L4WEY

I have found a picture of my Grandfather, Charles W Gates, who used to be responsible for the track between Brightside and Chapeltown on the LMS. Here he is in the centre with 2 of his gang in the fogman's or platelayer's hut on Woolley Wood bottom. He might be better known as Charlie Gates. He lived on Woolley Wood Road and died in 1975 at the age of 85 years. He worked up to his 65th birthday and retired from the railway to take up his "little job" collecting glasses at Bellhouse working mens club. He did this for nearly two decades. He took part in whist drives and generally had a good time up at the club. He was a keen gardener and well respected. Does anyone remember him?

Previous posts have mentioned Grange Lane Station, Steam trains, Basket Bridge LNER & LMS tracks, the dyke and football pitch. The two piccie links I offer consist of Grange Lane signal box with double box operated gates taken before the line got downgraded to a single manual gate box. A steam train plodding up the Blackburn Valley between Grange Lane & Ecclesfield East Stations. You can see the Basket Bridge and the football pitch in the dyke area to the right of the bridge. The LNER (GCR) tracks are on the left and the LMS tracks are on the right. The LMS line can be seen bending to the right towards Woolley Woods. Hope this conjures up some memories.

You should care about where you live and try to impress others to care about where they live also as we all have to live together. It is in what you say & do that matters. Does not matter where you live. Don't depend on Sanctuary Housing all the time. Leaving the neighbourhood is not the solution. Ever heard about community spirit and civic pride?

Very dignified and courteous was a very apt description of Nat. The caretaker I remember had a brown coat, bald head & specs and was called Sid.

Correction acknowledged. Apologies, my dad used to be an engineering inspector at Shardlows from the immediate post war period to when he died in 1974 . Yes it was Shardlows, don't know why I mistakenly put Arthur Lees in my text! I think I was about to mention something about Arthur Lees and somehow misedited the text.

Detention was very inconvenient in my day. I was sentenced by Dick to 3 hours detention on a Saturday morning. Full uniform including cap and short trousers. I think it may have been a uniform infringement seen up at Broomhill by a prefect that did it, but not sure of the details, it was really humiliating to travel by bus there & back across the city. My parents backed the school up so even they made me go through with it. Refused to give me a lift in the car. Only happened once though. Never again. Cannot remember who the teacher was, but it may have involved some remedial schoolwork.

Seems I lived on the Woolley Wood side of Bellhouse Road which is the same side as Concord Park so went to Shiregreen School which we accepted as natural progression. I had to pass the entrance to Hatfield House Lane School to get to Shiregreen School and then have quite a hike after that as you might see on the map. All my pals lived on the Woolley Wood side of Bellhouse Road , that is why we were called the Woolley Wood Gang . It could be that kids who went to Beck Road School went to Hatfield House School. That is the way life was. This caused a social rift and stimulated so called gang warfare i.e.stone throwing, chasing and general boisterousness.

Same School

Shiregreen Secondary Modern as it was called when I was there in 1958 was on the Flower estate. Going up Bellhouse from Firth Park shops towards Shiregreen fork right at the top of the hill and a couple of hundred yards or so is the school as was just as the road begins to swing to the right. Hope this helps.

Was the farm at Droppingwell where the Watson family lived?

We had a nickname for Mr Fuchs we called him "Nat" thinking that his name was Nathaniel or could have been an undeserved shortening of a well known teutonic nationalist political party:roll:. Was chatting on the phone with one of my old school chums Roger Davison found out after Nat died in 1979 that his first name was actually Maximillian. We should have been naming him Max! So this suggests that his nickname might have been a bit derogatory:surprised, when he was such a nice gentleman.

As a small boy I remember Peggy Lane really well, me & my pals used to venture down to Grange Lane a lot from Woolley Wood Road and across the level crossing turn left down Peggy Lane and along to the stream. We had it all, view of the railway and the trains and also a fishing opportunity with our jam jars but we only got water beetles & other water insects never remember any minnows. Not saying there werent any there it is just if there were we couldnt catch em cos we did not have a net. We used to go past the farm & over the tracks then the basket bridge to the ponds across Blackburn Brook for a better opportunity and went home with jam jars full of frog spawn, small frogs, tadpoles, newts dependant on the state of the season and the catch we could get at the time. I remember my mum's face when I used to turn up with them and asked her for a glass serving bowl to put em in. We never really ventured any higher up Peggy Lane since we would be getting away from the trains and where suited us best. When we got a bit older we used to venture up Jumble Lane and then back round past Ecclesfield East and West stations and home along Hartley Brook. School hols and long summer evenings used to allow us this pleasure without getting told off. We used to pretend we were on expeditions cos we were "so far from home". I remember seeing water voles in Blackburn Brook around the place where the river passed by the ponds. We used to sit in the grass watching them swimming towards their burrows in the opposite river bank. For catching minnows my dad used to take me across town on a Sunday morning in the car to Wiremill Dam where there were minnows in abundance. My dad liked watching the guys sailing their model boats. But I am getting off topic a bit.

Jock Sutherland did indeed return to Scotland and was seen by one of my class mates (of 1959 to 1964) in Aberdeen some years after the school had closed. This he told me at the reunion in 1999. I have no idea what has become of him now, but I liked him a lot and had great respect for him as I always considered him a born leader particularly when we went on trips outside school like up Snowdon etc. Dick ,as we called Mr A, we never felt we could trust. My mind is hazy on some details but I believe he drove a Jag and my dad always used to say "Son, you can't trust a chap who drives a Jag". When my dad said this it was before we ever encountered Mr A. Looking back now though in this instance I think my dad might have hit the nail on the head in terms of stereotyping. No offence to Jag owners BTW just in case you decide to flame me. In spite of Mr A shortcomings with his fags & his G & T I carry gratitude and thanks for the work that Mr Rankin, Jock, Nat Fuchs in particular did to provide me with a standard of education that I believe I have benefitted from in later life. Also thanks go to my family for sending me there.

I now remember the reunion being in 1999 and Rankin was then 82 years of age and still looked fit. I wonder if he has made his nineties yet? I had great respect for him, he was always turned out very smartly dressed and groomed.