Memories of Barnsley Issue 21

EDITOR

Rebecca Lawther

The Drill Hall,Eastgate

Barnsley S70 2EU

Telephone:01226 734689

Email:editor@whmagazines.co.uk

DESIGN/EDITORIAL

Paul Wilkinson

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Lots has happened in the Memories of Barnsley office since issue 20, including a visit from HRH the Prince of Wales on 24 January, on his first ever trip to Barnsley. We produced a Memories of Barnsley special issue to mark the occasion, covering royal visits to the town going back to the day a young Princess Victoria passed through Barnsley in 1835. Do give us a call or have a look on our website (www.memoriesof barnsley.co.uk) if you haven’t seen a copy yet but would like to.

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All rights reserved.This material must not be reproduced without the publishers’ consent.

While we strive to ensure accuracy and impartiality of information,final responsibility for this rests with our contributors.

While every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders of featured illustrations,this has not always proved possible because of the antiquity of the images Where we have failed to acknowledge copyright please contact us and we will be happy to correct any oversight.

Several readers contacted me following the royal special to point out that the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh visited Cannon Hall Park in 1977 as part of a tour celebrating the Silver Jubilee. As we come to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee this year, you will find a report on that visit on page 32, including a lovely photograph of children in fancy dress at one of the many street parties held across Barnsley in honour of the occasion. How did you celebrate? Were you among the crowd of people who gathered in Cannon Hall that day in July 1977? Do send us your photographs and recollections from previous Jubilee years.

2012 is a big year for Britain not only because of the Jubilee celebrations but also because of the London Olympic Games, and on page 14 Don Booker tells the remarkable story of Cyril Thomas – a former miner from Grimethorpe – who was injured in a rock fall at Ferrymoor Colliery, and went on to compete and win medals for Great Britain in the Paralympic Games.

On page 6, Brian Elliott looks back on the history of the traditional summer mining galas and demonstrations which were held in Barnsley over the years, including some wonderful examples of the colourful banners which were displayed by the town’s pit villages.

You will find memories of working in the Out Patients Department of Beckett Hospital on page 44, and of attending Barnsley’s other grammar school, Broadway, which is of course currently part of Kingstone School, soon to be amalgamated into the new ‘super school’ on the site of the old SRGents factory on Dodworth Road on page 26. Did you wear the bottle green blazer, or experience the Beckett Hospital during the 1950s as a patient or as a member of staff? If so, what are your memories of those places?

It hardly seems like any time at all has passed since we were working on the very first issue of Memories of Barnsley, and over the past five or so years I have thoroughly enjoyed working with local historians, as well as hearing about your memories and stories of growing up in Barnsley; your working lives and the many fascinating events which have taken place in the town over the decades, and indeed the centuries. However, it is time for a change, and your editor from now on will be Paul Wilkinson, who you will know as working on the magazine since the beginning, and who will I know continue to keep your memories of Barnsley flowing with each issue.

Rebecca Lawther Editor

Old Barnsley A view of the past

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Old Barnsley is a unique stall with over 6000 images of Yorkshire towns and villages taken in the early 1900s.Of particular interest are the buildings and shops long since faded away,which may rekindle fond memories of bygone days.Other subjects include: canals,collieries,industries,armed forces,royal visits and other social events.We may have something which is right up your street. As well as photographs we stock a wide range of local books and magazines;along with commemorative plates,coal figures and other mining memorabilia.

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Many unseen pictures of Barnsley from the late 19th and early 20th century.

6 Standing together

Brian Elliott remembers the traditional summer pit galas and demonstrations held in Barnsley.

14 Going for Gold

Don Booker MBE meets an ex-miner from Grimethorpe with six Paralympic medals.

18 Cawthorne’s brush with the classics

Barry Jackson looks back over the life of Cawthorne’s PreRaphaelite painter, John Roddam Spencer Stanhope.

23 Gem from the Archives

Paul Stebbing examines the vehicle registration volumes kept in the Barnsley Archives.

26 Broadway Grammar School

Former pupil Phillip Norman looks back at the school’s history and remembers studying in the 1950s.

32 1977 Silver Jubilee celebrations

The day the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh visited Cannon Hall Park during their Silver Jubilee tour in July 1977.

36 Readers’ page

Comments and memories from our readers.

42 Letters from the Front Line – 1915/1916

Last letters home from Barnsley men during the Great War.

44 Memories of Beckett Hospital

Margaret Storey shares fond memories of working in Beckett Hospital during the 1950s.

MEMORIES

Standing together

Do you remember the summer days when the miners’ demonstration and gala came to town? I bet many of our readers do. Locke Park was transformed into a sea of people, bold colours, vibrant sounds and, from the food stalls, not unpleasant aromas. Many thousands of people flocked to Barnsley by bus and train from outlying areas, and some from other coalfield regions too.

The 1992 event, one of the last of the great traditional pit galas held in Barnsley, took place on 20 June, proudly and defiantly in the wake of the vindictive decimation of the coal industry following the 1984/85 miners’ strike. By then there were

YORKSHIRE MINER’S DEMONSTRATIONS and gatherings had their origins in Barnsley from the 1840s when large assemblies of miners met on May Day Green. The first official gala took place in 1863. They were not annual events due to a variety of circumstances such as strikes and wars, but became yearly after 1947. Before 1881 the galas took place in Wakefield, Leeds, Bradford, Methley, Sheffield, Pontefract and Chesterfield. After 1881, when the South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire miners’ associations had merged, the venues were Barnsley, Wakefield, Leeds, Sheffield, Dewsbury, Rotherham, Castleford and Doncaster. Barnsley was always a popular venue, the occasion always covered in great detail in the Barnsley Chronicle. Apart from the celebration, it was a time when some of the leading figures in British politics and trade unions came to Barnsley.

only a couple of pits left in the Barnsley area. And a few months later Michael Heseltine announced in Parliament that a further thirty-one collieries would also close nationwide. Less than twenty deep mines in Britain were left, which were soon reduced to just a handful.

At the 1992 Yorkshire miners’

demonstration and gala there were eighteen brass bands – and nine jazz bands – on the great march from Victoria Road to

Brian Elliott remembers the traditional summer pit galas and demonstrations held in Barnsley in days gone by,and takes a look at their origins.

Locke Park where Grimethorpe Colliery and British Steel Stainless (Dodworth) bands performed a concert. For many

individuals and families it really was a proud and celebratory day despite recent events.

There was certainly plenty to do. The entertainment available included performances by The Banner Theatre, Pathfinders Dog Demonstration Team and Bozo and Zizi (clowns). Not to be outdone, Gary Lee, stuntman and escapologist, advertised that if he survived his first daring escape at 2.45pm he would perform again at 3.45pm. Other attractions and performances included a Beautiful Bouncing Baby Show, Fancy Dress Competition (‘for adults and children’), Crazy Bears

Roadshow, Medieval Knights in Battle and Powder Pastimes (vintage firearm shooting). And of course there was all the fun of the fair via Tuby’s mini fairground ‘all rides absolutely free!’ To cap it all – weather permitting – The Flying

Johnstons dropped in by parachute at 4.45pm. Oh, I nearly forgot, there was also the wrestling contest ‘featuring top TV stars’. Recent galas had Jackie Pallo, with Crazy Dave Adams up against Barnsley’s Sam Betts. And, always popular, was the Miss Miners’ Lamp Beauty Contest – for young ladies.

Previous galas of course hosted a Coal Queen Contest as well. In 1979 the judges included Peter Purves (of Blue Peter fame), Jonathan Dimbleby and Ashley Jackson. Let’s not forget the main platform; in 1992 the guest speakers were Bill Morris,

A WONDERFUL image, by Joe Short of Wombwell, showing the Darfield Main branch banner, the leading men wearing sashes. Probably taken during the 1921 or 1926 lock-outs.

THE MARCH TO Locke Park through town usually went via Regent Street and Eldon Street but here we can see part of the contingent – led by the Grimethorpe Branch – walking down Market Hill, and what a magnificent sight it was. There was no room on the pavements and people in the market area spilled out on to part of the road. Notice the young children ‘hitching a ride’. This is believed to be 1969.

Always popular, was the Miss Miners’ Lamp Beauty Contest – for young ladies...

HERE THE DODWORTH (Church Lane) banner is proudly displayed, proclaiming ‘Shorter day, Better conditions and Longer life’, c.1979. Is the man at the front wearing a suit Allen McKay, who was to become the Barnsley West and Penistone MP? Can you recognize anyone?

General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers’ Union and Frank Dobson MP; and from the NUM, Arthur Scargill and Peter Heathfield, President and Secretary of the NUM respectively. As usual the gala involved a massive amount of organization by the Yorkshire NUM in co-operation with Barnsley Council.

I can’t remember exactly the first miners’ gala and

‘ETERNAL VIGILANCE is the price of liberty’. Banners were unfurled and displayed for a variety of reasons and not just at galas. Here photographer Martin Jenkinson has captured such an occasion on 22 September 1982 when the Woolley Branch demonstrated their support of health workers outside Barnsley Hospital. Arthur Scargill is shown second right and to his left is Ralph Summerfield.

demonstration that I attended but I was a toddler in short trousers when taken to Locke Park by my dad who worked at Wharncliffe Woodmoor 1,2 & 3 colliery. It may have been as early as 1952 when the Llanelli MP James Griffiths was the principal speaker. Clement Attlee was the Labour leader, but then in opposition following Churchill’s victory in the 1951 election. Nine months later Roy Mason was elected as Barnsley’s MP following a by-election.

The next gala in Barnsley was in 1958, a special one celebrating the centenary of the South Yorkshire Miners’ Association but the parade was ruined by rain, only a few events in Locke Park surviving the bad weather. The speeches were heard indoors, via platforms in the Miners’ Hall

(Yorkshire NUM headquarters) and Arcadian Hall. Speakers included Hugh Gaitskell, the Labour leader, Arthur Horner, the well known Welsh trade union leader who was General Secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers; and Harold

Wilson, then Shadow Chancellor. Years later, when I was still a teenager, I took my camera along to Locke Park and recorded some of the events at the 1965 gala.

The main speaker then was George Brown (1914-85), Labour’s Deputy Leader, who

also served as First Secretary of State for Economic Affairs (in the Wilson government). Defeated by Harold Wilson for the leadership of the Labour Party, Brown always attracted a lot of media attention because of his drinking problems and antics but

‘JUST LIKE MI DAD.’

The children’s fancy dress was always popular. I wonder if the little girl in the middle won – or was it ‘The Past’ or ‘The Present’?

