grinder

Did he have limp ?

OK maybe a bit carried away with district,Tony, the Ponderosa is more a recreation area between, would you believe, Mushroom lane/Bellefield street and Oxford street

PS.

you can Google it

I always get mix up between Gabby Hayes and Andy Divine as who was with Gene Autry and which one was with Roy Rodgers...

I think one of the indicators on how popular the westerns were back then is the the fact that we now have a district in Sheffield officially called the "Ponderosa" which was the name of the Cartwright family's ranch in the TV series Bonanza.....

Looking back every flippin year it seemed like I got a wind up train that ran round and round on about eight lines...

But fortunately back in the late forties my Mum worked at Rotax razors on Queens road and they didn't only make the obvious, they also made plastic pencil sharpener, in different colours...

One year she brought me home a bag of dud ones (scrappers) and I used these to build walls for my soldiers to hide behind while I shot at them with my wire gun..

They were made out of one piece of wire bent into the shape of a pistol with a spring at the back and were a health and safety nightmare, they fired a small wooden bobbin with a hole through it, you put the barrel through the hole and then slid the bobbin down pushing the spring back until the bobbin clicked onto the trigger part..

Easily powerful enough to knock over the wall and the soldier and surprisingly accurate over two to three yards, of course the big problem was finding those little bobbins afterwards .....

No body buys cowboy outfits any more but back then all the boys had six shooters that fired caps, and everybody used to do that funny skipping run, slapping their backsides as they rode off into the sunset...

Or was that just me.......

When I die bury me deep

bury my geography book at my feet

tell my teacher I've gone for a rest

and wont be back for my geography test .

Some where in Sheffield.

1900 and blob..

Yes, we think of Sheffield as being inland but I suppose over there we would be considered practically on the coast .....

I think providing you can find a place that makes a decent stab at frying the fish (my own recommendation is Shaws in Killamarsh) then the worst two things are the DryWhite they use to stop the potatoes discolouring once they've been peeled and cut and the vinegar. The DryWhite stuff means you rarely get chips that are even lightly browned and it affects the flavour - (fry your some of your own chips and see the difference) and the vinegar is now so dilute it's hardly worth putting it on.

Flipping vinegar !!!!

That's another thing the EU ruined.....

---------- Post added 14-07-2015 at 21:03 ----------

Thanks for that info.

 

I'm in north TO, and I've heard that Duckworth's on the Danforth is OK, but all these places are a good drive away from me, and I would probably have eaten them in the car on my way home

 

When I was 8 or so on Saturdays I would make a little spending money by taking the "eyes" out of the potatoes after they had been through the "rumbler", at our local F & C. shop.

As a matter of interest you two do they cook them in oil or fat over there ?

I'm pretty sure I've read some where that at one time there was a fence/wall and gate down there and to get out of Sheffield at that end of town you had to use the London road across the moor. ( Far gate ?)

For me fish and chips went to the wall when we joined the Common Market, and they made us cook in oil instead of fat...

£.S D, pounds and ounces, feet and inches, Chocolate, fish and chips it ruined the lot ....

There was a time back in the past when Fish Chips and peas was our staple diet, our favorite nosh, but now it cost an arm and a leg and usually looks and tastes like warmed up left overs from the night before ....

You couldn't beat walking down the street eating a bag full of red hot chips back then, but now !!!!

We went to Bakewell the other day and it cost us £16 for fish and chips twice and chips and fish cake twice and the stuff looked and tasted so bad none of us could Finnish it

I can go to Chesterfield market and get 10 pound of new potatoes for one pound fifty and yet it cost nearly as much for a small bag of horrible looking cardboard tasting warmed up greasy chips, you'd think for what they charge they could at least give you a good chip,and if you add a case hardened fish to them you'll need a bank loan ..

They would have been stoned when I was a lad for dishing up the rubbish you get today and daring to charge a fortune for it.

But that's not all, oh no not by a long shot because what really gets up my nose is the best chip shop I know is run by a Greek fellow and the only way I can get edible chips is to go to a Chinese take away !!!!!

What's happened to the good old British pride and skill with the fryers....

I use to live at Upperthorpe and we went round to it on the inner circular. . Always remember coming home eith black feet due to ash. The song that reminds me mentioning 3 ships one of them being rhe Santa Maria. Anyone remember who recorded it and the title?

Can't remember the title, all I can remember is the opening lines, I think they went-

Long long ago long ago

three galleons gay and romantic

sailed on the mighty Atlantic

The Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria .....

There was also a group called "The three monarchs" I think . with a funny guy called Cedric ?

And don't forget the bird impersonators like Ronnie Ronalde.

Does anyone remember the burning tip that was on the land before the Vic Hallam houses were built and The Farm grounds used to have a Fairground there every year and also a boxing ring where if you could last I think 3 rounds you won some cash not sure how much but my stepfather won his beer money on many occasion till they stopped him because he kept winning. I remember sneaking over the wall on Farm road I think it was called, the one that run at the back entrance to Norfolk Park.

Haven't been round there for Donkeys years and it's all altered beyond recognition on a road map but Farm road was at the bottom of Farm grounds and the one at the top across the bottom of the park was Norfolk park road..

