Holmfields Lane. After passing a large old barn the path ended at the back gardens so everyone used their back doors. The front doors were difficult to reach, facing as they did towards Nevison and entailing the crossing of neighbouring front gardens to reach the ones in the middle. At the Ferrybridge end of the terrace was a large field, divided by narrow paths into five big gardens, the whole surrounded by hedges. Even the most prolific gardeners amongst the cottagers only cultivated about half of their land, so generously sized were the plots. On the uncultivated part were hen huts, the hens roaming freely in the field. Auntie Leah lived in the middle cottage and in their front garden Uncle Cyril (who worked at Glasshoughton Colliery as an underground fitter) erected a greenhouse. With the produce from the garden and greenhouse, the eggs and occasional hen, not to mention one of the ducks, they were better provided for than many. The rooms in the cottages were quite large. A big kitchen, with beneath the window a stone sink which was white on the inside, brown on the outside, a table and two chairs against the wall and a hooky rug. Two easy chairs, one a rocker, stood either side of the black leaded kitchen range with its high over-mantel studded with candlesticks, tea caddy and alarm clock. There was an oven at one side of the fire and a boiler at the other which was always kept full of water. The only water in the cottage apart from an enormous earthenware jug which was kept for coolness on a table at the top of the cellar head.


The low door to the cellar led out of the kitchen down steep steps to the dark place where coal was kept. Another flight of stairs led upward between the kitchen and living room to the two bedrooms. There was no bathroom, the kitchen became the bathroom when the tin bath was brought inside, filled from the fireside boiler and put to use in front of a blazing fire. The fireplace in the living room was also black leaded, with a fancy tiled panel and hearth. A brass fender reflected the firelight. Against the wall stood a black piano. There was no such thing as entertainment at the flick of a switch, only the kind you provided for yourselves. Uncle Cyril was a good pianist and could make the cottage ring with melody. There was no piped water, no electricity, and no gas. Just the soft light of oil lamps and candles once it got dark and the cosy glow from the fire. Water had to be pumped from the well. There was only one well and it was sunk in the front garden of the middle cottage. It took a lot of arm-aching effort to raise the water and as soon as the creak of the pump handle was heard people dashed from the neighbouring cottages with buckets and jugs to take advantage of the flow. Whenever the pump broke down it was left until Uncle Cyril arrived home from work and he would have to fasten two stepladders together in order to climb down and repair the mechanism. The summer of the General Strike in 1926 was very hot and dry. Dixon’s well, with its tall slender water wheel, at the big house (Holmfields Farm which once belonged to the Fryston Hall Estate) ran dry. So did the one at the farm on the corner of Holmfields Lane. The one at the cottages was very deep and continued to provide water for the tenants as well as those whose wells had failed. The cottages were owned by a Castleford man, Street, I think his name was, and the weekly rent was five shillings. Uncle Cyril walked to Glasshoughton Colliery and back each day. Auntie Leah walked up the narrow twisting hill; through Townville to Airedale to catch a bus into Castleford, then all the way back from Airedale with her shopping. The first buses to run between Ferrybridge and Castleford were owned by Newton and Ward and made some aspects of life for the people of Holmfields much easier. The cottage children went to school in Ferrybridge – a long walk but unavoidable. One morning in the 1920’s two of the children were making the lonely walk together when they discovered a dead woman lying head down in a ditch. ‘A woman with red hair’ remembers my cousin Audrey who was one of those children. ‘It haunted me for a long time’ she said. The children from the cottages had fewer toys and other possessions than today’s children but they had acres of meadow to play in and trees to climb. A shallow beck rippled under the main road from one side to the other on its way to the church and the River Aire. The tunnel underneath the road was an ever-present attraction to the boys who would dare each other to go through. Crouching in the darkness they would splash about blindly. Brushing against the slimy walls, feeling the matted cobwebs sticking to their faces and sending the rats squeaking into the daylight. Through the woods and under the barbed wire were the vast fields that surrounded Fryston Hall. There the children would go, peering through dusty windows and squeezing their way through gaps to get into the Hall itself. Disturbing the hens that had made it their home and sending them squawking into corners while they continued their explorations. The cellars were creepy with their tiled shelves, shadows and echoes. Fryston Hall had been the home of the Monckton Milnes family and was destined to serve as a quarry for the building of Holy Cross Church in Airedale but at that time was just an empty shell.


Until the stone church of Holy Cross was built the worshipers used a wooden building that had been brought from its site opposite Castleford Rugby Ground on Wheldon Road to Burkhill. This structure was the Church of St Mary and had been dedicated in December 1914. In 1930 it was replaced by a wooden structure once in use at Ashton Road School. In 1931 a picnic was held at Fryston Hall followed by a procession round the building and a short service in the old ballroom. God’s blessing on the project was prayed for. The same week demolition commenced. In February 1932 the manager of a generous colliery cut the first sod and the task of digging the foundations commenced. In October of the same year the vicar, Father Daly, unofficially laid the first stone. Thenceforth the building grew upward at the rate of a foot a month. The newly erected church was consecrated at 3.00 pm on the fourteenth July 1934.The now defunct wooden structure was then used by the Roman Catholics until the mid-fifties when their new Church of St Edmunds was built. Sadly, St Edmund’s closed in 2009. A Saxon church is mentioned in the Doomsday Book as being at Queldale (Wheldale). It is thought to have been near the site of Wheldale Farm. In 1332 a Deed of Endowment made by Sir Henry Vavasour to the Vicar’s Choral of York makes reference to it as a Chapel of Ease where an Anchorite resided. In 1739 Lady Elizabeth Hastings, of Ledston Hall, bequeathed all her lands and hereditaments in Queldale to Queen’s College Oxford with various conditions attached. The church of St Peter at Fryston which was built in 1896 to serve the families of the miners who arrived, many from Staffordshire, to work in the new colliery, was joined with the new Holy Cross Church. In 1991 shortly after the colliery closed, the church was demolished. The War Memorial still remains in the grounds of the cemetery. The local mining community built Holy Cross Church and the church was consecrated on the fourteenth of July 1934. The church is enhanced by many of the beautiful columns and artefacts taken from the Hall. My father used to tell me that when he was a boy living in New Fryston village his maternal grandmother, Alma Bertha Saunders, lived at the laundry house belonging to the Hall at Water Fryston. This house was situated close to the farmhouse, stables and barns. During the First World War some of the boys from Fryston Village used to help to break-in the horses which were trained at the Hall farm and which were destined for Army service in France. In the wood near the hall was a stone coffin that had been unearthed by two men who were preparing the land for liquorice beds in a field known as Paper Mill Field on the Fryston Estate. The land was at the time being used by James Brook. This find took place on the 23rd March 1522. Inside the stone coffin was a large skeleton. The skull, with perfect teeth, was placed between the thighbones. A stone was lying where the head should have been. The six foot five inches long coffin is estimated to weigh a ton and a half. In the latter part of the nineteenth century the coffin had been transferred to Fryston Hall and remained there for many years. Eventually it was removed to the grounds of Pontefract Castle. The coffin is believed to be of Roman origin although it was once thought to have contained the relics of Thomas, Earl of Lancaster. Thomas had acquired the honour of Pontefract when he married, in 1294, Alice de Lacy whose father settled his lands and properties on the couple. Thomas was beheaded on the orders of King Edward the Second. Thomas and other nobles had been responsible for the beheading of Piers Gaveston, one of the King’s favourites and were involved in a revolt against the King. The king took possession of the castle that had been willed to Thomas’s brother, Henry, but after the gruesome murder of Edward at Berkeley Castle the property was restored to Henry by Edward the Third. The first dukedom to be awarded in Britain was to Henry and he became Duke of Lancaster. When his son died without male heirs his daughter, Blanche inherited his estates. Her husband, John of


Gaunt, the fourth son of Edward the Third, then became the Duke of Lancaster. When Blanche died of the plague John married Isabel of Castile, the daughter of Pedro the Cruel. The duke fought in Spain for his wife’s father. The walled town of Ribadavia in Galicia, a region of northwestern Spain was one that he captured. When the Duke of Lancaster left for England a small band of soldiers remained. These men married and integrated into the population. Later their descendants were instrumental in introducing the culture of wine production into Portugal Descendants of the illegitimate (eventually legitimised) children of John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford (who later became his third wife) became kings of England. Margaret, the granddaughter of their son John Beaufort, was the mother of Henry the Seventh. Their daughter Joan was the grandmother of Edward the fourth and Richard the Third. The Honour, with Pontefract castle, remains part of the Duchy of Lancaster to this day. Over the years the local people began to venerate Thomas as a saint and attributed many miraculous ‘cures’ to him. This seems strange, as he was disliked during his lifetime by most of the populace. Although he was never officially canonised he became known as St. Thomas. A chapel was erected close to the place of his execution. It is recorded that a bequest was made in 1401 to the Guild of St. Thomas in Pontefract that stipulated that a stone cross was to be erected in place of the existing wooden one. The site was described as being ‘towards St. Thomas’s Hill (Mons Beati Thomae) next to the way which descends towards Bondgate. This instruction pinpoints the site of St. Thomas’s chapel to the area of what is now called Mill Lane, Water Lane and Cobbler’s Lane. There was a windmill on St.Thomas’s Hill that had been converted into a house. It was named after the hill and was one of the landmarks we looked out for on our walks. Nearby was Dandy Mill that still stands, near the railway embankment behind the Prince of Wales Working Men’s Club. This mill with its tower of tarred brick bears the inscription ‘Boreas Union Mill 1819’ which probably refers to the fact that it was a co-operative mill belonging to several farmers. In Greek mythology Boreas is the name given to the purple winged god of winter and the north wind. In the early nineteenth century, in the five miles between Pontefract and Kellingley there used to be eight mills. After my parents married they moved into a council house in Wheatcroft, Airedale that backed on to a quarry. The quarry is now filled in and is the site of a children’s playground. Dad’s parents lived round the corner in Fryston Road. Granddad was a miner at Wheldale Colliery and dad worked in the fitting shop at Fryston. At the time my brother was born, in 1930, a scarlet fever epidemic was raging and both mother and baby became infected. Our mother was very ill but Doctor Sloan pulled her through. He was the colliery doctor at Fryston where the men paid a few pence weekly to cover for doctor’s fees for themselves and their dependants. This was a good scheme in the days before the National Health Service but not all collieries ran such a scheme. Glass Houghton, for instance, did not. Scarlet fever, diphtheria, measles and whooping cough; all were serious diseases that swept with a dreaded regularity throughout the community. There were no antibiotics to use in those days and each epidemic ran its course, emptying the schools, filling the Fever Hospital and sometimes graves.Our house in Wheatcroft was conveniently close to a parade of shops. The shop at the end next to the council houses was an off-license belonging to John Smith’s Brewery. A brother and sister named Pawson managed it. Next-door was the Post Office-cum-confectionary shop, known locally as ‘The Bun Shop’, which belonged to Johnson’s. A young man rode round the neighbourhood on a ‘stop-me-and-buy-one’ type of bicycle