A LINE-UP OF potential Coal Queens at the 1966 miners’ gala in Clifton Park, Rotherham.

was a very good public speaker. The photographs that I took were processed in professional photographer Joe Short’s home lab in Wombwell. Those of Brown, marching through Locke Park with a police escort, Joe thought worthy of publication, and he almost sent them to the South Yorkshire Times

The miners’ banners that survive are an extremely important part of our social

The Woolley Branch makes its way along Eldon Street after having marched down Regent Street during the 1983 or 1987 demonstration.

‘VICTORY TO THE MINERS’: Frickley miners and their families wheel their banner to proclaim their right to picket their pit during the 1984/85 strike.

The miners’ banners that survive are an extremely important part of our social history

safety and welfare’ under an image of the much revered Yorkshire miners’ leader Joe Hall.

STEPS TO SOCIALISM was the theme of the main side of the Wombwell Main banner, characterizing the great optimism of the early post-war era. The other side of the banner portrays a large image of the modern colliery.

THIS SIDE OF the Woolley Branch banner has ‘To each according to his ability – To each according to his needs’ as the main motto, set above ‘Liberty’. And ‘United we stand and divided we fall’ was a typical wording to emphasis the importance of Union solidarity, set alongside dignified images of miners and the family.

history. They are the most spectacular of documents, reminding us about the aspirations and struggles of our parents, grandparents and great grandparents. The socialist slogans, emblems and symbols displayed on them were placed there with a great deal of careful thought. Common themes include: the struggle for work, socialism, internationalism and

world peace. Red-blood imagery vied with wonderful phrases: ‘Steps to Socialism’, ‘Prosperity and Happiness’, ‘Health and Peace’, ‘Five-day Week’, ‘Family Allowances’, ‘Social Security’ and a celebration of ‘nationalization’.

The early, hand-made silk or velvet versions are rare and precious. Surviving banners are often replacements of original versions as they were made to

have a lifespan of only a generation or so. Inauguration was always a special occasion.

From Keir Hardie and Alexander McDonald to Clem Attlee and Harold Wilson, the heroes of Labour are featured on many banners, as are the great union leaders of the past: Tommy Hepburn, Arthur Horner, Peter Lee, A J Cook, Herbert Smith. More modern banners

THE HOUGHTON MAIN banner with its typical blood red background has an image of Clem Attlee on one side enclosed by the legend ‘Labour leads the way to prosperity’. It was Attlee’s government that nationalized the mines in 1947. The other side of the banner extolls ‘Health,

THE CORTONWOOD BRANCH banner has clearly weathered many galas, demonstrations and a variety of occasions but – front and back – still has tremendous impact.

THE NORTH GAWBER Branch banner stands out from many of the other banners because of its blue rather than red background and has a modern multicultural central image.

DISPLAYING BANNERS in windy and wintry conditions was never an easy job. Here the Barrow Main banner takes pride of place at Birdwell in January 2007 at the event to commemorate the centenary of the 1907 cage disaster.

feature leaders such as Lawrence Daley and Arthur Scargill.

Miners’ banners can be seen in a variety of settings, from working men’s clubs and institutes and miners’ welfares, trade union buildings to town halls, regional and national museums; and mining museums. Occasionally one or more will appear at a special occasion such as the dedication or rededication of a mining memorial. One of the best displays I have ever seen took

THE WHARNCLIFFE WOODMOOR Branch banner was brought from London to Carlton (via the tube!) in 2008 for the re-dedication and commemoration of the 1936 Woodmoor disaster memorial. It had been given to Tony Benn in recognition of his support of the miners. It clearly needed repair and conservation.

‘BARNSLEY A TOWN to be proud of’: one of several modern banners produced by local primary schoolchildren and displayed at the banner event in Barnsley Civic in 2009.

place in 2009 in Barnsley’s new Civic Hall, the use of light and music creating a wonderful atmosphere for the all too short occasion.

There may be no pits left in

the North East, but the annual Durham Miners’ Gala continues to attract large crowds after almost 130 years, keeping a great tradition alive.

Yorkshire Miners’ Galas in Barnsley in the modern era and notable speakers:

1907Keir Hardie, Ebby Edwards

1911Keir Hardie

1932George Landsbury, Herbert Morrison, Ebby Edwards

1933Ernest Bevin

1936Clement Attlee

1937Tom Johnson, George Gibson

1947*Clem Attlee, Manny Shimwell

1952James Griffiths

1958Hugh Gaitskell, Ernest Jones, Harold Wilson, Arthur Horner

1965George Brown, Lord Collinson

1969Roy Mason, Lawrence Daly

1975Michael Foot

1979Clive Jenkins, Tony Benn

1983Peter Heathfield

1987**Neil Kinnock, Arthur Scargill

1992Bill Morris, Frank Dobson

A revived gala was held in Locke Park in 2004 to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the miners’ strike when speakers included Steve Kemp, Councillor Bill Newman, Ian Lavery, Tony Benn, Rodney Bickerstaff and Joe Merino.

*nationalization year

** 100th gala

MINERS' WIVES (Royston Drift) approach Locke Park towards the end of the march, 2004 gala.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Most of the modern images reproduced remain in the copyright of the author. Other illustrations are courtesy of the NUM, R. Taylor and M. Jenkinson. My special thanks to Phil Thompson at the NUM for his help and kindness over the years. A sample of miners’ union banners can be seen on the NUM website: www.num.org.uk

TONY BENN WALKS in front of the Nottinghamshire NUM banner in Locke Park during the extraordinary 2004 ‘strike anniversary’ gala and demonstration.

Going for Gold

Don Booker MBE meets an ex-miner from Grimethorpe with six Paralympic medals.

The shotfirer let off his charges hundreds of feet underground at Ferrymoor Colliery, Grimethorpe, near Barnsley, in February 1956.

PERSONALITIES

planning his future. He had a broken back and was paralysed from the waist down.

A WAVE FOR everyone at the Seoul, Korea, Paraplegic Olympic Games in 1988.

One of them failed to explode, and a trainee collieryman – 27-year-old Cyril Thomas – was sent ahead to check if a wire had broken. Suddenly there was a rock fall and he was trapped with a stone across his back – it took four colleagues to remove the debris.

For Cyril, it was a devastating incident for a married man

Far from his mind were any thoughts of being on the rostrum at the Paraplegic Olympic Games, winning six gold medals for his country and more than thirty medals in other international events throughout the world.

Cyril now 84, who lives with his wife Edna at Redbrook, Barnsley, is one of Barnsley's unknown sporting personalities – a true Yorkshire lad who was able to overcome adversity with guts and determination.

After the accident he was hospitalised for six months in Beckett's, Barnsley, Sheffield General Infirmary and Lodge Moor spinal unit.

He told me: ‘When the doctor told me I would not walk again I was devastated. You cannot take pills to make it go away, it's for life, but the wonderful surroundings of Lodge Moor made life more pleasant.’

The physiotherapists at the moorland centre slowly managed to restore a little feeling into his legs and encouraged him to take up sports he had never heard of in a pit village.

‘We played basketball in the gymnasium, swam in the pool and took part in field sports such as discus and shot put. The physios gave their spare time to coach us and their families gave

support when we entered competitions.

‘Sport became an important part of my rehabilitation process, just as important as the medical

treatment. The Lodge Moor sports club even helped me with my mental adaptation to life when I left hospital,’ he said.

Sport replaced the gap left in

his life by the accident and his inability to work. Cyril took up fencing and made his first international appearance in 1960 at the Rome Paraplegic Olympics.

He then went on to win medals at the Olympics in Tokyo in 1964, Israel 1968, Germany 1972, Canada 1976 and his final appearance in Seoul, Korea, in 1988. He captained the squad for Great Britain for ten years.

When he returned from Japan with his first ‘gold’, the residents of Grimethorpe and Brierley gave him a civic reception, lining the streets of both villages to show their appreciation.

The Grimethorpe Colliery Band collected them at their White City council house and, with the Scouts and St John Ambulance Brigade, led them through the streets, through

CYRIL THOMAS in his fencing gear.

WITH OTHER competitors and helpers in Seoul (see also below).

crowds of flag-waving youngsters at Willowgarth High School. In true local fashion,

peas and pies followed.

Cyril told me how news of his success had reached Kenya,

fencing, against the wishes of the security men.’

Cyril still drives and passed

where they invited him to teach them how to throw the javelin. He went and returned with a gift – two spears.

He was also invited to Hong Kong, but was advised that the streets would be too narrow for his wheelchair.

Travelling was not easy, but Cyril said he enjoyed all but the long haul journeys. A hoist was used to get him and his wheelchair and crutches into a plane and national trainers and university students gave their support.

His proud memories are of meeting Royalty; Princess Anne on her sixteenth birthday, the Duke of Edinburgh in New Zealand and Princess Diana on her visit to Lodge Moor.‘She was a dream,’ said Cyril. ‘She asked me to show her the technique of

his advanced driving test. His proudest memories are the occasions he took his wheelchair up the ramp to the special rostrum to collect his medals for Britain.

Cyril and Edna have a daughter, Christine, who lives in Derbyshire and a son, Brian, who lives in New Zealand. ‘Edna has been magnificent help to me all the way,’ he said.

When the Paraplegic Olympic Games follow the major Olympics in London later this year, no doubt memories will return for a man whose involvement with sport has kept life on an even keel.

Life's memories will also float back for a couple for whom in 1956 there seemed no future. On 29 March 2012 they will celebrate their diamond wedding anniversary.

She asked me to show her the technique of fencing, against the wishes of the security men.

CYRIL PORTRAYED by cartoonist Heap.

CYRIL AND EDNA with his Olympic medals.

ISSUE 9

ISSUE 10

11

Cawthorne’s brush with the classics

Barry Jackson looks back over the life of Cawthorne’s Pre-Raphaelite painter,John Roddam Spencer Stanhope.

As the younger son of a Yorkshire country landowner, John Roddam Spencer Stanhope (usually known in the family as Roddam or Roddy) would have been expected to follow certain clear paths as he grew up.

Roddam’s elder brother Walter (1827-1910) was set to inherit the family home of Cannon Hall and its estates, along with directorships of colliery companies and canals, and to follow his grandfather, the first Walter Spencer Stanhope (17501821) as a Tory MP.

When he was born in 1829 it would have been difficult to predict that Roddam would follow the somewhat bohemian vocation of artist, but the independent, artistic, classically minded strains were already there in the genes inherited from

his parents.

He inherited love of the classics from his father, John Spencer Stanhope (1787-1873) who survived internment in postRevolutionary France and was granted freedom by Napoleon, plus a written permit allowing him to travel on to continue his studies of the antiquities of Ancient Greece which brought him election as a Fellow of the Royal Society. Equally independent minded was his mother, Lady Elizabeth, daughter of the Agricultural reformer Thomas Coke, Earl of Leicester, who had been taught to paint by no less an artist than Thomas Gainsborough.