Looking at the map it was in the triangle of Farm road, Norfolk park road and Granville road...

We moved into a spanking new prefab on Algar place, just below the Carlton cinema on Eastern Avenue in 1946.

Back then the land behind us was just called "The Fields" and our road and Algar Dr were at the top of "The Fields" and at the bottom was a long ash felt path that ran from Spring lane/Northern avenue down to Arbourthorne road, and all the way along side the path were iron railings that looked 8ft high but could have been six.

At the top end (Spring road ) was a narrow iron gateway as high as the railings it was one of those gates that let people through one at a time to stop any animals getting out and a path down between a smoking tip on the right and a stone wall that kept the cows in a field above a farm house on the left.

At the bottom the path did a sharp left turn along side this field to a track that ran to the farm house and across the top of Norfolk park.

Just inside the entrance to the park was a lovely cottage which we took to be the Park-keepers house and opposite this was the Pavilion/ cafe were you could buy drinks etc..

At the bottom of the ash felt path on your left hand side just before you reached the Arbouthorne road end was a shale tip and on the right behind the railings was The magic pond and the beginning of Cheery wood .....

Thorntons Millhouses factory was at the junction of Smithywood crescent Ulveston road and Archer Road.

Laycock eng owned both sides of Archer road around the bottom of Fraser road.

The entrance to Sainburys car park is where the offices and main gates were for the Archer road factory.

My wife worked a the Archer road factory from the early seventy's till it closed in 1989..

Says on Wikipedia that when they did the Sheffield castle dig they found the remains of other buildings down there too.

You are miles out ,The Lord of the Manor granted farm workers and labourers the right to hold a Market on the spot where the Don and the Sheaf meet.

This was a couple of hundred years before any Castle was ever built.

 

The area had been the traditional Market area before Sheffield became a Town.

So the local Saxon/Danish big wig at the time gave permission for a market at the cross roads ( about where the hole in the road used to be) in around the 9th/10th century right. then in the 11th/12th century the Norman overlord built a Castle where the two rivers meet and a church higher up the hill and a town grew up between the two of them right.

So then Sheffield became a town because of the Norman conquest, OK, but why bother building such a supposedly imposing edifice there in the first place ?.

And I say Supposed because although there are artist impressions of what it may have looked like I sure I've read there are no actual paintings or drawings of the place.

Please note.. the "lost" steel industry is still here, still producing roughly a million tonnes of steel a year.. it just doesn't employ guys to be a fitters bag carrier or night shift kippers watchman anymore.

 

Richard

Well Dick if that's true, mores the pity because it may be doing something for the share holders but it's doing bugger all for the people of Sheffield....

But back to the post,

If we take what Tim Lamberts says in hilsbro post as fact, Sheffield is here because some one built a Castle, they didn't build a castle because Sheffield was here.

But some how I very much doubt he was riding along and said "hey up look there's two rivers meeting over there, I know lets build a castle".

There has to be a reason why some one decide to build a castle, firstly in wood and then as a ruddy great stone thing here in the first place ...

Looking like we're going to have to dig up the castle again then...

They apparently have an rough Idea what sort of area it covered but nobody seems to know for sure how high it was or why they built it here in the first place...

Incidentally the castles armorer at the time of it's surrender to the Parliamentarians was a guy called Kelham.

Wonder where he went ?

Sheffield became a city because of three things, Coal, Steel, and manufacturing. Maggy T destroyed all three industry's then by passed us with a motorway to Leeds and closed our rail link to Manchester and the East coast, you can't blame the council for everything that's happened since the sixty's can you ....

So what happens to Sheffield now, do we dig up the castle ?

Like I said if Mary queen of Scots stayed here for 14 years it must have been incognito because if you can find anything other than a passing reference to her stay here any where outside Sheffield your a good un..

Back in the 14th century knives would have been just a cottage industry, why not you had all the things you need right on your door step and that's probably the only reference you'll find about Sheffield until the back end of the 19th, so what the hell happened to the 500 yrs in between ?

As for the Castle, I think you'll find most of our knowledge about it came from a dig in the 1920s and like the Wincobank fort it was probably built to guard a ford across the Don and I believe was built to replace a wooden one ? it looks as if both apparently turned out to be a waste of time and effort..

And Cromwell didn't literally knock it down it was an act of Parliament to get rid of places they didn't want but didn't want anyone else to use either..

Of note prior to the Industrial revolution ?

We became a City on the back of Coal, steel and manufacturing round about the beginning of the twentieth century , but previous to that we seem to be a place that history past by.

Yes we had a castle but it apparently took very little if any part in this country's history in fact the only time it came under siege appears to be in the Civil war and the defenders ran off !! It's also said to have been quite large but no one knows for sure how large or what it looked like.

I remember being proudly told that Mary Queen of Scots was kept prisoner here but it's news to the Scots and I've never seen it mentioned in any major work on her life story.

So stainless steel, early football association rules and the founding of the Yorkshire cricket club, all after the industrial revolution, before that, a quiet back water ?...

From what it was to what it will become....

 

Looks like they're renovating it at the moment - anyone have any ideas who's taking it over? I noticed there were never any For Sale / To Let boards on there so maybe the sale / lease was agreed before Tesco closed.

Latest rumor is Wilkinson's....