from which he sold and delivered bread and cakes. Adjoining the Post Office was a Barber Shop belonging to Jack Davis. The end shop was Stephenson’s Newsagents that sold an interesting variety of items as well as the usual newspapers and periodicals. In 1934, when I was eighteen months old, we left Airedale and went to live in Sheepwalk Lane, Townville. It was there of course that all the things that I remember happening took place. We lived in a three-bed roomed, semi-detached Edwardian house behind which was a large garden, half an acre, always kept well cultivated by my father. Immediately behind the house were two flower beds, in one of which grew a white flowering cherry tree. Beautiful in spring and lots of cherries in summer but the birds usually found them before we did. Behind the beds was a big square lawn then halfway down the garden there were three greenhouses. In the bottom one was a grapevine, its sprawling tendrils almost obscuring the glass roof. In the top two Dad grew tomatoes. Each year the old soil had to be removed, painstakingly, wheelbarrow-by-wheelbarrow, then fresh soil dug from the bottom end of the garden was spread in the greenhouses ready for the new plants. Adjoining the lower greenhouse was a brick outhouse that a previous occupant had used as a wash place. It was easy to tell that the lady of the house had had a washerwoman. No one would want to work voluntarily possing and mangling down there in the depths of winter. Tall hedges of privet and hawthorn enclosed the whole plot of land. There were fruit trees in the lower part of the garden and a wooden shed complete with workbench and tools. At the front of the house a holly tree and an enormous sycamore flanked a wooden gate. The piece of garden that fronted the road faced north and the grass there grew lush and dank. The raised flowerbed that ran along the width of the house was prettier. It caught the rays of the early morning sun and was home to laburnum trees and roses, a glossy bank of blue starred periwinkle and lost tennis balls. That was where I loved to play at ‘doubly’, throwing two balls rhythmically against the brickwork of the house for hours on end. At the corner of the house, under the fall pipe leading from the gutter was an old aluminium peggy tub, our answer to a rain barrel. Mother said that her mother always washed her hair in rainwater because it was so soft. It was true that Grandma Bucknall’s hair had always been pretty, rippling in soft waves back from her face. I never tried it though. Our barrel’s surface always had a coating of soot that put me off. Maybe that’s why my hair was so uninteresting. When we are children we take our parents or guardians for granted. They are there but we do not really look at them. They exist to care for us and tell us what to do but we often do not see them as individuals. Therefore I have to look at old photographs to find out what my parents looked like when they were in their early thirties. My father was five feet eight inches tall and of stocky build. His hair was black and curly and his eyes blue. He was a keen gardener and in old photographs he is depicted wearing his gardening clothes, usually holding a pair of hedge cutting shears or some other tool. He was very strict with regard to general behaviour and a stickler for the correct usage of the English language. My mother was five feet three inches tall and slim of build. Her hair was a warm brown colour, naturally wavy and worn short with a side parting. Her eyes were large and brown and her nature placid and gentle. My brother Donald was born in 1930 and was three years older than me. His hair was dark brown and flopped in a fringe over his forehead. As he grew older his hair darkened and became very curly. His eyes were hazel and, like me, he had a fine crop of freckles whenever the sun shone. I was a plump child with straight brown hair that was cut short and parted down one side with a section caught up by a bow of ribbon on the other. How I longed for my hair to grow so it could be plaited. Or at least a fringe! But


that was never allowed, no doubt because it was easier to keep clean. In spite of its shortness I still caught nits and remember my mother combing painstakingly through my hair with a ‘nit comb’ and cracking the little beasts between her thumbnails. After this ritual my hair would be thoroughly washed with medicated soap. The whole process was repeated nightly until my hair was clean again My sister, Brenda, was born in 1940. She was a frail child and spent a great deal of time throughout her young years in and out of hospital. She was very thin with pale auburn hair and a complement of freckles to match Don’s and mine. She spent a lot of time convalescing at home and played quiet games sitting at her desk. In those days boys wore short trousers until they were about twelve or thirteen years old and it was a great day for them when they got their first pair of long trousers. Navy serge or grey flannel was the most common material used and usually they were home made. My mother had an ancient Singer sewing machine. She kept it in the bathroom, which may seem an unlikely place but the bathroom was large and the machine was ‘out of the way’. I’ve had many a Friday night bath lathering away to the accompaniment of the whirring wheel. Jumpers, plain and patterned, were mostly hand knitted, geometric designs being popular around that time. Girls wore dresses, skirts and blouses and pinafore dresses. They never wore trousers and tights were unknown. They wore liberty bodices over their vests and in winter, long black woollen stockings. I don’t know which was the worst. Wearing knee socks inside hard-topped Wellington boots that rubbed against the inside of my knees and chapped them to a raw redness, or wearing the long black stockings that were held up by garters. Elastic garters, made by my mother to encircle loosely the tops of my legs. ‘Mustn’t be too tight or they’ll cause varicose veins’, she would declare, measuring them round my leg and sliding her finger underneath the elastic. They were useless. I’d have to stop every few yards or so on my way home from school to tug the concertinaed stockings back into place. The bane of my life - those black stockings! My first weeks at school coincided with a scarlet fever epidemic and I was duly whisked off to the Fever Hospital in Chequerfield for a prolonged stay. I can remember very little about those six weeks apart from drinking out of a blue-rimmed enamel cup and hearing a nurse say, ‘Matron’s gone to see the King and Queen’. That Royal visit, by George V and Queen Elizabeth took place in October 1937. Around this time I also began to go to the Methodist Sunday School at the chapel a few doors from our house. ‘Jesus is watching you wherever you are and whatever you are doing’, I learnt. That bothered me a lot at times and when I thought about it I would close my eyes tightly so that he couldn’t see me. It was at Sunday School whilst singing the lovely, timeless hymns that I first realised that in whatever way I was to earn my living it would not be with my singing voice! ‘Don’t eat too much dinner’, warned my brother on the day of the Sunday School party, ‘or you won’t be able to eat any tea’. We sat with scrubbed faces at the long trestle tables and were introduced to fish paste sandwiches and red jelly and thought that we were at a banquet. Sometimes, in the summer, we would make little holes in the corners of the back lawn and play at putting. We would use an ancient set of golf clubs left behind by Archie, a lodger who had joined the Royal Air Force at the outbreak of the Second World War and had been killed when his plane crashed into an electricity pylon at Kinloss, Scotland. Archie McKenzie was Scottish; he had come to Castleford to find work because his hometown of Kingussie was in the Highlands and far from any industry. He was nineteen when he was killed in the early years of the war.


The golf clubs were heavy and apt to hurt if you stopped a swing with your ankles. The balls were so worn that the thin rubber bands with which they were made pulled off in long stretchy strands. There was a summerhouse at one corner of the lawn. It was open fronted and painted green. I always thought that it would make a lovely playhouse but never got the chance to put it the test because it was always full of coal. Still, its outside wall was useful for chalking on and usually wore a permanent white circle marked ‘den’. Often on Saturdays or during the summer holidays Don would sit, with our cousin Keith, on the green painted wooden gate, obscuring with their short-trousered legs the nameplate, ‘Dunachton’. Each clutching a grubby notebook and pencil they would inscribe the numbers of passing vehicles. Sometimes they would sit for a long time just gazing at the empty road, waiting. In one of the long drawers in the huge old-fashioned mahogany chest-of-drawers in our parents’ bedroom were two leather cases, each containing a telescope. They were very old and had been brought from Jarrow when our mother came to live in Yorkshire. Besides being old they weren’t much use either. At least I could never see anything through them. But we’d take them down the garden and climb up on to the roof of the brick outhouse and pretend that we could see right over to Pontefract and watch the races or tell the time on the clock of St. Giles’ Church tower. The Water Tower on Pontefract Park hill was another landmark that we focussed on. It was completed in 1929 and had a capacity of 100,000 gallons. Its overall height was eighty-one and a half feet above ground level so that was one object that we could hardly miss seeing. Even so, I’m sure we saw far more with the naked eye! Sometimes our ‘Geordie’ cousins would come to visit, with their parents. Uncle George liked to come to Yorkshire in St. Leger week, before he lost his sight as a result of being gassed years earlier in the First World War that is, and they would stay down the road at our aunt’s house. There would be one time during their visit when Uncle George would send the older boys across the road to Albert Hall’s shop to get change – all in pennies. He’d wait until we were all at fever pitch on the back lawn then throw the coins into the air. ‘Hoy oot! Scramble! He’d shout. My father worked at Fryston Colliery, in the fitting shop, and every few weeks a concessionary load of coal was delivered to the house and duly shovelled into the summerhouse. This meant that we were able to have good fires in the kitchen and living room – the front room was rarely used. Maybe once a year at Christmas when relatives visited for an annual get-together. During cold spells a trip upstairs was like leaving the temperate zone for the arctic. Often, when we slid reluctantly out of a warm bed on winter mornings and pulled the curtain aside to peep out we would find our view obscured by the thick frost covering the windowpanes. Densely patterned ferns and flowers would remain on the glass until the temperature rose again. There were fireplaces in two of the bedrooms but the fires were never lit – only if someone was ill. Then it was a joy just to snuggle down in bed, forget all about school and its attendant worries and give in to the luxury of soft firelight licking against the shadowy walls Sometimes, though, the feeling of security was breached when, waking from a fitful sleep, the shadows danced menacingly as though savage horsemen galloped around the perimeter of the house seeking an entry. Visiting adults were an unknown quantity and I was afraid and shy of them.’ Here’s Doctor Sloan come to see you’. My mother would say. And I would slide down the bed and pull the blankets over my head. One couple who came to visit, not very often I’m glad to say although I’m sure that they were really very kind, would let their false teeth drop loose. Huge white fangs embedded in impossibly red gums. I used to be petrified! I