A further artistic and religious influence came from his uncle the Reverend Charles Spencer Stanhope, who, in addition to holding the livings of the parishes of Cawthorne and

Weaverham in Cheshire, provided early encouragement for the career of the painter JF Herring and saw the potential of a young Cawthorne stonemason, Thomas Whitlam Atkinson, encouraging him to become an architect who went on to be a favourite of the Tsar of Russia, Alexander II.

He was educated at Rugby and Christ Church College Oxford, and then, with some reluctance,

JOHN RODDAM SPENCER Stanhope photographed by Lizzie Casswall Smith at the Gainsborough Studio, 309 Oxford Street, London, somewhere between 1904 and 1908.

HILL HOUSE, his Cawthorne home 1870-80, which he converted from a farm to a gentleman’s residence.

LADY ELIZABETH Spencer Stanhope.

JOHN SPENCER Stanhope.

his parents allowed him to enter into some ‘artistic training’ with the painter GFWatts, which lasted seven years (1850 to 1857) and involved him in the painting of large murals based upon classical sources such as the Elgin Marbles. In 1857 came his first meeting with members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Rosetti, Burne-Jones and William Morris. He was invited along with Val Prinsep to take part in the painting of murals at the Oxford Union. These depicted scenes from Le Morte d’Arthur and were described when first painted as ‘so brilliant as to make them look like the margin of an

illustrated manuscript’. Sadly, poor preparation of the surfaces has subsequently led to deterioration and fading. In 1858 he took a studio at Blackfriars one floor below that occupied by Rosetti.

Here he painted Thoughts of the Past, described by Peter Trippi as an ‘intensely naturalistic picture of a prostitute reflecting on her fall.’ He points to carelessly strewn coins on the dressing table as payment for services rendered, the necklace with missing beads as cheap and fading glamour, a man’s glove

and walking stick with discarded posies of violets and primroses on the bare floor as a quick exit, and broken furniture and window panes as [signs of] physical decay.’ Only the sickly pot plants are ‘struggling towards light’, and, of course, the view through the window is of the river where so many women, weighed down by their unequal struggles in a man’s world, ended their lives.

It seems strange that, considering Thoughts of the Past is now perhaps Stanhope’s best known work, it is the only one of

‘THOUGHTS OF THE Past’ reproduced by kind permission of Tate Britain.

THE PULPIT AT All Saints’ Cawthorne with Roddam’s original painted panels which are now in safe-keeping at Cannon Hall and have been replaced by copies.

THE ALTAR PIECE

The Plagues of Egypt, which he finished the night before he died. It was destroyed in the Borlets fire 1991.

its subject type that he painted. He turned his back on the grim reality of contemporary Britain and was no longer in tune with ‘the moralistic strain’ of the first Pre-Raphaelites as shown in Holman Hunts’ Awakening

Conscience.

From this time onwards it is difficult to point to any theme as being typical of Stanhope’s subject matter. To name just a few of his paintings, Penelope (1864), Ariadne in Naxos (1868), Andromeda (1872), Orpheus and

Eurydice on the Banks of the River Styx (1874) and Charon and Psyche (1883) were all classical subjects, The Flight into Egypt (1862), Christ in the Winepress (1864) and Eve Tempted (1877) were biblical, while he painted landscapes of locations as far apart as Lake Lucerne, Florence and Jowett Farm, Cawthorne. To these can be added two Shakespearean scenes – Juliet and the Nurse (1863) and Patience on a Monument Smiling at Grief (1884).

Significant factors in

Stanhope’s life from the mid1860s onwards were his friends and his health. He seemed to be a robust and very jovial man who boxed with Holman Hunt and Val Prinsep. He had an understanding with certain friends that, wherever they might meet, they would greet each other in a broad Yorkshire dialect and it was reported in the Barnsley Chronicle in September 1869 that ‘At the Cawthorne Harvest Thanksgiving Supper... Mr Roddam Stanhope brought down the house by narrating an imaginary conversation between himself and an aged male grouse on the grouse moor as the guns blazed overhead.’

He was, however, an asthmatic and this led to him and his wife dividing their time between England and Florence. As his parents grew older and worse in health he left the South of England and moved into Hill House at Cawthorne which he had converted from a farm to a gentleman’s residence complete with a studio. This remained his English residence until 1880 when the cold, damp climate proved too much for his asthma and he moved to the Villa Nuti at Bellosguardo, Florence.

John and Lady Elizabeth Spencer Stanhope died within a week of one another in 1873 and their sons, Walter and John Roddam decided upon a complete refurbishment of All Saints’ Church, Cawthorne in their memory. For this Walter provided the money (£9,000) and the estate masons (under clerk of works, George Swift who was also the churchwarden), while Roddam organized the artistic design by bringing in his friend, the architect GFBodley. He had previously been persuaded by his friend, William Morris, to provide paintings for Bodley’s new chapel at Marlborough College (Morris’ old school) and when he himself designed a window (showing

Photographed by W H Senior at Old Battersea House, c.1959.

Fides [Faith] overcoming the folly of the world) in memory of his daughter, Mary, who had died in Florence, aged 7, from Scarlet Fever, it was to William Morris’ glass company that he turned to make and install the glass in Cawthorne’s Lady Chapel.

He also designed, for the refurbished All Saints, a magnificent West Window of Faith, Hope and Charity, and the present pulpit, (the second pulpit which he gave to the church) has panels painted by him showing Christ in glory flanked by two angels. The current panels are copies, the original having been moved to Cannon Hall for safe keeping.

When he moved to Florence permanently, studies with an Italian landscape began to appear which we must assume were from this period, although it is not really possible to accurately date such paintings as The Pine Woods at Viareggio and The Women of Sorrento Hauling in the Nets (The latter now on loan at Cannon Hall). In Florence however, he did become involved with the Anglican Church of the Holy Trinity and when it was

decided that it needed replacing he sold his Botticelli to help finance it. He was the Vice Chairman of the Building Committee which gave the planning and building commissions to his old friend Bodley who stayed at the Villa Nuti while the work was done.

Stanhope painted two altar pieces for the new church but they were broken up into their many panels when the building became redundant and was sold in 1967. One of only two ways one can now see the principal piece which must have been magnificent is in the extremely large book of sepia photographs of it which he sent to Cawthorne Victoria Jubilee Museum of which he was the founder and first president. The other is in the large watercolour study of it which his stepdaughter Mrs Mure gave for the Lady Chapel of Christ Church, Esher in Surrey.

He died after finishing his last painting The Plagues of Egypt in 1908 and is buried in Florence. During his working life he was criticized for poor drawing skills, a weakness which he shared with

his teacher GFWatts, and it was often pointed out that he lagged well behind his fellow PreRaphaelite, Rosetti, for innovation. However, his use of colour was never criticized and he was described by Burne Jones as ‘the greatest colourist of the century.’

It seems regrettable that so few examples of his work are to be found within easy travelling distance of his Cawthorne birthplace, although some are to be found in churches at Cawthorne, Flockton and further afield at Saint-Martin-on-theHill, Scarborough. It is hoped that, in the not-too-distant future, the name of St John the Evangelist Howlandswaine can be added to the list. This church, the building of which was

A WATERCOLOUR STUDY of his altar piece for Holy Trinity Church, Florence, which stands in the Lady Chapel of Christ Church, Esher, Surrey. This photo was given to the author by Judy Oberhausen, an American art historian whom he showed around Cawthorne.

THE WOMEN AT the Sepulchire from Marlborough Chapel reproduced with permission of the Headmaster. This photo was given to the author by the late Jon Catleugh when he was Chairman of the De Morgan Foundation. It is very similar to Roddam’s painting Why Seek ye the Living Among the Dead? which now hangs in the Art Gallery of Sydney, New South Wales.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Books about the Spencer Stanhopes by AMWStirling. Various lecture notes by Simon Poë.

John Roddam

Spencer Stanhope.

The Early Years of a Second Generation Pre-Raphaelite 18581873 – a thesis by Peter B Trippi submitted towards his degree of Master of Arts at the Courtauld Institute, London in 1993.

Peter was an American art historian whom I had the pleasure of showing around Cawthorne in September 1993 and who sent me a copy of his thesis in unpublished form.

The story of the Barnsley trip to Old Battersea House came from the late Diana Gilfillan, having been told to her by her father-inlaw.

Barry Jackson, current President of the Cawthorne Victoria Museum Society.

financed by Roddam’s parents, contains wall paintings by him surrounding a Burne Jones east window. Unfortunately they were overpainted with emulsion in the 1960s and the parish is now trying to raise money and obtain grants to have them properly restored to view. In Cawthorne

Victoria Jubilee Museum there are framed sepia photographs of many of his major works which he sent at regular intervals. Sadly the story could have

been so different. After Roddam’s death his niece, Anna Maria Wilhelmina Stirling became his great champion. She wrote his biography A Painter of Dreams and built up a collection of his paintings, along with paintings by her sister Evelyn De Morgan and ceramics by Evelyn’s husband William De Morgan. These were kept at Old Battersea House which she and her husband had on a lifetime lease –and hers was a long lifetime!

Around 1962 she made an offer to Barnsley Council of Spencer Stanhope paintings and painted furniture, Evelyn De Morgan paintings and William De Morgan ceramic for the fairly new Cannon Hall museum (opened in 1957). A party of councillors and Town Clerk (AE Gilfillan) went to inspect the

offered items, taking with them as art advisor LHHGlover the Principal of Barnsley College of Art. After the tour, Harry Glover’s assessment of the collection, which was then not in vogue, was as follows: ‘it is a load of Pre-Raphaelite rubbish’ –and the offer was turned down!

Mrs Stirling died in 1965, a couple of weeks short of her 100th birthday, and her collection came to form the basis of the De Morgan Foundation. When the Foundation had trouble finding accommodation for all the collection, twenty-two items by Roddam (including his very last work, The Plagues of Egypt altar piece) were sent for storage to James Borlet’s warehouse. There in 1991 they were incinerated in a disastrous fire.

RODDAM’S WINDOW IN the Lady Chapel of All Saints’, Cawthorne with glass by the William Morris glass company. It is in memory of his daughter, Mary.

RODDAM’S DESIGN FOR All Saints’ west window.

A CLOCK WITH painted decoration by Roddam.

Motor vehicle registrations

Archives and Local Studies Manager,examines

Dodworth Grange is credited with being allocated HE 1 – the first registration plate issued in the new County Borough in April 1913. It was attached to his 20 horsepower Royal Blue Limousine, which had attractive red lining. Taylor was a wealthy, Barnsley-born, Church of England clergyman in his midseventies. He purchased the vehicle for private use and enjoyed the use of it for six years before selling it on in 1919. You can imagine him making the journey into town during the years of the First World War, when cars were still very few in number. Taylor died in 1922, aged 83.