don’t know what Don made of it, he was older than me and perhaps saw their teeth in a different light. Whatever light I saw them in they were horrible and I would dive behind the sofa to hide. When we were quite small and Christmas-time was approaching we were taken to Leeds. A visit to see Santa in Lewis’s which I anticipated with delight and dreaded at the same time. Dreaded because I was always sick on the bus but looked forward to just the same because a trip to Leeds was an adventure. One year an added attraction was a ride on a stick of rock. My brother Don was lifted up onto the front of the shiny pink ride then my cousin Keith was seated behind him. According to our usual pecking order I was stuck on at the back. No sooner had the ride started rocking than the back end fell off and I found myself recovering in the First Aid room. Being a girl and the youngest I was used to being the tail end of everything. In order to be ‘accepted’ I was prepared to ‘stick my neck out’ more than my instinct told me was wise. So I was the one who tore her clothes and spoilt them with indelible stains such as tar and oil. It was no surprise either that I was the one who plunged ankle deep in the boggy mud at the side of Benny’s Beck when told that the bright green grass was ‘fairy grass’ and especially soft. It was! Fortunately the beck ran through one of our Uncle Harry’s fields and I was able to go to the farmhouse where Auntie Beryl took charge of the situation.‘Take those sandals off and wash your feet while I see what I can find’, she instructed.Struggling with the wet buckles I dropped the black objects outside the back door and hopped inside. Whilst I was standing on one leg with the other propped up on the edge of the old brownstone sink, cleaning the mud out of my toenails, Auntie Beryl rummaged upstairs for a pair of tennis shoes left behind by one of the Land Army girls. They were about four sizes too big for me but it was infinitely better than having to trudge up the Old Roman Road in my soggy mud caked sandals. I knew what my mother would say when I reached home.‘Won’t you ever learn to keep clean?’ When it snowed – and we did have heavy snowfalls in the early Forties – drifts would form as high as the summerhouse in the angle between it and the hedge. We couldn’t wait to get outside and actually ‘handle’ it. Don with his balaclava and me with my pixie bonnet, bursting with eagerness and well muffled up we’d dash outdoors and plunge our old-sock-mittened hands into the icy whiteness. Giant snowballs. Snow-bricked walls and igloos, there was no end to our ambition. Our Dad made a sledge for Don. Built in his usual manner – for strength and durability – it was far too heavy on its iron runners and sank deeply into all but the most frosted snow. We would have fared better with a plastic sack but plastic hadn’t been invented then! Across the road and a bit further down was a small shop. The young man who lived there with his parents was called Albert. That was where we spent our pocket money, if and when we had any. Behind the shop was the recreation ground, partially enclosed by iron railings, and that was where the swings were. Swings, Box, Zigzag and Ocean Wave. We queued impatiently until the caretaker unlocked the gate. There was always a little crowd of children waiting for that moment and once opened it was a mad dash to the far corner where the swings were. Bad luck if you were too slow! There was a cricket pavilion and a bowling green, the football field and the ‘trenches’. The ‘trenches’ had been dug out and were used by the local Home Guard for practise in repelling the enemy. I bet ‘Dad’s Army’ could have picked up a tip or two from them!My first memory of the ‘rec’ is of me sitting on a table in the cricket pavilion being fitted for a gas mask when the threat of war hung over all our heads. I can still smell the rubber and feel the tight mask clinging round my face with suffocating pressure. Later, when war was finally declared, I can remember the fear that came whenever I was


awakened from sleep because the Air Raid sirens were blowing. I would drag on my clothes and run, with the others, to the shelter. Teeth chattering from fear and cold I would sit in the damp earthy-smelling place looking at the mottled metal walls and draught-driven candle flame. We were fortunate that all the bombers flew overhead without unloading their cargoes although there were one or two occasions when bombs fell in the area. There was the night in August 1942 when High Explosive Incendiary bombs were dropped on Ewbanks Liquorice Works. Several sailors from the Naval Training base at the bottom of Baghill ran to help the police and firewatchers when they saw the flames. One sailor, seeing an unexploded bomb leaning against the wall, picked it up, pushed it up his jumper and dashed into the office. It takes no imagination to guess how quickly the office emptied! A plan crashed in Morrison’s field at Engine House Farm – one of ours. I can’t remember any details about it but the boys of the neighbourhood swarmed around collecting souvenirs. When it became apparent that our area wasn’t on the ‘hit list’ we often ignored the warning sirens and just snuggled further beneath the bedclothes when we heard the screeching sound. The only time I went near the shelter then was when I made mud-pies and ‘baked’ them in the gap between the shelter door and the corrugated roof. When I was older I joined the crowd that used the ‘rec’ as meeting place and playground. Summer days always seemed long and hot. The warm air was heavy with the buzzing of bees and other tiny insects as we ran carelessly across the crisp dry grass to the play area with its enclosing spiked railings. (How did they escape being taken for scrap to help the war effort? The school railings had been. Of course, they didn’t need railings to keep us out of school!) This was our own small world where friends and enemies met on common ground and school could be forgotten for a while. School with its multiplication tables and strict teachers – some heavy handed with palm and ruler. Getting a whack on the palm of your hand because you got your sums wrong didn’t help you to work out why. The classrooms, where in winter we sat and shivered, huddled into our coats, heating turned off to conserve fuel. Where we wrote in pencil in our exercise books then weeks later turned them upside down and re-used the smudgy paper with pen and ink. What a pleasure when the twice-filled book was turned in for salvage and replaced by a new one with clean smooth paper. Where reprieve from lessons was heralded by the sound of a whistle summoning us to the playground and a practise descent into the air-raid shelters. Creeping single file along the zigzag tunnel lit by Kelly lamps and smelling of dank earth. Hearing Mr Cranswick, the Headmaster, call, ‘sit down and tuck your toes in!’ I loved writing and history. In fact I enjoyed most subjects except maths and sewing. I wasn’t much good at needlework. I stitched and unpicked so many times that the yellow flannelette knickers took on a greyish tinge. After a long struggle I managed to complete the task but I never wore them. No doubt they ended up as dusters! Periodically the ‘nit nurse’ would visit the school. She had ginger hair and wore a buttoned-through overall. She would take hold of a clump of hair on either side of your head, yank it upwards and pull. I think she was trying to shake them out. After each of her visits there would be a rash of little girls with short strong-smelling hair and boys with heads ‘shaved down to the wood’ apart from a tuft jutting up from their foreheads. Just enough for the teacher to grab hold of them by. I expect we all had nits in our turn. Certainly lots of us fell victim to the epidemic of scabies that swept the area on at least one occasion.


Once, during the war, we had to go, each in our turn, to the Headmaster’s room where we had our weight and height recorded and feet measured. If we were above a certain size we were allocated extra clothing coupons. That must have been the only time on record when it was felt advantageous to have big feet! Every morning the same few children, some five or six of them, would line up in front of the class. They were each given a spoonful of cod liver oil. I realised that they were being taken care of by the authorities but I pitied them each day. Not because they were undernourished or frail but because they had to swallow that nasty oil. So did we but in the privacy of home where we could indulge in groans and grimaces. The ’rec’ was our stamping ground and we went there at every opportunity. Sometimes the Airedale children would shout. ‘Townville snobs!’ at us but it was done in friendly rivalry and we all played together more or less in harmony. One or two, when they left school at fourteen would return to the ‘rec’ in an evening to strut and swank and generally show off their new status but this never cut any real ice with those still at school – they knew too much about the swankers’ pasts. During the summer we would play in the ‘rec’ until dusk. Winter evenings were short but often between the dusk and the ‘black-out’ time the boys would play hide and seek and levi-i-o in the football field. They discovered that if they unravelled the rusty wire rope that had once surrounded the pitch and now hung in broken lengths from the slanting posts, they could pull out the tarry rope that formed its inner core. They cut it into short pieces and lit the end with purloined matches, then held it, smouldering, in their cupped hands. The boys said it kept their hands warm. It didn’t. I tried it All it did was to make your hands black and smell evilly of coal tar. Besides, it was dangerous, as one boy found to his cost when he thought he had extinguished it and left it in his coat pocket in the school cloakroom. He was lucky and escaped with only a burnt hole in his coat. Sometimes we’d fasten a piece of butter muslin or an empty cloth flour bag to the end of a bamboo cane (filched out of the greenhouse), tie a bit of string round the top of a jam jar and go fishing for sticklebacks. We usually went to Benny’s Beck that ran through the fields of Blind Hardwick Farm. This farm belonged to our Uncle Harry so we always felt more privileged than the other kids who played there on the banks of the beck. We’d follow the beck back up the fields in our search for tiddlers. The banks were black from the coal dust that had washed down from the screens at Pontefract Prince of Wales Colliery. During the dry spells the black mud baked hard and was cracked into uneven square shapes. When it had been raining heavily the mud was deep and treacherous. Sometimes it was covered right to the water’s edge by soft vivid green grass. To get to the farm we’d go down Gypsy Lane which in those days was a narrow unmade path. There were a few houses on one side but these soon petered out and the pathway all but disappeared between hedges of hawthorn and elder and foaming cow parsley. There was a curve toward the end of the lane and then it ended precipitately at a tarmacced road. The Old Roman Road we called it, never by its official name of Spittal Hardwick Lane. I often wondered about those legionnaires who must have built the first road and the many people of different generations who had walked along it throughout the centuries. What did they think about? What were their feelings? Happy/ Sad? Worried? Vengeful or compassionate? Now when I look back I see the tired childish feet that were my own trudging back up the ancient road. Tagging on behind all those who had gone before. Invisible and forgotten except in my memory. Blind Hardwick Farm was an ancient building. Several hundred years old, built of stone with beamed ceilings and stone-flagged floors. The upper storey had once been


one long room that was later divided into several rooms separated by wooden panelling. Immediately in front of the west facing kitchen was a well that supplied water before modern facilities were installed. A brick outhouse in the stack yard housed the lavatory. Inside the whitewashed interior were two ‘thunder boxes’. The wooden lids were bleached white and situated side by side which made conversation easy for little girls who didn’t want their play interrupted. The farm had close associations with the hospital of St. Nicholas that had been founded by the monks sometime before the year 1090. The hospital was situated on the present Mill Dam Lane and a later one was built to house thirteen poor people. It was demolished in 1889 when a terrace of houses was built on the site. These are let to tenants of the Charities Fund. It is worthwhile remembering also that in the Middle Ages hospitals and hospices were built in order to provide shelter for travellers. This was especially the case with monastic orders and the Hospital of St. Nicholas was built adjoining the site of the Cluniac Monastery of St. John. In the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries the Manor of Methley was held by this hospital and its warden was granted free warren in his demesne lands of Castleford, Methley and (Spittal) Hardwick in 1328. Before the year 1129 this hospital had been granted into the custody of Pontefract Priory by Robert de Lacy 1. In 1294 Henry de Lacy, with the consent of the then warden of the hospital, William Nony, granted to the Prior and Convent of Pontefract 60s. Annual rent from Spitelherdwyk. The master of the hospital had to pay the money instead of the earlier rent that consisted of: - Twelve baskets of wheat, twenty-four baskets of oats and one mark. Now the M62 motorway bisects the fields that once formed Blind Hardwick Farm. The farm had been in the ownership of the Townend family for several generations before my Uncle Harry took over in the Forties. The beck, the correct name of which is Fryston Beck, is called ‘Benny’s’ after Ben Townend. During the 1926 strike he employed Irish navvies to dig out the coal that lay fairly close to the surface. They dug in front of the house until the water flooded the holes – then concentrated on the orchard at the side. Pricking melted tar bubbles at the edge of the road with a twig on a blistering hot day. Crushing a piece of orange peel (a rare luxury in those days of strict rationing) under your shoe heel in a puddle and watching the rainbow colours fan out to the water’s edge. Decorating the surface of your top using stumps of coloured chalk so that swirling patterns would appear when it was spinning. Envying your friends their ‘cossies’ when you too would like to cavort half naked in the sun but lacked the necessary garment. Hitching a lift on a coal cart, horse’s hoofs beating a soft tattoo on the unmade road and sliding off the tailboard with blackened legs and coal smudged knickers. Pushing a pram, complete with baby sister, up Fryston Lane at Holmfields searching for beechnuts among the fallen leaves, we would make our slow progress towards deserted Ferry Fryston Church. Standing amongst the tall weeds and tilted tombstones we would morbidly read out to one another the inscriptions on the lichened tombstones. Once, returning from such an excursion, one of us fell into the beck. Pulling her out, brand new Whitsuntide clothes sodden and dripping with black viscous mud, we begged some dry clothes from a sympathetic farmer’s wife and toiled back up the hill to make our explanations. The children who lived opposite and I spent most of our spare time in the ‘rec’. Their back fence had a little gate that opened directly on to the ‘rec’ field. Through it we would run. Bruce, their big black curly haired dog, bounding at our heels. On hot days we would take bread and jam sandwiches and a bottle of water and have a picnic near the ‘trenches’. In a shed down our garden was a copper, usually full of boiling pig potatoes. These were liberally splashed with purple dye to stop people using them for