Cars and motor vehicles are a part of all our lives and it is hard to imagine a world without them. They have had such a huge impact on society, and it is estimated that there are approximately 600 million passenger cars worldwide.

However, back in the nineteenth century, the streets of Barnsley were car-free. The arrival of the very first car in Barnsley in 1899 was such a spectacle that it drew people out into the streets, with the Barnsley Chronicle of 26 August reporting on the event and referring to the car as a ‘horseless carriage.’ The motor vehicle has gone on to change the lives of everyone – the way we live, the way we work, and the way we travel.

The Motor Car Act of 1903, which came into force in January 1904, introduced the registration of motor vehicles and motorcycles in the UK so that they could be easily traced in the event of an accident or offence. The Act required that registration marks were shown on the vehicle and the responsibility for registration lay with county and county borough councils. At that time, Barnsley was part of the West Riding taxation authority, and cars were only just starting to be mass produced.

It was to be another ten years before motor vehicles began to be registered in Barnsley itself, when, in 1913, the County Borough of Barnsley was created. The registration office was situated at the rear of Shambles Street.

Thomas Thornley Taylor of

Vehicles continued to be registered in Barnsley until 1976, when the system was computerized and centralized at Swansea. Luckily, fifteen volumes of registrations have survived, spanning that sixty-three year period, and they are available for public use at Barnsley Archives and Local Studies.

These records provide a

Paul Stebbing, BMBC’s

the vehicle registration volumes kept at the archive which reveal the history of motoring in Barnsley from 1913 to 1976.

A WELL POLISHED Napier with the prestigious HE 1 number plate stands outside the Peel Street showroom of Eyre Bros.

Gem from the Archives

fascinating insight into the owners of these vehicles. They could quite easily have been destroyed in 1976, as there was no legal requirement to preserve them, but thankfully they were

sent to the South Yorkshire County Record Office in Sheffield, before being transferred back to Barnsley in 2010.

The earliest registers from 1913-1920 give the most information, at a time when motor vehicles were the privilege of the very wealthiest in society. The registers from that period give the name and address of the owner, the type of car, the colour and weight of the body, the intended use of the vehicle, the licence number and the date of registration. Owners of motor cars and motorcycles are divided into separate sections. In 1914, the first full year of registration, just eighty-one vehicles were registered. By 1974, the annual figure had risen to 3,500!

They provide a wealth of information for historians

interested in the history of motoring. They are also of great interest to those tracing their family history, as they can indicate the wealth and social status of our more recent ancestors. The registers also provide a nice link to present-

day Barnsley through the inclusion of the coveted THE1 plate, which can still be seen in the town on the mayor’s official vehicle. Volunteers are busy fully transcribing the registers, with a view to making them available online in the future.

They are also of great interest to those tracing their family history...

MOTOR POWERED dust-cart in Barnsley, c. 1930.

BARNSLEY ARCHIVES AND LOCAL STUDIES is situated in the Central Library on Shambles Street. The collections date from the twelfth to twenty-first century and include records detailing everything from local families to schools, local businesses, the police and councils. The department is open from 9.30am-5.30pm from Monday to Friday, with late opening on Mondays until 7pm and on Wednesdays until 6pm. They also open on Saturdays from 9.30am-1pm. Within the next year, through the Experience Barnsley project, the department will move into Barnsley Town Hall to form part of the new Heritage Lottery Funded Barnsley Museum and Archives Centre.

BROADWAY Grammar School

Much has been written, and rightly so, about the Barnsley and District Holgate Grammar School on Shaw Lane and the Barnsley Girl's High School on Huddersfield Road, but Barnsley had a third Grammar school which, to my mind, sometimes gets forgotten.

Too many years ago than I care to remember, when I was a pupil at Agnes Road Junior School, I failed the dreaded 11+

examination. At that time I was not much of a scholar, as can be seen from the report of my time in class 4A under Mr Gaunt's tuition. One could say that, in today's politically correct regime, I was ‘educationally challenged’.

My main attribute would appear to be that I ‘tried hard’. Failing the 11+ was, through my 11-year-old eyes, not the end of the world. Passing the exam would have meant spending five years at either, Holgate Grammar, Longcar Central or Barnsley Central schools, the pupils of which were required to wear a blazer, tie and cap and do ‘homework’. I was quite content to spend the rest of my school days at Racecommon Road Secondary Modern; no uniform, no homework, four years wasting my

time (pupils left when they were 15) and then leave with no qualifications, ready to spend my life underground at a local pit. My father, however, had other ideas.

In my second year at Racecommon Road I suddenly found myself entered in an exam which, if I passed, would mean transferring to the Barnsley Secondary Technical School. My quiet life would be in ruins; uniforms and homework flashed in front of my eyes; I was just getting used to watching TV at night; hopefully I would fail.

I remember the morning the envelope containing the exam result dropped through the letter box. I should have left it on the carpet where it was and gone on

Former pupil Phillip Norman looks back over the history of Broadway Grammar School and his years spent there in the late-1950s.

AGNES ROAD Boys and Girls school photographed in 1994.

'BROADWAY' WAS the first Technical Grammar School to be built in the County Borough and was designed by Dyson, Cawthorne & Coles of Barnsley, the site chosen having commanding views over Barnsley to the northeast and Stainborough to the southwest.

my way to school. My father was in bed. He had been off work for some weeks and had been seriously ill at one time although he was making a steady recovery. I took the letter upstairs to him and beat a hasty retreat trying to avoid the impending storm. As I reached the bottom of the stairs he shouted down that I had passed and congratulated me. How had this happened? It was totally unexpected.

As I walked to school I slowly accepted that my life was going to change and consoled myself with the thought that if I had managed to pass so would all my friends who had taken the exam at the same time. I would not be on my own. How wrong can you be? ‘Morning Les, did you pass?’ ‘No.’ ‘Billy?’ ‘No.’ ‘Tom, Dick, Harry?’ ‘No. No. No.’ I was the only one. Total disaster.

In September of 1957 my easy life as a pupil of Racecommon Road came to an end. I donned the bottle green blazer and cap, put my handed down satchel containing a pen, pencil, ruler and rubber on my shoulder and set off on my lonely journey to my new school.

That was the only day during the next three years that my satchel would be empty.

Barnsley Technical College

In 1940 several of the junior classes of the Barnsley Technical

College were grouped together under the title of 'Works Preparatory Department', and by 1943 had expanded to become the Junior Technical School. It consisted of six classes of engineering and two classes of building students.

After the 1944 Education Act it amalgamated with the Junior Day Commercial classes and the Household Science and Needlework classes which resulted in the formation, on the 9 April 1945, of the Barnsley Secondary Technical School. This then became a five form school: two forms for engineering, one

for building, one for commerce and one for domestic science. These forms were made up of seventy-five boys and girls from the Barnsley Borough and another seventy-five from the West Riding. The school at this time occupied part of the College of Technology building next to the Town Hall.

In January 1947 the school began to move to rooms in the Old Rectory and the adjacent huts on Church Street. The huts were fitted out as laboratories, workshops and classrooms.

At 9.00am on the first day of term in September 1957, pupils,

BARNSLEY TECHNICAL College on Church Street on the left of the picture, c.1950.

new and old, assembled in the hall of the old Technical College and after registration were shunted out to the classrooms available in different parts of the town. My class ended up in the cellar of the Old Rectory on Church Street, which room, I believe, was used as the school dining room. There we underwent a rapid fire oral maths test on the times tables (at that time Maths was a new subject to me, I thought of it as the same as Arithmetic). The teacher, Mr. Hirst, explained that he would go round the class and ask each pupil a question. He did it so fast he hardly give you time to think. I was panic stricken as it approached my turn and knew I would be the only one who got their question wrong. 'Eight times eight' he shot at me, '64' I shot back, giving the first number that came into my head. 'Correct' he said and moved on. Relieved, I thought: 'Hang on; there may be hope for me yet.'

The rest of the term passed in a blur. We seemed to spend most of our time tramping the streets of Barnsley, walking backwards and forwards between the various classrooms and then standing about waiting until a

teacher turned up. Homework was given at every lesson. We were expected to do about 1 hour per night. It seemed to me that every teacher expected you to spend that hour on his subject alone. My satchel slowly filled up; geometry set, drawing instruments, log tables, 'Elementary Algebra,' 'Dictionary of English Literature,' maths, physics, chemistry, English, geography, history, the list was endless. Watching TV and 'playing out' at night became a thing of the past.

Broadway School

A new school was planned and building work started on Broadway in March 1956. In December of 1956 the huts on Church Street were demolished to make way for the expansion of the College of Technology and the school took over classrooms in a building used by the Air Training Corps in Racecommon Road for use as drawing offices. It also took over the School of Art for commerce lessons and laboratory and workshop accommodation in the old college building.

Building work on Broadway advanced rapidly and the school was able to take over an adequate number of classrooms enabling it to open on the first day of the Lent term, 6 January 1958.

As from September of 1958 the new school admitted sixty boys and sixty girls, aged 11 years, to a four form coeducational school on the results of the Education Authority's transfer system for pupils at primary school.

For the first three years education would be of a general nature, encompassing all the usual subjects. After three years, according to their abilities and inclinations, the students would be allowed to follow, for the next two years, either a more academic course in arts or science subjects or a more practical one in engineering,

COPPER HALL, which was also referred to as the ‘Old Rectory’ was used as a College Annexe and stood at the top of Eastgate, where the new college is today. The building was known as Copper Hall as the workmen were reported to have been paid in copper. Tasker Trust

building, commercial or domestic science subjects.

After satisfactorily completing the five-year-course pupils would be entered for the General Certificate of Education Ordinary Level examination, the 1st Ordinary National Certificate examination or, if applicable, the Royal Society of Arts examination. Most students left after the GCE exams but sixth form courses were available which led to the Advanced Level of the General Certificate of Education. More advanced courses in commerce, engineering, building and nursing were also available.

Large playing fields, covering 101/2 acres, were available opposite the school where pupils were encouraged to participate in school games; hockey, rounders, netball and tennis for girls; football, cricket and tennis for boys. Representative teams played other schools in the area and inter-house competitions were organized within the school itself, the four houses being Davy, Ross, Webb and Wren.

The school could accommodate 680 pupils who

occupied eleven classrooms, three science laboratories, a commerce room, library, garden room, two division rooms, two housecraft rooms, a needlework room, art room, housecraft cottage, two drawing offices, workshops for building, woodwork, metalwork and engineering. Three extra classrooms, sited next to the kitchen and servery, were available when not in use as dining rooms.

The assembly hall had a spacious stage and property store with adjacent dressing rooms. A smaller raised hall was available to the rear of the main hall. There was a gymnasium with changing rooms and showers for both sexes.

The school cost £203,045 including; £9,180 for the preparation of the playing fields (which involved removing 21,000 cubic yards of soil); £2,130 for a caretaker's house; £9,000 for special foundations required to combat the effects of mining subsidence and £23,000 for the cost of furniture, equipment, library and textbooks. Barnsley Corporation building department won the contract, completing the

building in 21 months – 9 months ahead of schedule.

The new school on Broadway opened in January 1958, my year being part of the first intake. It had now become a Grammar School and the teachers took to wearing mortarboards and gowns; Mr. Purdy, the headmaster, was never seen without his. Pupils were now separated into four houses – Davy, Ross, Webb, and Wren – and were expected to take part in inter-house competitions. I was in Ross house. I'm not sure how the names were chosen but I suspect they were named after Sir Humphrey Davy (scientist), James Clark Ross (Antarctic explorer), Captain Matthew Webb (sportsman and channel swimmer), and Sir Christopher Wren (architect). The school acquired a new badge with a Latin motto, Semper Sursum which translates as 'Always Striving' or something similar. Pupils were also required to learn a new school song 'Forty Years On' which is also the 'Harrow' school song and many other schools I think.

Every pupil was assigned a locker to keep their books in. It

Sir Humphrey Davy.

James Clark Ross.

Captain Matthew Webb.

Sir Christopher Wren.

The four houses of Broadway were named after historical figures.

Engineering room.

A domestic science room.

The Hall.

The Physics laboratory.

PHOTOGRAPHS FROM a brochure of the time, showing the features of the newly built school.

was full after the first week. The amount of homework grew steadily. One hour per night became two, then three, but in reality you kept going until it was finished. The importance of passing the GCE examination was drilled into us and we lived and breathed it, morning, noon and night. It soon became apparent that my satchel was not large enough to accommodate all the books and I acquired a small suitcase as a replacement. I carried this suitcase to school and back twice a day (I always went home for dinner) for the rest of my time at Broadway, filling it each morning and afternoon with enough paraphernalia to get me through the next lessons. I continued to use this suitcase after I left school when I went for further education classes at the Barnsley Technical College.

I outgrew my blazer after the first year and never had another, going to school in a hand-medown sports coat with the school badge sewn on the top pocket. I should perhaps explain that my father never saw me at Broadway, having passed away before I left Racecommon Road. After my father died money was scarce and my mother got me a job as a paperboy which I had until I left school.

My typical day would start at half-past six in the morning; collect the papers from Lawson's newsagents at the top of New Street (we lived in Castle Street, near Locke Park) at 7 o'clock; deliver the papers in Park Grove and Longcar Lane; back home for 8 o'clock; prepare my own breakfast (my mother worked as a cleaner at Longcar Central School in the morning and evening), check the completed homework; put it in the suitcase and set off at 8.30 to walk to Broadway ready to start school at 9 o’clock. At 12 o'clock I would walk home for dinner and get back to school for 1.30, having

repacked the suitcase ready for the afternoon classes; we would finish at 4 o’clock and walk all the way home again; prepare my own tea and start with that day's homework.

There would be no let up at week-ends. Papers still had to be delivered Saturday and Sunday. Saturday was pay day; 15 shillings a week, which my mother allowed me to keep. After delivering the papers it was back to the homework while listening to 'Children's Favourites' with 'Uncle Mac' and then 'Saturday Club' with Brian Matthews on the wireless. I did manage Saturday afternoons off when I went into town with friends to buy one of the new 45 rpm records in Neals Music shop on Sheffield Road, which I played on an old record player that was connected to the radio which was used as an amplifier. The record player could only accommodate one record at a time. Every three or four minutes I had to get up to turn the record over or put a new one on. Records cost six shillings and eightpence; a third of a pound and nearly half my wages.

Who were these people, teachers, monsters, who changed my life so much?

The headmaster was Mr Francis A. Purdy. I still have my school reports with his signature on them. 'Phillip tries hard' seems to have followed me from Agnes Road Juniors. Mr. Burns was the deputy head for the boys and Miss. White for the girls.

Mr. Pilkington, physics, never gave out lines. Any misbehaving pupil was told to write out twentyfive times Boyle's Law, Charles Law, Archimedes Principle, or some other such rule or law that he had made his flavour of the month. Twenty-five times, easy, until you realised that each rule was between five or ten lines long. I still remember them fifty years later.

Mrs. Griffiths, English Language and sometimes literature, packed a mean left hook. I saw her knock one lad clean off his chair –there was no political correctness in those days. If she could see me writing this she would be amazed and no doubt still find lots of mistakes.

Don Martin, maths, spent

BROADWAY headmaster, Mr Purdy.

THE SCHOOL BADGE with Latin motto Semper Sursum, which translates as ‘Always Striving’.

NEALS MUSIC shop on Sheffield Road. Tasker Trust

most of his time pushing his broken-down car, or rather having the pupils do it for him. He smoked a pipe which he kept in the top pocket of his jacket, sometimes still lit. He managed to teach me the rudiments of algebra, trigonometry and geometry. I can still recite the rules for addition and subtraction of negative numbers that he drilled into us.

Mr. Hirst took PE and maths. He was always throwing pieces of chalk up and down and used an old slipper across the bottom as further punishment. I remember a boxing match between myself and another boy. We agreed beforehand not to hit each other too hard. He was not amused but we got away with it.

Bayliffe (chemistry), Ecclestone (geography), Seaman (English), Gibson (mechanical science and metalwork), Stonehouse (technical drawing) and good old Mr. Slater, the music teacher, who failed to find any musical bones in my body, all remembered with a certain degree of affection but mostly with a great deal of respect.

In preparation for the opening

day ceremony we had to recite a poem 'The Ballard of Semmerwater' by Sir William Watson. Miss White took us for rehearsals and stood on a chair conducting us like a choir. 'Deep asleep, deep asleep it lies, the still lake of Semmerwater under the still skies' it began. At one point a solo 'artiste' was required to say the line 'I faint for lack of bread'. She tried each boy in turn. When she came to me I made sure I wasn't the unfortunate soul who had to make a fool of himself in public. Having suddenly developed an acute stammer, I said the line and slumped back dramatically in my seat. She was not amused but it did the trick.

The staff photograph dated 1947 is taken outside the Old Rectory and appeared in the Memories column of the Barnsley Chronicle 8 May 1998. Mr. Pilkington is in the front row 6th from the left, middle row 1st from

left is Mr. Seaman, Mr. Gibson, 3rd from left and Mrs. Griffiths, 7th from left. The others were before my time I think.

I left Broadway in the summer of 1960 when I was sixteen. I had five GCE passes (maths, English language, physics, mechanical science and metalwork) and was top of the boys’ section in my class. I like to think my father would have been proud of what I achieved. However, there is a 'but': I gave up my paper round, went straight to the National Coal Board, got a job as an apprentice fitter and spent the next thirty-two years of my life underground, which would not have impressed him at all. I did, however, become a mechanical engineer in the process; spend six years working in Africa; retire when I was 48 and have, so far, lived a very comfortable retirement. That really would have impressed him.

History

The Charter Comprehensive, was built adjacent to Broadway Grammar. These two amalgamated in 1987 and became the Kingstone Secondary School. I understand that next year this school will merge with the Holgate School to form an Advanced Learning Centre on a new site in Dodworth Road.

The Holgate Grammar School moved to its present site in 1912; the Girl's High School was founded in 1909; if the Broadway Grammar School buildings are demolished in 2012 they will have stood for a mere 54 years.

1977

SILVER JUBILEE CELEBRATIONS

As part of a two-day Silver Jubilee tour of Yorkshire and Humberside,the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh visited Cawthorne’s Cannon Hall Park in July 1977.

MEMORIES

In 20 minutes of wild excitement at Cannon Hall Park on Tuesday, 12 July 1977, an estimated 15,000 people gave the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh a welcome to match anything they could have seen during their tour of Britain to mark the Queen’s Silver Jubilee.

Thousands more packed the

streets of Barnsley when the royal couple were driven to the train station in order to catch the royal train to Leeds that evening.

Royal visit ‘spectacular’

Although the Queen was only due to spend 20 minutes at Cannon Hall, Barnsley Council organized to make the Queen’s visit a ‘mammoth entertainment spectacular’, with fifteen different types of entertainment being arranged – Cannon Hall’s first ever carnival-type operation. The entertainment started at approximately 11am and continued virtually non-stop until around 7pm.

The biggest single item featured was a musical pageant involving over 3,500 schoolchildren from the area. Other attractions included a horse and pony gymkhana, a moon walk, children’s swings and roundabouts, model railway, five-a-side soccer knock-out competition, canoeing and subaqua displays, band concerts by Grimethorpe Colliery Junior Band, the release of 5,000 gas-

filled balloons and displays by Dodworth, Penistone and Hoyland Majorettes.

A right royal occasion

Excited, cheering crowds lined the route from their previous destination, Hillsborough Park, Sheffield, to Cawthorne, and at several points along the way the royal motorcade was brought to a standstill as crowds surge into the road, making the Queen and Prince Philip around 15 minutes late arriving at Cannon Hall, where they were welcomed by Barnsley civic leaders.

The Queen was dressed in a smart, close-fitted light turquoise coat with a patterned dress in tonal colours, and matching turquoise and white hat. She

CELEBRATIONS SUCH as this street party in New Lodge took place across Barnsley to mark the Queen’s Silver Jubilee.

THE QUEEN AND County Coun Tom Ryan take an interest in a mural portraying the 25 years of her reign.

THE ‘MAMMOTH entertainment spectacular’ included a display from the Barnsley Model Aircraft Club and the Barnsley Model Engineers passenger special. Below: the royal couple toured the park land in an open Range Rover, and visitors admired the huge crown on the lawn in front of the Hall.

wore white accessories, a matching pearl necklace and earrings and an attractive, plaincoloured shoulder brooch on the left side. Prince Philip wore a neat, beige raincoat.

The Lord Lieutenant of South Yorkshire, Mr Gerard Young, presented the Mayor and the Mayoress, Coun and Mrs John Stanley, to Her Majesty and then the Mayor presented local MPs and council members.

The Queen and the Duke signed the distinguished visitors’ book in the hall before appearing on the terrace where they were greeted with a fanfare played by Barnsley Schools Music Centre Band. The Queen was presented with a bouquet of white roses by the young granddaughter of a council member.

As the royal couple left the terrace, masses of red, white and

blue balloons were released from the lawn area ahead of them, which is said to have delighted the Queen.

The Queen remarked to the Mayor about the number of people who were in the park and how they seemed to be enjoying themselves.

The party then boarded a fleet of Range Rovers to tour the parkland and the activities going on there, stopping at three points along the way. As she walked down to the Range Rover, a 12year-old boy named Richard Glover dodged the police officers standing by to present the Queen with a bouquet of roses and honeysuckle.