human consumption Maybe, as children, we weren’t truly human. I do know we sometimes dipped into the boiling mess and filched a sample. They tasted horrible, like bonfire smoke, but we thought it was great! When the ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign started Uncle Harry brought his horse and plough and turned over the bottom of our garden to grow corn. It almost seemed for a while that we lived on a farm. In the garden next door were lots of apple trees. One large one – an eating apple – grew in the centre of the back lawn. The owner tied a bell to one of the branches so that she’d hear it ring if children sneaked in to pinch apples. Dad believed in feeding the soil. Big bags of bone meal and dried blood were used for the tomatoes. One year he bought three lorry loads of slurry from the sewage works and had it tipped at the end of the back lawn. The whole width of the garden was a mound of stinking black sludge. It was a blistering hot day and we escaped to the ‘rec’. Mother was trapped in the sweltering kitchen, jam making, with the sweet smell of simmering raspberries, the predatory wasps, and the foul stench of the slurry wafting through the open kitchen window. One good thing about the heat, it soon baked a crust over the offending mound and smothered the smell. Spring-cleaning was hard work. The furniture would be pushed to one side then the carpet square rolled up and dragged outside onto the lawn. We’d help to heave it over the clothesline then beat it with string-less tennis racquets. Clouds of dust would cover us and get in our eyes until, satisfied, our mother would say, ‘Put it flat on the grass’. Then we’d get down on our hands and knees and scrub at it. We used buckets of soapy water, making the lather from hard bars of Co-op Sunlight soap (there were no detergents in those days). After ceilings and walls had been dusted with the ‘cobweb’ brush, the floor scrubbed and paintwork washed, the carpet was put down in a different position so that the furniture would cover the threadbare bits. You just had to hope it hadn’t shrunk too much! After tea, in the winter, Mother would draw the blackout curtains and get out ‘the rug’. We’d each hold a corner of the sacking and peg away with a wooden progger. Pushing in the narrow strips of cloth to make a new clippy rug in time for Christmas. Each colour had a story to tell and as we pegged we’d say. ‘That’s my coat, or ‘Dad’s trousers’, as we filled in the simple design drawn in copying ink pencil. In the evenings we’d listen to the wireless. It would always be ‘Saturday Night Theatre’ and ‘Palm Court’ on Sundays. ‘The Man in Black’ was a favourite but we’d be ready to hide behind a cushion if it got too creepy. We laughed at Tommy Handley in I.T.M.A. and wouldn’t miss ‘Dick Barton, Special Agent’ for the world. When we’d been younger we’d be held spellbound each evening at 5.0 o’clock by ‘Children’s Hour’ with its Auntie Muriel, Uncle Mac and Romany. Our wireless needed accumulators and when they were running down we were sent, each in turn, to Willie Lowrie’s to get them re-charged. ‘Mind you don’t spill the acid on your coat’, we were warned. What about legs? During the summer months we loved to go to the swimming baths. My friends and I usually went to Castleford Baths. The bottom of the pool was rough and grey coloured and I’m sure that the rest of the facilities would be equally Spartan but that didn’t prevent us from having a wonderful time. Occasionally we would go to Pontefract Baths that were posh in comparison to Castleford. The pool there was lined with smooth blue tiles! When I was ten years old I joined the Girl Guides. Our troop met in the Hall at Airedale Senior School and I enjoyed every moment. Where my uniform came from I


can’t remember; it certainly wasn’t new. The brown leather belt had belonged to Auntie Mary, perhaps the uniform had too. I was in the Buttercup Patrol and a right fat little buttercup I must have been. In the summer of 1944 Lady Baden-Powell came to Castleford to open the new Girl Guide premises in Florence Street and all the Guides in the area turned out on parade. In August of that year we went to Hillam for a week’s camp. Only a few miles from home but it seemed like the other side of the world to me. It was my first and only time under canvas and I loved it. Sleeping five to a tent, washing in a tin bowl each morning behind the hessian screens and shivering in the cold. Even the primitive latrines were a novelty. Gathering sticks, eating round the campfire and singing songs as the twilight deepened into darkness. I suppose the fire would have to be doused before blackout time and perhaps it wasn’t all that dark when we sat round it but it still was a great adventure to a little girl on her first foray away from home. I still remember swimming in the tiny, rough outdoor pool at Hillam Hall and running back to the tents over the crisp grass to quickly pull on my clothes and getting stung by a wasp in the process. The place swarmed with wasps due to the prevalence of fruit trees. We, as well as the wasps, ate our fill of juicy plums and pears that week. We took advantage of the glut because fruit was rationed at that time and only readily available if you had your own trees. Before we left home for Guides we’d be given three pence. One penny was for subscription, two pence for a bag of chips to eat on the way home. Dark winter evenings with no street lamps or friendly lights shining from house windows. Just the blackness pressing in all around us and the tiny pinpoint of light shed by a hand torch. I carried a bicycle lamp, its glass screened by paper with a hole cut in the centre to limit the beam. Dangling the lamp from my finger ends and clutching the greasy paper of chips I’d gobble the hot delicacy as the vinegar ran up my wrist to soak into my coat cuff. Our troop eventually folded up, due to a contretemps between our Guider and the Vicar of Holy Cross. That left me a very disappointed Buttercup. It was around this period that we began to visit the cinema. The local cinema, near the Airedale Hotel, was called the ‘Empire’ but was known to all and sundry as ‘The Scrat’. We never called it ‘cinema’ of course, always ‘the Pictures’. The ‘Scrat’ was a small building with seats sloping upwards from the screen on one floor only. There were three prices. We always sat in the second-class seats. The ones at the back were too expensive and the ones at the front would ‘damage your eyes’. I think we paid two pence eachEach programme consisted of a ‘B’ film, a cartoon, the newsreel and the main picture – all in black and white of course. Sometimes there would be a ‘sing-a-long’ with the words shown on the screen and depicted by a small ‘ball’ bouncing from one syllable to the next. The unmelodious din must have been dreadful! Frequently the film would break or catch fire. The lights would go on, and the place erupt into a shouting, catcalling, rabble until it was repaired and the show could continue. When the performance was over we’d charge out through the doors into the daylight and run home re-enacting each scene on the way. It all seemed very real and exciting to us, an adventure which we lived through on Saturday afternoons, a break in our humdrum lives. Sometimes we talked about what we’d do when the war was over. When the lights could shine from windows without the restriction of blackout curtains. When we could go to the seaside. When sweets were no longer rationed. An often-discussed treat did become a reality. One hot August afternoon we heard the clang of a bell in the distance. A bell, previously only to be used when an invasion threatened; and caught a glimpse of a gaudy van. Someone shouted ‘ice-cream’ and we were off. First a mad dash indoors to beg some pennies, then a frenzied chase round the streets of Airedale. The sound of the


bell, like the flute of the Pied Piper, drew children from the streets and alleys as the van passed by, We ran and ran but distance gained when the van stopped was lost once it drove on. We despaired of ever reaching our goal but eventually ran it to earth near the Airedale Hotel. Gasping and sweating we parted with our hot coppers and carefully licked the gritty greyish substance. What a disappointment! Something the taste and texture of cardboard coated the inside of my mouth. Even spitting it out didn’t remove the horrid flavour. To think I’d waited five years for that! I remember my Aunt Mavis taking my brother and me to the Wesleyan Chapel in Airedale to a Harvest Festival Service. The weather was bad, the rain bucketing down, so we went by bus. Halfway down Fryston Road the bus slowed down and a policeman climbed aboard. He jumped off near the school to apprehend a man who was jogging along in his long johns. Running for a bet from the Airedale Hotel to the Magnet. Of course everyone on the bus was convulsed with laughter. One didn’t often witness a strip-tease act on Fryston Road. Especially on a wet day! When I was eleven years old I changed schools and started attending the Pontefract and District Girls’ High School, long gone and re-incarnated as a Sixth Form College. This meant travelling by bus. The red J. Bullock and Sons’ single deckers ran on our route. Often, as we passed through Monkhill, I would peer across the fields at the ruins of Old Hall. That was the name by which it was generally known although its correct name was ‘New Hall’. On November 23rd 1539 the Priory of St. John surrendered to King Henry VIII. In 1553 Edward VI granted the priory to George, Lord Talbot. George married Elizabeth Countess of Shrewsbury. In 1591 his heir, Edward, commissioned the Hall to be built. Robert Smythson, a famous architect of the time, is thought to have been the designer. It was similar in design to Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire, although not so large. The stone used in its construction was quarried from the neighbouring Cluniac Priory. In 1594 Edward was accused of plotting to murder his older brother, Gilbert, Earl of Shrewsbury. The method chosen was poisoned gloves. Edward’s accomplice, a man named Wood, was sentenced to have his ears cropped. Edward was excluded from inheriting from his mother’s estate. In 1616 Edward died and his three daughters inherited the estate. The youngest daughter married the Earl of Arundel whose son later became the Duke of Norfolk. Edwards’s niece inherited, Grace Pierpoint inherited later. In 1645 Parliamentarians seized the Hall in order to enable them to control the road to Ferrybridge. Nancy Dawes, daughter of the last Pierpoint to live at the Hall married into the Lascelles family in 1746. During the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century the hall was let to various tenants. The Hall was in ruins from 1812. It had been hoped that the building would be preserved as of historic interest but was considered by some to be unsafe so was demolished in 1966. It soon became obvious that attempts to knock it down were proving unsuccessful so explosives were used. Several windows in houses on the nearby Nevison Estate were broken but New Hall stood firm. Another attempt using larger amounts of explosive were used and the destruction of the building was completed. The outlines of the foundations were covered over for future reference and a new estate of houses has been built. We travelled on the ordinary service bus but the boys who attended the King’s School had a private bus. Their school was much older than ours, its origins stretching back to the twelfth century. The school is first mentioned in a Charter which was drawn-up around the year 1139-41 by Ilbert de Lacy the Second, son of Robert and brother to Henry, who founded Kirkstall Abbey. The Charter states that when Ilbert the First founded the Church of St. Clement he gave certain possessions to the Church. All these benefices he (Ilbert) confirmed by the authority of Archbishop Thomas, who dedicated