The Mayor and Mayoress described the royal visit as a ‘thrilling, fantastic occasion’.

One of the highlights of the royal visit for those in Cannon

Hall Park was the stage performance and static displays given by hundreds of schoolchildren from the area.

On the sloping lawn in front of the hall was a huge crown painted in gold and decorated with fresh flowers and leaves which many visitors to the park admired.

A Barnsley couple, who interrupted their holiday in Bournemouth to return to Barnsley for the day in time for the royal visit, were rewarded when the Queen stopped to speak to them.

Dunkirk veteran Mr Eric Crow, sporting a row of military medals, and his wife Dorothy, of Pogmoor, were invited to the occasion as representatives of Barnsley British Legion.

The Queen asked Mr Crow whom he represented, and questioned Mrs Crow about a poppy brooch she was wearing, a

recognition of the thousands of poppies she had sold over the years for the Earl Haig Fund.

Children from Worsbrough Common Infants School had a special interest in the royal visit, as they had recently received their own message from the Queen.

That April, the children had sent the Queen a toffee bar on her birthday – in keeping with their school tradition that everyone receives a toffee bar in the morning assembly on his or her birthday. Many of the sixyear-olds also wrote letters to the Queen, describing their Jubilee celebrations and telling her that they would be in Cannon Hall with their flags for her visit.

They received a letter from a Lady in Waiting the week before the July visit, which read:

‘I am commanded by the Queen to write and thank you for your kind thought in sending Her Majesty a toffee bar.

‘The Queen was so touched by the children’s thought of her and asks me to say how much she is looking forward to her visit to Barnsley next week.

‘Her Majesty asks me to send you and all the children her best wishes.’

Waited for hours

Thousands of people, some of whom had waited for up to four hours, gathered to catch a glimpse of the Queen and the Duke when they arrived at Barnsley Railway Station to catch the royal train to Leeds. They were due to arrive from Cawthorne at around 5.30pm but were 20 minutes late.

The town’s publicly owned buildings were the epitome of drabness for the visit and it was left to individuals and private companies to give gaiety to the town’s welcome. Most of the decorations were in Regent Street, with Lancaster and Sons and the Queen’s Hotel leading the way – the Queen’s being the first building in Barnsley to boast red, white and blue ever since the Jubilee celebrations began.

People were jammed together along Regent Street and down to the railway station. The crowd were in a quiet mood before the arrival but, when the royal party did arrive their spirits rose and cries of ‘Hurray’ and ‘Long Live the Queen’ echoed around.

People outside the Queen’s Hotel at the bottom of Regent Street spilled on to the road from

UNOFFICIALBOUQUET

FIVE-YEAR-OLD TRACY JARDIN was one of a few girls who managed to elude the tight security surrounding the royal party to give the Queen their own little welcome.

After fretting for hours before the Queen’s arrival at Cannon Hall, afraid that she would not accept a small bunch of roses that she had picked and made up herself from her grandfather’s garden, Tracy dashed out from the crowd to the open-topped royal Range Rover with the flowers. Barely two feet tall, she stretched up on tip-toe and the Queen leaned over and with a smile took the pink, red and yellow roses from her.

Tracy jubilantly told the Chronicle reporter: ‘The Queen smiled and said thank you. I was very scared before she came, I am glad that she took them.’

behind the barriers, trying to get a better glimpse of the Queen as she was approaching. Office workers were leaning out of the windows all along Regent Street, and people were even standing on the roof-tops in an effort to get a better view.

THE QUEEN waved farewell to the gathered crowds before walking over the bridge to leave the Park.

Readers’ page Readers’ page

Working at Beevor Hall

Joyce Hodgson née Hawksworth

Iread the article about Barnsley Brewery with great interest as I was employed in the offices there in Beevor Hall late 1960s and early 1970s. I think the caption under the photograph of 'Beevor Hall' is wrong, the photo is of Beevor Court which was flats and offices. A friend of

mine lived in one of the top floor flats and had to go over a bridge to get to the garden which can be clearly seen in the photo. Beevor Hall was further down the drive towards the brewery itself.

I worked as a Sales and Purchase Ledger clerk in the days before computers. It was a double entry book keeping recording how many 'barrels' of beer and lager in their various sizes, and how many dozens of bottles had been delivered to the pubs, hotels and clubs in the Barnsley area and as far away as Doncaster. The final numbers had to tally

Beevor Hall as it appeared in the reign of Edward VII.

Beevor Hall photographed in 1960. These were the brewery’s offices, after the building was purchased from the Senior family in 1922.

Beevor Court, which formerly housed the stables. It was converted into flats and offices. Editor’s note: This was wrongly captioned in the last issue as ‘Beevor Hall’, as Mrs Hodgson has kindly pointed out.

If you have photographs or memories you would like to share with us, please write to:Rebecca Lawther,Editor,The Drill Hall,Eastgate,Barnsley S70 2EU or email:editor@whmagazines.co.uk.

Umbers who was a rather mysterious figure who inhabited the far end of Beevor Hall. I only saw him if he was in reception and at Christmas when the annual staff party was held in the Buttery, a very old room which was part of the original Hall. The reception was run very efficiently by Mrs Petty aided by Jane McKenzie who at one time had lived in the Hall as her grandparents were cook/caretaker.

They were happy days accompanied by the smell of malt and brewing and I was devestated when Beevor Hall was suddenly demolished without any thought of its place in Barnsley's heritage. Gone but never forgotten.

Brewery memories

Stella Needham

Iwas very interested to read Brian Elliot’s article on the history and tales of Barnsley Brewery, as I know my dad worked there in its early days.

with those of the Order Office run by Harry Smales and his staff. A discrepancy meant going through all the delivery notes again checking for the error which could take ages. The ledgers were heavy black books which were opened by winding with a key to insert new pages and towards the year end they weighed a ton! I had a view of the grounds and breweryfrom my window but rarely had time to admire it. The office was a number of bay windowed rooms connected by doors. In the end room were the comptometer operators, Christine and Joan,who worked out the wages and printed all the slips, overseen by Maurice Hoyle, the opposite end housed Joan, Dorothy and others whom I can't remember or what they did.

In the same office as myself were the wages clerks, Stan Gregg and Les Allen – both characters – who enjoyed their daily allowance of two bottles of Magnet Pale Ale. Woe betide anyone if they got Light Ale by mistake! The female staff had an allowance of a pint of lemonade which was often scrounged to make shandies to eke out the ale. On wages making up day the cash arrived from the bank, a predetermined number of each denomination of notes and coins, and each wage packet was made up and lined up along the table. Calamity if there was any money left over at the end of the process. Everyone had to help to check each wage packet until the error was found as the men had to be paid on time!

Looking at the photos brought back many memories, names ringing a bell time and again, particularly Mr

He was Bert Ransome, or may, in his earlier days have been known as Bert Goodfellow (his foster parents’ name). He was born in 1892. He worked at Barnsley Brewery as a horseman, taking the beer round to the publicans on a dray. He worked with Ernest Loader, (my ‘Uncle’ Ernest, as both families became life-long friends until their deaths). I was the youngest of the family (born 1935) so my knowledge is limited, only remembering snippets my mother told me about.

I was amused to hear how Brian was thrilled to receive his two pints of beer each day! When my dad delivered the beer, the publicans ‘allowed’ them to drink what they wanted, – which they did at every delivery! My mother, to her utmost disgust, said he used to arrive home every day blind drunk. They lived at 1, Oakwell Lane and the horse used to take him home! She said it caused constant rows and much unhappiness. I understand on one occasion the horse and dray ended up in the canal!

I know he was working at the Brewery before his marriage in March 1915. On the marriage certificate his occupation was ‘engine steerer’ so I presume they had moved on to steam power.

He never spoke much of those years as I think he thought they were better forgotten, but after a few drinks at Christmas, he used to delight in telling us how he ran into and smashed the first taxi in Barnsley!

He joined up later in 1915 but I know he went back to work there when he came back from France.

Mrs

The Barnsley Brewery gates.

A trip down memory lane

Maureen Gosling

The Fish & Chip Shop (circled) in the competition photograph was My Uncle Jack's. It was a very small shop, I was only small when I used to go with my Grandmother and I do not know if they lived there but I suppose that they must have.

My husband and I both enjoy reading Memories of Barnsley each quarter and this one was very interesting, quite a lot of the items are within our memories and Gordon especially remembers the Old Mill area very well as he lived in Old Mill Lane up to being 15 years old in 1955.

Most of the old photos of that area are as it was when he played there with his friends every day, the canal and its banks being a big draw for young boys.

Other than the sunken barges in front of the Keel Inn (where they used to climb out onto and fish with nets for tiddlers) he does not remember if there were any other boats on the water.

Your article on the Great Snows was interesting, but before our time. Gordon just remembers the big snow in 1947 when he was 6, he made a snow cave in the piled up snow in the backyard.

Your article on the Queen's visit brought back memories too, Gordon was with a school party at the bottom of Regent Street in front of the Queens Hotel and his main memory is that the Duke of Edinburgh was wearing obvious makeup which someone explained was necessary for press photographs.

A stay at Kendray Hospital

Two of the articles in the Winter 2011 edition of Memories of Barnsley were of special interest to me. The first one was about someone who had been a patient in Kendray Hospital in the 1950s. He remembered seeing a boy in an Iron Lung. It reminded me of the time I was a patient on Arnott Ward, from 1953 until 1955, which was a long time for a child to be in hospital.

I saw someone in an Iron Lung when I was taken around the grounds with a nurse and I looked through a window. The nurse said the person had polio. The wards were separated by glass corridors and I can remember waving to children in the next building. The doctor was called Dr Danahar.

The second article was the royal visit to Barnsley in 1954. On the day of the visit, some of us patients were taken to the main entrance of Kendray Hospital to sit on a stand that had been erected for when the royal car would pass by down Doncaster Road. As the royal car approached it slowed down and the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh waved to us. Someone in the crowd handed me a bag of sweets and I have often wondered who that was.

Looking up Doncaster Road, towards Kendray.

Mrs Nancy Jackson

Smithies Wesleyan Reform

It was so nice to speak to you just before Christmas regarding church history and Smithies Wesleyan Reform which appeared in the Readers’ section in issue 18.

I believe that my great grandfather, Elijah, was a Trustee of the chapel. Another name that comes to mind is Samuel Truelove.

Incidentally, I was christened at the chapel, the minister of that time being Mr Tom Roberts. My late brother and I attended Sunday School along with all the other children in the village. There was no other church.

I have photographs of the Coronation in 1937, when a celebration was held behind the school room. A Sunday School teacher, Mrs Featherstone I believed, crowned me Queen. Everyone had a wonderful day and all wore fancy dress. And of course, we had a big 'tea' afterwards.