the church with the school of Kirkby and Pontefract’. An enquiry into the affairs of St. Nicholas’ Hospital in 1267 states that an allowance was made ‘to the scholars of Pontefract School, 40 loaves each week’. In 1548, in a warrant of the Commissioners under the Chantries Act referring to the continuance of payments to schoolmasters, the grammar school is again mentioned. ‘Which school is very necessary to continue’. The schoolmaster was allotted 59 shillings and two pence per annum. When Henry the Eighth dispersed the religious houses the grammar schools went also. During Edward the Sixth’s short reign many of the grammar schools were reinstated and named ‘King’s Schools’. In 1583 a decree was made for a new school building to be named Queen Elizabeth’s School. The building was situated in Northgate opposite the later site of the Militia Barracks. By the end of the eighteenth century the school had been vacated. A new charter dated 13 February 1792 re-instated the school as ‘The King’s School’. The Institution was stated to be for seventeen boys, all children of residents of Pontefract or Tanshelf. The king at that period was George the Third. The school closed in 1887 but in 1889 was re-opened in the recently vacated Militia Barracks. The school moved to its present premises on 14 July 1932. On V.E. Day I was taking part in a concert at Brotherton. Singing and dancing on a stage in a chapel or community hall, I can’t remember which. I was no dancer or singer but no doubt helped to swell the ranks of the little concert party. Because the war was near its end my mother had been able to dispense with some of the blackout curtains and she utilised the material to make me a costume for the concert. The circular skirt was trimmed round the hem with coloured rickrack braid and who was to know that it had once hung at a window? As we travelled home that evening by bus many celebratory bonfires lit up the sky. A few days later we all went to a ‘Street Party’ held in someone’s garden lower down Sheepwalk Lane, Clarks, I think it was. ‘Are you off down town on Sat’day?’ This was a common query when we were in our early teens. There was a poky little shop on the right hand side of Castleford Market Hall just inside the door under the clock. It was chock-a-block with sheet music and for a shilling I could buy the latest ‘pop’ song that I would later play on the piano – it would make a change from some of the dreary pieces set by my teacher. That was something that had to be saved up for. We’d dawdle round the Market taking it all in; the book stalls with their second-hand selections, the fruity smell of the greengrocers wares and the pungent odour of the fish on the white marble slabs. In the outside market we’d weave our way between the stalls amidst the colour and the noise. ‘Pan Annie’s’ raucous voice could be heard from one end of the market to another. ‘Look at this now’ she’d shriek. ‘Not ‘alf-a-crown, not two bob, not even one bob. A tanner!’ And she’d hold up some item already made indispensable in the minds of her audience by her clever spiel. Woolworth’s counters also got a careful going over. Some weeks our funds would run to a lipstick or other aid to glamour but often we just browsed. Going home on the bus we’d gloat over our purchases – even though it might only be a second hand copy of the ‘Girls’ Crystal’ bought from Brown’s book stall in the Market Hall. Occasionally, and it was only in the wintertime, I would go with a friend to the Theatre Royal in Albion Street Castleford to see a pantomime. The Theatre Royal looked seedy even in the dimmed lights and no doubt the performances often matched the surroundings but to us it was a magical world. It was made more fascinating by its unfamiliarity – the noise of the orchestra tuning up, the smell of dust and tangerines (this was after the war and imported fruit was no longer rationed) and the aura of sleaziness which permeated the building, stage, and, it sometimes seemed, the audience itself. Just entering the theatre propelled us into an environment that was completely


alien to the simple uneventful lives we led ourselves. Plus the enchantment of real live performers. Some Sunday afternoons my friend, Sheila and I visited Northgate Lodge, which was the former workhouse, in Pontefract. There we would meet up with Mr Gardiner, a religious minister, who took a group round some of the wards each week. A dreary, cheerless place it was, with dark paint and big black enclosed stoves in the centre of each long ward. Those inmates who were not bedridden sat listlessly on benches at the end of the wards. There was a small ancient organ that two of the inmates would carry for us from ward to ward. It was old and battered but the thumped-out tunes livened up the place for a while and requests for favourites came thick and fast. One old man had spent most of his life at sea and always asked for the sailors’ hymn, ‘Eternal Father, strong to save’. Another man had been a theatrical producer and no doubt had travelled widely throughout the country experiencing the gaiety and glitter of the stage with all its ups and downs. Now he was bedridden and ending his days in a gloomy ward. In 1930 the administration of the workhouse had reverted to the local council and it was classified as a poor law institution. In 1948 the National Health Service took over the administration and the change was dramatic. It was now known as Headlands Hospital and was transformed by light-coloured, bright paint and floral curtained screens into a much pleasanter place. There were comfortable easy chairs instead of hard benches and the atmosphere seemed different. The inmates and patients showed us each new improvement proudly and their pleasure was apparent. The stigma of ‘workhouse’ still clung to the building however and the older people of the district still viewed it with dread. The workhouse was erected in 1867 and demolished in 1989. The name of the land on which the workhouse stood was Paradise Gardens. Sometimes on Sunday evenings during the summer we’d go to Pontefract Park. It was a popular venue and we were sure to see people we knew. Round the lake we’d stroll, being chatted-up at times by the Poles and other foreigners who lived at the Displaced Persons’ Hostel on Knottingley Road. Or there’d be soldiers from the Barracks – on the lookout- not to mention the local lads. We’d dawdle our way round the lake, gossiping and giggling amongst all the others who were similarly employed. I clearly remember the summer of 1947 for the contrast between the girls who had bought the elegant ‘New Look’ clothes with their long swirling skirts, nipped-in waists and flared peplums and those of us who were still wearing our clothes at knee-length. The Barracks was built around the year 1878 as the headquarters for two well-known regiments, the 51st foot and the 65th foot. The Marquis of Rockingham formed the 51st Foot in 1755. It later changed its name to The King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry. In 1758 an act for the raising of the Militia of the West Riding was passed at a meeting in Pontefract. Each parish was required to provide a specified number of men who lived and worked locally. It was named the First West Yorkshire Militia. The Militia’s headquarters were near the cemetery at Headlands where they remained from 1851 until about 1878 when the new Barracks in Wakefield Road was completed. The old headquarters were taken over by the Grammar School. When the Grammar School moved to its new premises the buildings were used by an elementary school until the late 1980’s. The buildings were demolished in 1989 and Morrison’s Supermarket erected on the site. The crenellated gateway has been retained as a reminder of the West Riding Militia. One of the most famous personages connected with the regiment was Sir John Moore. He was gazetted into the 51st (Second Yorkshire West riding) when it was serving in Minorca. He saw active service with the regiment for twelve years then moved to Africa with the 82nd. He rejoined his old regiment in 1788 and gained command. His career was tremendously active and he was described as ‘the greatest


trainer of troops that the British Army has ever known’. In 1794, in Corsica, after a series of actions against the French, the regiment was involved in the siege of Calvi. John Moore was directing the attack when Captain Horatio Nelson, who was standing beside him, ‘lost the sight of an eye from stones thrown up by enemy round shot’. Sir John Moore was killed at La Corunna in Northern Spain on 16 January 1809 whilst directing the Regiment in their covering of the embarkation of the Army into waiting vessels. A memorial garden surrounds his tomb on a hilltop in La Corunna overlooking the sea. In St Giles Church is a marble plaque recording the fact that Thomas Blanco of Pontefract was present at the burial of Sir John Moore at La Corunna. Thomas Blanco enlisted in the 51st Regiment, known later as the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, in 1905 aged 19 years. In 1814 he was discharged as an invalid. He returned to Pontefract and married Elizabeth Jackson. He worked as a chemist’s porter. Being widowed in 1863 and now blind he spent the rest of his days in the Knowles Hospital. One of fourteen almshouses in Pontefract, the Knolles/Trinity Hospital was founded in 1385 and completed by 1403. It was an almshouse intended for the use of 13 poor people. Demolished in 1956 the site is now occupied by the bus station. The residents of Pontefract tried to get him a pension and his regiment held a collection for him. However he died before he received the money so the memorial plaque was placed in the church instead. In Pontefract Town Hall there is a plaque featuring Lord Nelson. It is the plaster sculpture from which one of the sides of the base of Nelson’s Column, which stands in Trafalgar Square, London, was cast in bronze. Four sculptors contributed to the making of the statue. One of them, Carew, was a friend of Benjamin Oliveira, one of the Members of Parliament for Pontefract. The M.P. suggested to the Mayor of Pontefract that the plaque would look good in the Town Hall and show the town’s admiration for Lord Nelson. The plaque was delivered and erected and shortly afterwards the bill arrived. The Corporation had been under the impression that the plaque was a gift from the sculptor and a great deal of embarrassment ensued. The bill was finally paid but the amount was never disclosed. Other Sundays we’d go to Queen’ Park at Castleford. Various bands played in the park and were very popular. The park would be full of people just wandering along the paths or sitting about on the grass. Through the rose arbour and round past the tennis courts. Up to the top of the hill where a few stone ruins were all that remained of what we called ‘The White House’. Back past the bandstand and round again. To get home we climbed old Red Hill – Queen’s Park Drive was still in the future. Queen’s Park was opened in 1897 in honour of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. It was a gift from the Earl of Crewe and John Davison-Bland esq., and consists of sixteen and a half acres. My uncle Leslie Gibbons had a shop in Castleford. It was a corner shop in Hugh Street and I had a Saturday job there for a while. Early in the morning I’d run under Tittlecock Bridge and across Castlefields fairground to start work. My uncle was tall and thin with black receding hair and a serious nature. My Aunt Mavis was small and pretty with a great sense of fun so that when she and I got together it didn’t take much to send us into fits of giggles. It was hard sometimes to keep a straight face on hearing some of the things that the customers said. My education expanded rapidly whilst I was there! I liked to dress the window that was big and deep and lit by gas. It was difficult to clean the inside of the window and rearrange the cluttered shelves without knocking against the gas bracket and breaking the fragile mantle which would disintegrate into a soft white dust. A lot of the objects displayed in the window were dummies. Just empty