Imagine my surprise to see Old Road, Smithies in issue 19 – I was born at number 3. I can still remember all the names of the people who lived there. The same Elijah (my great grandfather) owned all of these properties.

The top house in Quarry Street is where Tommy Taylor was born. We all played together as children. He was later killed in the Munich Air Disaster.

I have so many memories of different people in Smithies.

Old Road

Competition Winner

Congratulations to Mr John Hall who correctly identified the location as being Doncaster Road, looking up towards Kendray. He wins a copy of Barnsley’s Best – a Tribute to the Town’s Best Sportsmen and Women.

He also sent us this letter:

Great to see the picture. My uncle Bill Hall and aunt Alice lived in the first house ‘just past the Pindar pub’ and were, I think, the last tenants until the row was knocked down in the 1960s. He then moved to Farm Road, Kendray. (He was unfortunately killed by smoking in bed).

In the 1950s my dadGeorge rented the garage immediatelydown the entrance for his Austin 10. He'd previously used it before the war and it was a kind of meeting place. I remember having to shovel out the mushroom compost when he put it back into use.

Further along the row was Pickles icecream, made in the cellar, and sold from a stall at the front of the house and an icecream cart. My dad taught Horace Pickles to drive. And again, the fish and chip shop that once belonged to the family.

Happy days and great people. My father's side, the Hall's and Parkers all came out of the 'Dyke', (Old Row, Portland, Boundary and Pindar Oaks Cottages) from the 1870s on and some were still residents when they were demolished.

Mrs J H Semley

Elijah Higgs.

The same location in 2012. The street on the left is Portland Street, leading to Boundary Street and Lulworth Close.

Recollections of Pitt Street

Ifound the feature on Pitt Street in issue 18 to be of great interest as Pitt Street was on my regular route to and from work in my younger days, and I was familiar with all the buildings mentioned. There was another important building in Pitt Street which Gerald Alliott did not mention, namely the County Borough of Barnsley Public Assistance Office at number 4, where the Post Office now stands.

In 1940, having just left Holgate Grammar School, I had a job interview with Alderman Joseph Jones, and as a result was appointed as a Junior Clerk in the Public Assistance Office in Pitt Street. This was a building which was visited by a very large number of Barnsley residents who had fallen on hard times, and they had to come here to claim their allowances which were paid either in cash or in the form of grocery vouchers to be exchanged for goods at a local shop. The administrative offices fronted onto Pitt Street, and there was another building at the rear, approached via a cobbled yard. This building had a central hall where claimants would wait their turn to be seen by one of the Relieving Officers. Each Relieving Officer had a private office adjacent to the hall, and he would interview claimants through a hatch. The air in the hall often became very stale and it was regularly necessary to use an air freshening spray. One of the Relieving Officers (Mr Smith) was on call day or night to arrange for the admission of Barnsley patients to Storthes Hall Mental Hospital.

The general office in which I worked looked out towards the back of Wellington Street, and one morning in 1942 we could see the smoking, roofless fly-tower of the Theatre Royal which had been burnt out the previous night.

The Public Assistance Officer was Mr Sam Thomas (his son Alun became a member of the successful Barnsley Boys’ Football Team), his deputy was Eric V Williamson, and the chief clerk was Arthur P Nicholson. A regular visitor to Mr Thomas’s office was the Chairman of the Public Assistance Committee Councillor George Mason who was immediately recognisable on account of his pointed, waxed moustache. In addition to oversight of Poor Law in cash or kind, Mr Thomas had overall responsibility for the Barnsley Workhouse on Gawber Road, and Childrens’ Homes on Rockingham Street and Princess Street.

This was wartime, and in addition to his normal duties Mr Thomas had been appointed to set up and oversee the running of Barnsley’s British Restaurants which provided cheap and nourishing meals for the population at large. The largest restaurant of this type occupied the main floor of the Public Hall (which later became the Civic Hall), and there was a large kitchen on the stage. Other restaurants

were in Locke Park Café and on Parker Street and, if I recall correctly, at Lundwood and Worsbrough Common.

These were supplied with food cooked in a purposebuilt kitchen on Intake Lane and delivered by van. Another of Mr Thomas’s wartime responsibilities was the provision of Emergency Reception Centres for evacuees, and it was in this connection that refugees from the Channel Islands were accommodated in the Old Rectory on Church Street.

Arthur Nicholson had been given additional wartime duties as organizer of the Emergency Ambulance and Transport Service.

The Pitt Street office dealt with residents from the Barnsley County Borough, and another Public Assistance Office in Victoria Road dealt with residents from the surrounding West Riding Area. There was felt to be stigma attached to Poor Law, and Public Assistance in Barnsley was therefore re-named as the ‘Social Welfare Department’ in the 1940s. Poor Law ceased to function in July 1948 with the implementation of the Welfare State, and many of the staff from Pitt Street, including myself, were transferred to newly established offices of the Ministry of National Insurance or the National Assistance Board. Mr Thomas remained with the Barnsley Council and became Housing and Welfare Manager.

Colin Rowlands

Number 4 Pitt Street where Mr Rowlands worked when it was the County Borough of Barnsley Public Assistance Office. The sign in the window when this photograph was taken reads, Housing Welfare Department. This building was replaced by the General Post Office in 1964. Photograph courtesy of the Tasker Trust.

I regretted the demolition of the old St George’s Church which had a lovely reverent atmosphere and where I played the organ on many occasions in the 1950s.

I can recall many musical events in the Wesleyan Chapel which was the venue for concerts by the Barnsley Musical Society. The annual performance of Handel’s Messiah conducted by Norman Townsend was a very popular event.

As well as being organist at the Chapel, Norman was also sometime organist at the Ritz Cinema. The Barnsley Playgoers used the Temperance Hall for some of their productions.

In conclusion I would like to mention a building which

Readers’ family stories

Pulling the Crooked Leg

Every family has its stories. One particular story, passed to me as a child, concerned a relative who died during World War II while taking part in some unspecified secret mission. My cousin identified her maternal uncle Kenneth Hames as the family member in question, and went on to say that he was born in Wombwell around 1918, joined the RAF in 1939, and died during the early stages of the war. Not much to go on, but enough to warrant a letter to the RAF. The results were better than expected:

Operational records confirm that Sergeant C Kenneth Hames was a crew member of Avro Anson R9815 of BATDU (Beam Approach Training and Development Unit) which crashed at Boscombe Down aerodrome on 5 September 1940. The Anson was carrying four RAF crew (including Hames), and one Intelligence Officer. BATDU was initially established to train pilots in the use of beam-approach (blind landing) equipment, but in May 1940 RV Jones (British Intelligence) told Churchill that he suspected the Luftwaffe had developed a system of radio beams called Knickebein (Crooked Leg) to guide German bombers over British targets. It fell to BATDU to establish that the beams did exist, and to identify targets by flying

stood at the junction of Pitt Street and St George’s Road. This was the ‘Tin School’, on account of its corrugated iron construction. It seemed to have been a ‘special’ school but I have no further information about it. Can any of your readers shed any light on this unusual building?

Editor:

A short article about the Tin School appeared in issue 7 of Memories of Barnsley. If any readers have any further memories of this school, email us at editor@whmagazines.co.uk

up and down the Great North Road (the present day A1), plotting the wavelength and direction of the incoming beams. The first such flight took place on 21 June 1940, and found a narrow beam consisting of dots and dashes. The next flight confirmed the existence of a pair of beams crossing above the Rolls-Royce aircraft factory in Derby, which was bombed the same night. Daily beam-finding flights were quickly established, the intelligence so gathered being used to disrupt the beams by radiating false signals – a process the Luftwaffe described as ‘bending’ the beams. These operations became collectively known as the ‘Battle of the Beams’ and were – of course – secret. The Avro Ansons – already pensioned off – were far from ideal tools for the job, yet were rescued en masse from the scrap heap and pressed into service as beam-finders.

At the time of the accident (5 September 1940), Avro R9815 was returning to Boscombe after a night-time beam-finding flight, and was forced to land in fog. The runway lights were switched off because of the presence of enemy aircraft overhead, and it was decided to make a Lorenz (blind landing) approach. Although the aircraft made a normal approach, the undercarriage collapsed on landing, and the aircraft spun round before bursting into flames. Hames and three others died in the fire.

By September 1940, the Luftwaffe had lost confidence in Knickebein, and on the night of the 7 September, their bombers used the River Thames, rather than any beam system, to guide them to their target. During November however, the Luftwaffe introduced an improved beam system called X-Gerat. The new beams were much harder to detect, and their deadly potential was soon demonstrated in a German operation codenamed Moonlight Sonata. We know it better as the Coventry blitz.

Note: BATDU was the cover name for the unit during its beam finding phase. It was later renamed the RAF Wireless Intelligence Development Unit.

Avro Anson Mk I.

Andrew Taylor

Kenneth Hames.

Barnsley casualties of 1915/1916

PRIVATE A TEllIS Carlton

4th Royal Fusiliers

Killed by a shell

Private Ellis was killed by the explosion of a shell whilst on duty in the trenches. In a touching letter of sympathy the Chaplain to the Regiment, wrote to Mrs Ellis informing her that the death of her husband was instantaneous. ‘I know what a terrible loss this will be to you and your little ones. You will be brave and live on in hope of meeting your dear one again. God, our most loving Father, has other and more glorious work for him to do and now he is waiting and learning more of His great love for him and all the pain and discomfort of this life here is over for your dead husband. Think of him not as dead but as living in the place prepared for those who have tried to do their duty here. I buried your husband yesterday morning in a little well kept cemetery a few miles back from the firing line. A cross with his name on it will be put up over his grave in a few days time. All his comrades join with me in sending their sympathy. Your husband’s officer says he was one of his best men.’

Two days before his death, Private Ellis had written to his wife and children acknowledging the receipt of the Barnsley Chronicle. Here is a passage in the letter: ‘Ishould think it looks strange now to see the blokes walking about with the distinction armlets on. It makes one think the job is a long way from ending, but I hope none of them will be wanted. It seems a caution that the first things the committee have sent should go west. I thought they would have patronised the Chronicle Tobacco Fund before this. We are now in the trenches but there are rumours that it is our last time up before taking a month’s rest. We can very well do with it, for we have dropped amongst it properly this last three times, but we have been very lucky as regards losses.’