boxes and packets that had been exposed to the daylight for so long that the lettering on them was faded. There were plenty of things that were genuine though and it was always a major operation to retrieve them from the shelves without knocking everything else over like a row of dominoes. It was just after the end of the war but most things were still rationed and points and coupons had to be carefully counted and kept in separate boxes. Women popped across the street in their slippers, men called in on their way home from work in the hope of buying some cigarettes, always a scarcity and usually of some outlandish brand such as the oval-shaped ‘Pashas’. ‘Oss muck an’ bus tickets’ was the general opinion of many smokers in regard to the cigarettes of that austere period. Each November the fair came to Pontefract. It was an ancient tradition and had been granted by a Royal Charter in medieval times. The first Thursday in the month was Statutes Day (known locally as ‘Statis’) and the elementary school children were given a day’s holiday. This concession did not apply to us at the High School, which was a sore point. The fairground was held on land behind the Court House that was built around 1820 and stretched down to the Public Baths that had been erected in 1913, and the houses that formed Tanshelf. This area is now the site of Tesco’s Supermarket. These days the fairground is on the site of what used to be a cattle auction market, next to Baghill Railway Station. At one time Tanshelf was a very important manor and was in existence long before the town of Pontefract. It is thought that the old name for Tanshelf was Kirkbye although this is not certain. What is certain is its importance in ancient times and it is known that it owned mills in Castleford and Knottingley. In the late Anglo-Saxon period Tanshelf owned the only known fishery in the area, the location of which was on the River Aire at Knottingley. Although the Doomsday Survey states that Tanshelf belonged to Ilbert de Lacy there is a summary that records that it is referred to as a ‘villa regia’ or royal vill. The West Yorkshire Garage near the Queen’s Hotel is reputed to stand on the site of the Royal Saxon Manor of Ethelburger. It was here that, in 625 A.D. the marriage took place between Ethelburger and king Edwin of Northumbria. Here, also, in 947 A.D. the Northumbrian Witan acknowledged king Edred. Water was conveyed along lead pipes from Organ Well in Wakefield Road, which was previously known as Penny Lane. A conduit was mentioned in 1571 and a pump was erected in 1765 in the Market Place. The inhabitants of the town had to pay a charge for the upkeep of the pump and pipes. Poor people were exempted from this charge. No one was allowed to use the water for brewing barley until others had drawn water for essential needs such as cooking and washing. Mrs Elizabeth Dupier who was carrying out her late husband’s intentions built the Butter Cross in 1734. The Butter Cross was erected on the site of the earlier St. Oswald’s Cross. Also in the Market Place near to St. Giles church was that warning to potential law-breakers, the stocks. They were removed in 1872. Early in the twelfth century a church was erected in the Market Place. It was intended to be used as a chapel of ease to All Saints’ Church and was named St. Mary de Foro which means St. Mary of the Market Place. The name was changed later in the century to St. Giles when Henry de Lacy was granted permission to hold a fair on the feast of St. Giles. When, in the early eighteenth century, the square tower was deemed unsafe, it was replaced by the present distinctive one which is similar in design to its namesake in Edinburgh and to the Cathedral in Newcastle. In the mid-nineteenth century Lord Palmerson, Prime Minister of England and Lord of the Manor of Fairburn officially opened the Market Hall.


Bridge Street, which links Salter Row to Horsefair, used to ‘bridge’ the upper and lower areas of the town. Each area had a different rateable value. The Town Hall was built in 1785 to replace one built in 1656, which in its turn had replaced the old Mote-Hall. Around the year 1882 Assembly Rooms were added to the existing building. The arches, until quite recent times, were used by the Fire Service to store their fire engines. We played tennis in the castle grounds and walked around the perimeter, sometimes speculating about the people who had walked there before centuries ago when the walls were intact and the towers soared high into the sky – a landmark visible from miles away. We mused on the mystery of the King’s death that we had read about when studying Shakespeare’s ‘Richard the Second’. In Anglo-Saxon times the hill on which the castle ruins lie was used as a cemetery. On a lower level to the east, in the area known as the Booths, which had been one of the two areas designated for the siting of butchers’ stalls, the other being where the present Market Hall stands, was a Saxon church. The graveyard of this church was extensive, as was discovered during recent excavations. The castle was built by Ilbert de Lacy and over the centuries was extended until it became one of the most powerful castles in the country. It took a civil war and treachery to bring about its defeat. The townspeople were so incensed by the damage done to the town and the suffering caused by the sieges that they pleaded for the castle to be demolished. Not only soldiers had been killed and injured, several townspeople had also been victims. Over two hundred houses had been demolished and the church of All Saints had been ruined. It was assessed that the Borough had sustained more then £40,000 worth of damage. In 1649 the demolition of the castle commenced and was so thorough that little remained. We’d walk to Horsefair from the castle gate to wait at the bus stop that was outside the gracious-fronted house belonging to Mr Gardiner. On the opposite side of the road was Micklegate House, a large eighteenth century house that was then an antique shop. On Trinity Street where the bus station now stands, were some very old small houses. Some of the windows had been blocked up and the doorways were set low in the walls. When they were demolished in the mid-fifties the skeleton of a woman was found. The skeleton was buried partly underneath a wall, which would seem to point to foul play. A medieval mystery! In 1812 a Dispensary was founded in a small house in Baxtergate. The dispensary was supported by voluntary contributions and had beds for several patients. When it was decided to enlarge the Town Hall the site was required for the extension. Dr Wright, a lately deceased Medical Officer, had previously purchased a plot of land in Southgate as a site for a future dispensary. The foundation stone for the new building was laid on 7 May 1880. Several extensions were made over the years and on 26 February 1925 Princess Mary, granddaughter of King Edward VII, officially opened the Memorial Wing that was named after her grandfather. Since then other extensions have been made and the Pontefract General Infirmary is now a large complex of buildings. In 1966 Princess Margaret followed in her aunt’s example and opened the Friarwood extension. Now, at the time of writing, other modernisation is taking place. Beneath the oldest part of the Infirmary, to the side of the main entrance, seventy steep steps lead downwards beneath the building and roadway to the Hermitage of Adam de Laythorpe. In the fourteenth century Adam carved out of the soft sandstone a small chamber in which he lived. At a lower level he dug a well. Connected to these excavations there is an oratory that is thought to be of a later date.


To the south of the town the land falls precipitously. The Infirmary fronts onto Southgate and slopes away steeply downwards to the modern extension which was built on the site of the Dominican Friary which was founded by Edmund de Lacy. He laid the foundation stone in honour of Our Lady, St. Dominic and St. Richard of Chichester. St Richard had been Edmund’s tutor. Gifts and bequests were made to the Black Friars until the dissolution of the religious houses. The last recorded bequest is dated 1535. King Henry VIII’s Commissioners took over control of the Friary on 26 November 1538. It is thought that the monks introduced the growing of liquorice to Pontefract. The soil in the area was particularly suited to the cultivation of the plant due to its quality and depth. At first grown for medicinal purposes it later became popular as a basis for confectionary. By the year 1614 Pontefract Cakes were being manufactured. George Dunhill was producing ‘Pomfret Cakes’ by the year 1760. There were later several other liquorice manufacturers producing assorted confectionary in the town. The smell of liquorice being converted into sweets is still a pleasant feature of the town. Liquorice continued to be grown commercially in Pontefract until around 1945. Glasshoughton was a place through which we travelled by bus to get to Castleford. I can remember climbing up the steps that led from Front Street to the upper level and along the road to where the school stood. I was a member of the Airedale Girl Guides and several of us were going to be tested for a knot examination. An ex-sailor, Charlie Holland, who was the caretaker at Castleford Public Library, was the examiner. Charlie was short, stout and jovial which helped somewhat as I fumbled my way through the pieces of string. On our way back home up Holywell Lane we saw one of our teachers. This teacher was stricter than strict and everyone was scared of her. Outside of school though, she was very nice to us. It seemed as though she underwent a metamorphosis when she entered the school premises. Mention Airedale School to anyone of my generation and they will ask whether you remember her and grimace. The best part of Glasshoughton to us children was Holywell Wood but we didn’t go there very often and when we did it was usually with an adult. Even so it was a place where we could do a bit of exploring, pick blackberries in season and let our imaginations run riot for an hour or so. More intrepid children ventured into the sand holes. The disused sand quarries which ran for miles beneath the ground. It is my memories of those days that have prompted me to write about it and at the same time record a little of the history of the area. The Manor was called Glasshoughton-with Castleford in the Honour of Pontefract.Glasshoughton was an ancient settlement long before its existence was recorded in the Domesday Book. It stands on the rise of the first hill to be reached after crossing the flat plateau that lies between Pontefract at the southeast and Castleford at the west. In prehistoric times that position would have been a vital requisite for any vulnerable community. Maybe those first settlers scooped out caves for themselves in the sandy hills that form Holywell Wood. Worked flints have been found there. The spring that gives the wood its name was perhaps later dedicated to one of the Celtic or Roman deities. A stone slab was found there which had two carvings on its surface. It is believed that it came from the site of the spring that supplied the well. In any event it would be one reason for choosing the site. Unpolluted water was as essential in those days as it is now. With the arrival of the Romans the wood was utilised in a different way. It was used as a burial place and two stone coffins have been found there, one that contained gypsum. Only two gypsum burials have been found in West Yorkshire, where gypsum was quarried at Ledsham, Fairburn and Ferrybridge. This type of burial became


popular in the fourth century at the end of the Roman period. Frequently such rites were associated with Christian burial. The coffin that was found in 1966 lay east west with the head at the eastern end. Behind the skull was a decorated bone comb. Several Roman coins have also been found in the wood. The road from Castleford to Glasshoughton was known in times past as the Corpse Way. The word ‘houe’ is Celtic and means a burying place on a hill. ‘Ton’ is a Saxon word meaning a group of dwellings. These words probably formed the origin of the place name ‘Houghton’ with the prefix ‘glass’ being added in the eighteenth century when the first glass factory was built. In 1745 a small glasshouse was built under the name ‘Lee and Champion’. This glassworks was on, or behind, the site of the present Castle Parade shops on Front Street somewhere in front of the steps that lead to the higher road. Before these steps were constructed the slope was known as Glasshouse Hill. In 1839 the factory closed down and the buildings became a blacksmith’s shop. It was demolished in 1846 to make way for the Wesleyan Chapel. A man named William Clifton, of Houghton, was a glass manufacturer in the late 1700’s. He was also connected with the Ferrybridge Potteries.Domesday Book records that in the year 1065 during the reign of Edward the confessor, Hoctun was owned by a Saxon than named Lewin. In the year 1086 when the Domesday Survey was made, the manor belonged to Ilbert de Lacy. The tenant between 1137-1139 was named Selwin. During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the chief family in Houghton was the de Casterfords. The first record of this family is in 1256 and the line ended with ‘an only surviving child’ Isabella Casterford who was born in 1611. Sir Robert Waterton who died on 13 December 1476 is recorded as having been ‘seised of the Manor of Glasshoughton’ which means that he was the legal owner at that time. In a ‘Survey of Pontefract Park’ dated 1588, Houghton Carr Farm held certain rights to pasture in the park. An entry runs:‘That the farmers of the capital messuage of Houghton, called Houghton Hall, had time out of man’s mind, and also since thence the first year of Her Majesty’s reign, in the said park common for sixteen beasts and four horses, from the feast of St. Ellen until Michaelmas yearly, and also hath one key at the said feast of St. Ellen unto Michaelmas yearly of one gate called Houghton Carr Gate, for the driving out of their cattle, paying yearly unto the said keeper, at the delivery of the said key, fourpence, and in pannage time, swine without number.’ In 1776 two footpads held up and robbed Richard Shillitoe, a rope-maker who lived in Glasshoughton. He was returning from Pontefract Auction market and was travelling through Pontefract Park when the attack took place. An Act of Parliament for the enclosure of Pontefract Park was passed in 1780 to the effect that 325 acres of land were allocated for the use of the inhabitants of the town of Pontefract and Tanshelf. It is thought that Manor Farm was originally Houghton Hall. It was situated some way behind the present George Fifth working Men’s Club. The land on which Glasshoughton Colliery stood and the land where the Industrial Estate now stands was originally cultivated by this farm. The acreage had dwindled throughout the years beneath the encroaching spoil heaps of Glasshoughton Colliery. For a long time the farm was tenanted by the Harvey family and the last farmer was Mr Walshaw. Some time before the demolition of the farm several members of Pontefract Archaeological Society instigated an excavation. They noticed a rectangular depression in a small enclosure to the southeast of the farmhouse. While they were engaged in their investigations Mr Walshaw chanced to dig a hole to bury a cat. He unearthed some large stones and discovered that they were the foundations of walls, covering an area


somewhat larger than his house. These foundations are though to be those of the original Manor House. The farm was demolished in 1967. The ancient oak panelling of the room in which the Magistrate’s Court used to be held fortnightly is now vanished - in to a place of safety in Pontefract. The barred cell below ground in which prisoners awaiting justice were kept has gone. The farm had not been used for this purpose for a long time. During the early part of the C19 the Court was transferred to the Ship Inn, Castleford. In the Pontefract and Castleford Express dated 1 November 1912 there is a column that reads: “By virtue of a precept to me directed, I do hereby Summon you to be and appear at the Court Leet. View of Frankpledge, and Great Court Baron of John Davison Bland, Esquire, Lord of this Manor, to be held at the usual place, in and for the said Manor, on Wednesday, the 30th day of October, 1912, at 12.30 o’clock in the afternoon, to take upon you the Office of a Juryman for the year ensuing. Dated the 5 th day of October 1912. Thos. B. Wilson, Bailiff.” Twelve men thus summoned assembled at the North Eastern Hotel in Station Road, Castleford and were sworn in. After dealing with the business matters they adjourned. The chairman proposed a toast to the “Lord of the Manor”, Mr Bland. Later the Town and Trade of Castleford were discussed. Some shopkeepers were grumbling about the inconvenience caused by the improvements in Carlton Street. More bottles were being manufactured and leaving the town than ever before. Messrs Lumb and Co. and Messrs B Peacock and Sons were increasing their works. It was believed that a very prosperous time was in store for traders and workers. As regarded Agricultural Interests, the past season had been the worst for 20 or 30 years. It was noted that Collieries should be sympathetic to farmers. The workings caused land collapse and much work was needed to keep ditches clear in the area. No more waste land was available to be taken from farmers therefore colliery workings must spread further afield.” The Manor became the property of Thomas Bland in 1610. It had originally belonged to the Priory of St. Oswald. Mr Wilson was the Bailiff, succeeding his father and, previously, his uncle Mr England in the office. The later Manor House stands on the corner of Carr Lane and Leeds Road. Closer to the road than the Manor House is Manor Cottage that is an older building. At one time the servants for the manor lived in the cottage and the present owner thinks that the kitchen may have been originally a dairy – when the walls were stripped of plaster white-washed bricks were uncovered. In the garden is a long building that had been divided into two. When the wide dividing wall was removed a blacksmith’s fireplace was revealed. Underneath the soil of the garden is a yellow-brick floor – possibly the site of cowsheds or stables. Running parallel to the back garden wall and hidden beneath the soil are the footings of another wall. Some idea of the way that buildings have been subdivided and put to varying uses is shown in a legal document which states: -

‘Manor of Houghton24th October 1796 Surrender and Admittance granted in the Great Court Baron of Thomas Bland Davison Esq., a minor, Lord of the Manor of Houghton with Castleford.

1. Thomas Firth of Leeds, musician.


2. Sarah Firth of Leeds, spinster.

Property ----------- The White House Divided into two and then three dwellings with two gardens late in the occupation of William Hoole, Jeremiah Beasley (and another) then in the occupation of Abraham Buttroyd and his under tenants, the Estate of Thomas Brough who surrendered the same to Thomas Firth and his wife Sarah. 20 perches in Town end Garth late the estate of Sarah Dobson, widow, and surrendered to the use of Thomas Firth, with the buildings erected on it, which had been used as a dwelling house and a school in the occupation of John Collins, and all buildings about to be erected.

Signed as a true copy of the Court Roll by Thomas Bolland, Steward.’

In the ‘Proposals for inclosing the open parts of Pontefract Park. Dated 1799, a clause states that: ‘A road forty feet wide should be staked out from Tanshelf towards Houghton Village, the same to be a private Road, but shall become a Public Road whenever communication is obtained across the intervening lands lying between the park and the village of Houghton.’ A new turnpike road was constructed in 1882 from Leeds through Methley and Oulton with a toll-bar fixed at every six miles. One of the toll-bars still stood in Houghton village in 1880. Mr John MacAdam supervised the construction of the road.In 1838 Thomas Davison Bland is recorded as being the Mesne Lord of the Manor of Glasshoughton-with Castleford. The records tell us that in 1857 an omnibus ran between Glasshoughton and Pontefract and also between Glasshoughton and Castleford twice a day. In 1868 this arrangement seems to have been the same. At that time a carrier named Smith used to take his van to Pontefract and Leeds each Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Trams ran from the village into Castleford and thence to Wakefield. In order to get to Leeds by public transport it was necessary to go via Wakefield. The construction of the tramways started in 1902 and on 27 October 1906 the West Riding tramways were opened at Bridge Foot, Castleford. The first tram left Castleford for Pontefract on 29 October 1906. The tram service was withdrawn from Castleford on 30 September 1925. Castlford Parish was divided into two townships. At one time Glasshoughton was more important than its neighbour, Castleford, and was renowned for its bed of sand and its limestone. Both commodities were in great demand for use in the manufacture of glass. Many iron founders also used the sand. Together with the coal seams they were a valuable asset to the village. The ground in and around Glasshoughton is honeycombed with ‘sand holes’. In some cases they have caused serious subsidence to houses and at times have been a danger to those intrepid types who have ventured inside them in order to explore. Joe Smith, late of Holywell Farm, remembers his father taking him to see a steamroller that had fallen into a tunnel of the sand-workings. The steamroller was being used to construct the new road (Holywell Lane). The ground just collapsed beneath its weight. The wood side of Holywell Lane was mined clandestinely in order to avoid paying tax to the owners of the mining rights and far more sand had been removed than was advisable. Just after the Second World War, a friend of my father’s, who lived in Front Street, sent word to say that he had bought a quantity of surplus army goods and was going to sell them from the outbuildings in his yard. The brown army blankets saw service for


years on our beds, supplementing our originals which were difficult to replace in those years of clothing coupons and shortage of cash. The American Army kitchen knife with U.S. stamped on its metal handle is in daily use in my kitchen. This man’s wife used to tell us that her mother would send them out, when they were children, to pick wild flowers and berries for wine making. ‘We had to pick a peggy tub full of cowslip flowers,’ she would say. ‘No wonder there aren’t many left!’ I would think. Industries have thrived in Glasshoughton. Merefield Colliery, universally known as Glasshoughton Colliery, which was opened in 1869 and closed in 1985, was a productive pit. According to the records, ‘on the 25 February 1869 the Haigh Moor bed of the colliery was struck 347 yards from the surface. Coal was four feet six inches thick.’ Before the days of the National Coal Board the colliery had several owners. On 15 April 1793 Timothy Smith and sons leased a farm at Glasshoughton for twenty-one years from Thomas Davison Bland Esq. The Smiths began Glasshoughton Colliery there. The Wooley Hart Company was another owner. A ward in Hightown hospital was endowed by the company and bears its name. Haigh Moor, Silkstone, Beeston, the names of these beds of coal will be long remembered by the now redundant miners of Glasshoughton. Long before that shaft was sunk coal that was open-mined from Glasshoughton was highly prized for its good quality. In parts of Glasshoughton the coal measures are only three feet beneath the surface of the ground. The seventeenth century diarist, Celia Fiennes, wrote in her journal for the year 1697 an account of her journey through Yorkshire. She describes the Glasshoughton area as being dangerous because of the many coal pits by the roadside. Glasshoughton supplied a great deal of the coal required by Castleford and Pontefract. Coal was transported in panniers carried by donkeys or ponies to Pontefract. The coal that was taken to Castleford was pulled in containers along a wooden-railed track that followed the old ‘corpse road’. From what I have been able to piece together, that road ran from somewhere in the direction of Carr Wood Road, along by the side of the Castletex Clothing Company (formerly the Cosy Cinema), crossing Leeds Road and across the football field where the bank is, through what is now the Smawthorne Estate and thence across the allotments into Castleford. The Coke Ovens in Carr Lane with their attendant clouds of sulphurous fumes were another busy workplace, employing many local men. Lorries delivered coke to destinations all over Yorkshire. The Coking Plant was built in 1915 and its first manager was a man named Mr Cooper. In later years the manager was Mr Binks and the under manager was Mr Burdon. When the Plant opened a builder named Gallagher built houses on Carr Lane behind the Manor House to house the workers, many of who were brought in from other towns because a large number of local men were in the forces. Later a new coking plant was opened in India and Mr Binks and Mr Burdon went there to manage it, taking their families with them. At right angles to Carr Lane and behind the Industrial Estate is Carr Wood Road. Carr Wood was a large wood that was cleared during the First World War. Hartley’s and Hatton’s were two well-known brick manufacturers in the area. Hartley’s Works were in Castleford and Hatton’s in Glasshoughton. Charles Hatton started his brickyard in 1896 in Leeds Road on the site where the Asda supermarket now stands. (The previous one to the one opened in 2008). The clay quarry was behind and has now been filled in using waste from Glasshoughton Colliery that was on the opposite side of Leeds Road. Next door to the Asda Supermarket is the big house, The Mount, where Mr Hatton lived. Later the house was divided and Mr Hatton


and his family lived in the front portion and Mr George Upton, the manager, lived in the back. At the time of writing Mr Upton lived in the front portion. To the side of The Mount was the Wire Walk (now incorporated into an extension of Barnes Road) that ran from Leeds Road to Castleford and separated The Mount from fields and allotments. One day each year the Walk had to be closed at each end and people prevented from using it in order to retain the ownership of the brick company. The Wire Walk was a popular courting place. At the far end of the allotments in the Love Lane area near Temple Street School was a pottery where bread bowls and plant pots were made from clay quarried on the site. Mr Gilligan who owned the children’s carousel lived in a caravan near the pottery at one time. More than one generation of children enjoyed a ride when he and his wife toured the streets of the locality with the brightly painted roundabout. The first man in Castleford to be awarded the Military Medal was Mr Jack Collins. He lived in Oxford Street and bred hens on the allotments. There was another brickyard belonging to Hatton’s that was called Ridgefield and was in Oxford Street at the side of what is now the West Yorkshire Garage. A builder’s supply yard now occupies the site. The quarry (now filled in with waste from the colliery) belonging to Ridgefield came right up to Temple Street School wall. Charles Hatton had three sons. Wilfred opened a brickyard at Bolton-on Dearne, Ernest was a builder at Allerton Bywater and Herbert managed the Glasshoughton Works. Herbert lived in a wooden bungalow that was on the corner of Leeds Road and Ashton Road next to the brickyard and opposite the school. During the First World War this wooden building had been used as a soup kitchen. In 1923 the TheYorkshire Brick Company bought the Hatton Works. Waste shale from the colliery across the road was used in brick making because a certain amount of coal helped to intensify the heating and firing. When broken open it could be seen that the bricks had a black heart. In fairly recent years the biggest part of the bricks made at the Yorkshire Brick Company were taken to York and used by Rowntree’s to enlarge their confectionary factory that was in a constant state of expansion. The brickworks were closed in 1978. At one time there were thirteen farms in Glasshoughton. Now there is only one – and that one boasts a new farmhouse. The old house of Holywell Farm with its barns and threshing yard was demolished in 1983. Mr Bland of Kippax owned Holywell Farm. In 1958 Joseph Smith purchased it. The previous tenant was Tommy Groom. The house was built partly of stone and partly of brick. On one occasion when repairs were being carried out the bricklayer told Mr Smith that the bricks were at least two hundred years old. The windows had heavy fold-back shutters on the inside. New bungalows stand in its place at the corner of Rock Hill opposite the Rock Inn. In the 1880’s the landlord of the Rock Inn was William Widdup, an ex-policeman, who was also a Poor Law Guardian. He ran his house on very strict lines and wouldn’t allow the young men to sit with the old ones. The women were not allowed into the public rooms but had to sit with his wife, Sarah, in the kitchen. He insisted that the men went home to give their wives the pay on Fridays before they came into the Inn. The Inn of which Mr Widdup was landlord was replaced in the early part of the Twentieth Century by the present building. The front of the previous Inn faced downhill towards Front Street. At the bottom of the hill were some small cottages. Steps led up the hillside to other cottages which have all been demolished. The plot is called ‘Sparrows’ Ending’, supposedly a corruption of ‘Arrows’ Ending’ which refers to the ancient custom of marking boundaries at the limit of a bow-shot. When the foundations for the present bungalow were being dug a great many oyster shells were found. This kind of discovery is often taken to indicate Roman occupation, oysters being one of


their staple foods. Inns were required by law to provide accommodation for travellers and hay and stabling for their horses. Horses were also kept ready so that the brewery drays could have a fresh supply of horses. Opposite the Rock Inn, next to Holywell Farmhouse was the New Inn. Both buildings are now gone and bungalows have been erected on the site. There are now two Post Offices in Glasshoughton, one in Front Street and one in Churchfields Lane. In 1861 the Post Office was at Miss Hannah Carr’s. She probably converted one of the rooms in her house to conduct the business. Letters were brought from Normanton Railway Station at 5.0am by mail cart and delivery commenced at 7.30am. Letters were dispatched from Miss Carr’s at 9.0pm to Normanton railway station. Mail only seems to have been dealt with at Miss Carr’s. The nearest money order office was at Castleford, Bridge Street. The corner house at the bottom of school Lane that is now a D.I.Y. shop was used as a Post Office in later years, the proprietor was named Mr Swift. This may have been the same house that was occupied by Miss Carr. The Carr family seem to have been very enterprising. There was a John Carr – butcher and a Mrs Ann Carr – shopkeeper. By 1887 a John Carr was ‘butcher, shopkeeper and Post Office.’ Around the 1920’s there was a Walter Carr – undertaker, and a Herbert Carr – insurance man. Adam Carr’s name was on the foundation stone of the Wesleyan Chapel. There were several public houses in the village and at least one malt brewery. Benjamin Mitchell founded the Castle Brewery in the late 1800’s. In the Post Office Directory of 1857 it is recorded that there was a small Wesleyan Chapel and a small Primitive Methodist Chapel in Glasshoughton. There was also a Church of England School attended by 30 children. In 1871 the population was 1,049 and by 1875 the two chapels had been replace by new red brick buildings. The primitive Methodist Chapel was situated on Leeds Road. The Wesleyan Chapel on Front Street was built in the Elizabethan style and was capable of seating 300 people. It incorporated a small school. The Wesleyan Chapel closed in October 1986. In 1877 building commenced on a Board School that opened in 1878 for 190 children. In 1881 there were 881 residents in the village and the school was enlarged in 1893 to accommodate 313 children. The average attendance was 156 children. In 1904 the school was again extended and was large enough to take 600 pupils. The average attendance was 395 mixed and 140 infants.The master was Mr William RendallThe Mistress was Miss Isobel EddellIn 1927The Head was Mr Herbert MorleyThe mistress was Miss Fanny MoneyIn 1928 there were 1,757 residents in the village. During its latter years Mr Harold Wright, the last Headmaster, encouraged his pupils in the pursuit of music and local people have said that the sound of singing was frequently heard issuing from the school. They thought that it was a happy place. Sometimes on hot days during the summer the pupils would sit in Mr Armitage’s garden, which adjoined the school, for an art lesson. For a few years after it ceased to be a comprehensive school it was used for remedial teaching. The staff fought to prevent it being closed, the roof needed repairing and there were many signs of decay but the Rentokil firm could find nothing that was irredeemable. They were disappointed when, in 1986, the school was finally closed. After several years the premises were taken over


by the Yorkshire Arts Circus. Repaired and re-decorated the building was used for many interesting purposes. The premises were closed again in 2007. In October 1914 a school was opened in Ashton Road to which was added in July 1920 a wooden hut, thus enabling it to accommodate 756 pupils. The memorial stone for St Paul’s Church was laid in 1900 and the church was consecrated in 1902. The church was built on the site of an earlier chapel, which, in its turn, occupied the site of an old beer house. In the church is a font which was brought from Castleford and which may be twelfth century. During the Civil War, following the first siege of Pontefract Castle in 1645, a body of 500 Royalist cavalry was stationed at Glasshoughton. Langdale Sunderland Esq., of Aketon Hall, commanded them. At that time the owner of the sixteenth century Manor House, Richard Bilcliffe Esq., a Royalist, was in charge of the Houghton Volunteers. Sir Thomas Fairfax and his troops surprised them during the night and defeated them. A great many prisoners were captured. There were two public wells in Glasshoughton. The road named Wellgate was so called because it was the site of the well known as Top Well. The other well was called Weetworth Well and was situated opposite the Primitive Methodist Chapel on Leeds Road, at the top end of the football pitch at the banking side. Near where the old Roman Road ran. There were other, private wells that supplied the village until the building of the reservoir at Redhill in 1869. Kelly’s Directory of 1912 states that Castleford Urban District Council’s smallpox isolation hospital on Red Hill that was erected in 1893 was later leased to Normanton and District Joint Isolation Hospital Committee. The black painted wooden hospital was situated at the top of Holywell Lane next to the wood. Further towards the west the old road that twists down Redhill was once the main thoroughfare from Castleford to Ferrybridge. Ferrybridge Road was known as the London Road because it led towards Redhill, then down Sheepwalk Lane and past Holmfield to Ferrybridge and the Great North Road. It is said that the hill at Redhill was the site of a battle during the Wars of the Roses and according to legend the hill was named ‘Red’ because of the blood that was spilt. A small fragment of chain mail has been found there but from what period I do not know. The battle of Towton, which is held to have involved the largest numbers of combatants ever to fight on English soil, took place on Palm Sunday 1461. That battleground is not in West Yorkshire although one encampment site associated with it is just inside the Ferry Fryston boundary. Situated to the east of Pontefract, with Sowgate Lane on the north, the road from Pontefract to Knottingley on the south, Bubwith House to the west, and Narrowbeck Villa on the east. The area is undeveloped. Like all towns and villages Glasshoughton’s buildings are of varied architecture and age. It isn’t until you stop and really look that you realise how interesting some of them are. Between the Malt Shovel and the Post Office on Front Street is a construction that although useful, may not seem of much importance. The green painted; fancy ironwork construction of the gentlemen’s urinal is, however, a listed building. The land on the opposite side of the road was once the site of Manor Farmhouse.

POPULATION OF GLASSHOUGHTON

1801 - 3821848 - 5001871 - 1,049 1881 - 881


1901 - 2,9501928 - 67,57

TENANTS

1137 – 1139 SelwinHolder in 1086 Ilbert de LacyDonor of the land Ilbert 1

Much has changed in Glasshoughton over the years. Many of the older industries have disappeared but Industrial Estates have sprung up in their place. The Xscape with its ski slope and cinemas, shops and many leisure activities occupies the space that was once colliery property. Beneath the modern glitz and bustle of today men once toiled in the depths. Many were injured, many killed. My great grandfather, George Dodd, died down Glasshoughton Colliery when stone fell from the roof in 1911. So many changes have taken place and yet, beneath the modernity misty imprints of so many pasts remain. My past merges with that of everyone else; back and still further back until it is hidden in a cobwebbed haze. As I moved further up the High School (where once a week we trekked across the fields to the racecourse grandstand for lessons because the school was full to overflowing), the length of time spent on homework increased and my leisure time was limited. Perhaps my favourite pastime then was whizzing along on my bike and feeling the wind rushing through my hair as I freewheeled down the sloping roads around my home. Up into Pontefract and down through Nevison then along Holmfield Lane to tackle the narrow twisting hill back into Sheepwalk Lane.

No jeans, no television, no fancy holidays, few sweets and less money. Gas masks and air raid shelters. Pixies hoods and clog sandals. The Forties.


i became interested in local history at an early age … · web viewgirls wore dresses, skirts...

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