LANCE CORPORAL JOSEPH HOOSON

152 Cemetery Road, Barnsley

2nd York and Lancs Regiment

Accidentally shot, 9 January 1916

Private J White reported the sad news of Joseph Hooson’s death in a letter to Mrs Exley of 21 Providence Street. The letter read: ‘It was an accident. Joe had just laid down in his dug-out for a rest when one of the last reinforcement – one who had been in the First Battalion, who was going on sentry – put five rounds in his magazine and one in the breech. He pulled back the ‘safety’ catch and the rifle went off, the bullet passing through Joe’s head and killing him instantly. It was quite an accident, for the sergeant tried the rifle with the ‘safety’ catch back and off it went again, so there could be no blame attached to the lad, who feels it very much. We had only been across to the 1/5 Transport the night before to enquire about his cousin and they told us he had gone west.’

Before the war Joseph was a trammer at Barnsley Main Pit. He had been in France since November 1914. He was 20 years old when he died.

PRIVATE JAMES HURP

Plumber Street, Grimethorpe

15th Platoon KOYLI

Killed 28 January 1916

The deceased joined the Army in September 1914, and had been out in France for five months when he met his death. Mrs Hurp has received the following letter: ‘Dear Madam, Just a line to you on behalf of our platoon, NCOs and men, to express their most sincere sympathy with you in the death of your son Jim, who died bravely whilst on duty. The incident happened on the 28 January. He and two more were caught by a shell and their death, I can safely say, was instantaneous. Your son was one of our best comrades and was a good soldier who always earned the respect of our officers and men. He died a hero. Being a Barnsley man I may call upon you later and explain more fully. Yours in sympathy, Lance Corporal G H Waterfield.

He is buried in Cite Bonjean Military Cemetery, Armentieres.

SERGEANT JOHN THOS. BENNETT 36 Joseph Street, Grimethorpe KOYLI

Killed 23 November 1915

John Bennett, had previously worked at Grimethorpe Colliery. He was in the Regular Army some years before the outbreak of war and had served in India. He was 38 years old when he met his death, being killed by a sniper. Two letters have been received by his wife recording the sad event: ‘Dear Madam, It is with great regret I have to inform you of the death of your husband which took place on the morning of 23 November. He was shot through the heart by a sniper, death being instantaneous. He was a fine soldier, and brave, with a suitable inscription. Great sympathy is felt by all ranks with you in your bereavement.’

The other letter is from B Clayton Smith, the OC, who says: ‘Dear Mrs Bennett, On taking temporary command of ‘D’ Company, it at once becomes my painful and sorrowful duty to acquaint you with the death of your husband. On active service he and I never met, but in the days when we both were members of the KOYLI, he was a valued NCO under my command, and Ican, therefore, understand the feelings of sorrow which fill his company here now that he is gone. He was held in great respect by all ranks as a keen and hard-working soldier, always ready to lend a helping hand to those under his command, and above all he possessed in a marked degree the ability to be cheery under the most trying conditions, than which no quality, at this moment, could be more desirable. He died the death of a man, an example with the many who have gone before him, to us who are left. Believe me, we shall not forget them’.

The photograph of Sergeant Bennett and his wife, was in his breast pocket when he was shot. The bullet passed through the card killing him instantly.

PRIVATE CHARLIE NORTON

54 Pontefract Road, Barnsley

9th KOYLI

Killed 26 January 1916

Sergeant Wade, a colleague of the deceased, wrote the following letter to Mrs Norton: ‘I am very sorry to say that your son, Private Charlie Norton, was killed yesterday (26 January). It happened while we were in the trenches. The Germans were shelling us very heavily and your son, along with four other brave comrades, was in a dug-out when a shell fell on it, burying all the five. I was only a few yards from the spot when it happened. I can assure you that everything possible was done to save them, but death must have been instantaneous. Charlie was always cheerful, very willing and was respected by both officers and men of his company. We shall miss him very much. Please allow me on behalf of his Platoon to share our heartfelt sympathy with you in your sad loss. We have just one consolation – he died bravely fighting from his country. P.S. I am a Barnsley lad myself’.

From the Church of England Chaplain, Mrs Norton also received the following: ‘I write to express my sympathy with you in the great loss which you have sustained. It will be a satisfaction to you to know that he died in the discharge of his duty. It must be very hard for you to bear his loss, but will you try to feel that he died in a good cause? We must all one day go. Though his life on earth was short he has gone when he was on a good path and he has laid down his life for his country’s liberty. We buried his body in the military cemetery and the grave will be marked with a cross bearing his name. The cemetery is in a safe place where the graves will not be disturbed. Will you remember him still in your prayers as Ido not doubt you have done in the past and will you try as you do so to trust that his soul is in God’s keeping.’

Before the war he worked as a painter for the Midland Railway Company. He is buried in Cite Bonjean Military Cemetery, Armentieres.

Memories of BECKETT HOSPITAL

Margaret Storey (née Sanderson) shares fond memories of working in the Beckett Hospital Out Patient Department during the 1950s.

Whenever I have cause to pass the site of the dear old Beckett Hospital, I am filled with a sense of real nostalgia.

What a thrill, on leaving school in 1951, to be included among the first group of pre-nursing school students, after being interviewed by Matron Guyll, a well respected but feared Matron,

as they were in those days.

My first student day was spent in the Out Patient Department (dental clinic). I still can’t be sure from that day to this, whether it was by design or intended as a joke, but I was asked to go to Theatre (about a seven minute walk from OPD) to collect a Sphygmomanometer. Can you imagine trying to remember how to pronounce that for the next seven minutes – it was a good thing no one spoke to me en route!

The next six months were very, very happy ones and I was truly looking forward to a nursing career. However, that was not to be so, because after a

medical examination I was found to be suffering with a valvular heart disease and mother was called to Matron’s office and told that I would not be strong enough to carry on a very exacting nursing career. What next? Mother sent me to

OLD BARNSLEY

MARGARET SANDERSON in 1956.

MATRON GUYLL, Barnsley Beckett Hospital, 1956.

a private Clerical School for a year, and amazingly enough at the end of that year a job was advertised in the Barnsley Chronicle for a clerical secretary/receptionist in the Out Patient Department at Beckett Hospital. A successful interview with Mr Garratt (Hospital Secretary) and Mr Lawson (Orthopaedic Surgeon) found me back at Beckett’s in a rather different role, but still in the Out Patient Department.

For the following nine years, I wended my way from the bus station to the Out Patient Department to my clerical job in the OPD office.

Not many people today would work in the cramped area where we four girls spent our days, but to me it was a wonderful job which I thoroughly enjoyed from beginning to end. Being back in hospital life was so good.

Our ‘office’ registered all out-

patients, made appointments, filed medical records and prepared the records for each of the various clinics for the hundreds of patients attending: Casualty, perhaps the busiest and continual; Mr Butters, Surgical; Mr Rowe, Ear Nose and Throat; Mr Lawson, Orthopaedic; Dr Jeffries, Psychiatry; Dr Skipper, Medical; and Dr Fletcher, Dermatology.

All medical records were filed in our small office measuring around 7 feet by 10 feet, with a huge three-roomed cellar underneath, which was reached by concrete steps. An underground corridor with large fat water pipes running throughout housed most of the hospital records. Down in the cellar myself and the other girls had a small coat locker and a mirror. That was it. The WC was ten minutes up the hospital corridor!

The OPD office opened promptly at 9am, and life ran at a fast pace from then often until 6pm when all the clinics were finished. The four of us were responsible for registering each and every patient for all the clinics and making further

THE OPD OFFICE staff. Back row: Joan Wade (left), Margaret Sanderson. Front row: Veronica (left), Mary.

LAMBERT WARD photographed in 1964.

Beckett Hospital

appointments on leaving. My personal responsibility was the Orthopaedic and Fracture clinics each day and also taking shorthand letters from Dr Hyla Burke (Registrar) to later type up and send to family Doctors.

eventually, after I’d spent far too long on that one appointment –found a notice – ‘April Fool!’.

BECKETT HOSPITAL WAS the first hospital in the area. In August 1862, Mr John Staniforth Beckett, a retired banker, signed the deed conveying the land on which the hospital was to be built, to the first trustees: Frederick William Thomas Vernon Wentworth Esq; Walter Spencer Stanhope Esq; the Rev Henry Robert Alder; Thomas Edward Taylor Esq; and Robert Coldwell Clarke Esq. The foundation stone was laid that year.

Beckett Hospital opened in 1865 as a voluntary hospital. It was staffed by local doctors (general practitioners) and financed through endowments and voluntary donations. In 1948 – the year the National Health Service was created – there were 182 beds available. The hospital was closed in 1979. It was previously named Beckett Dispensary and Hospital (1865–1871) and Beckett Hospital and Dispensary (1871–1948).

Some of the Hospital Committee's notable benefactors include Mr C J Dibb, who presented the Committee with £500 'in order that there might always be one medical bed free for those who were not able to get recommends', in January 1884. In 1887 the death of Mr Robert McLintock was recorded. He had served on the Committee and had earlier donated a number of 'handsome quilts for the beds' to the hospital.

In 1900 Mr Joshua S Cooper generously offered to take upon himself the entire cost of building a separate building for the Hospital staff. The Cooper Nurses' Home was built as an adjunct to the Hospital at a cost of £4,500. It opened on 11 March 1902 and is still in use as Barnsley Council offices. Around the same time, another benefactor, Mr William Moore, built at his own cost a ward in which open air treatment could be carried out.

The First World War proved a trying period for local health services. Many key people served in the Armed Forces – many members of the medical profession and staffs of civic hospitals were required by the War Office for foreign service. Heavy demands were also made by the military authorities upon voluntary hospitals for wounded servicemen. During the First World War period, the Beckett Hospital treated nearly 1,200 soldiers, and in 1916 the Miners' Federation dedicated a bed in memory of their first President, Mr Ben Pickard, and endowed it with £1,250. The Great War also contributed greatly to the change in status and importance of women. In 1917 the Hospital Committee secured the services of female doctors including Dr Nesta H Perry.

The introduction of the NHS in 1948 called for a change to the local health services and work began on Barnsley District General Hospital in the 1960s. The foundation stone was laid in September 1967 and the work was carried out in two phases, the second costing around £5.5 million and being completed in 1974. The staff of Beckett and St Helen hospitals were required to amalgamate in the General Hospital in 1977, two years before the closure of Beckett Hospital.

One of the most unusual things that I remember was when the Fire Brigade’s bells sounded outside Casualty and within a few minutes a stretcher carrying a washing machine and a little boy were hurriedly wheeled into the Casualty theatre. Yes, our little fellow had his arm stuck inside the tiny engine cupboard of the machine and had to be cut out! I guess he and his mother will never forget that wash morning!

1952–1962 were years of many colliery accidents and we daily had the ambulance men from one or more of the local collieries bringing in patients. The Barnsley Chronicle reporters were regular daily callers at our window asking for any news items to report.

One April Fools’ Day I was taken for quite a ride! Each morning appointment cards arrived in the post from the various local doctors asking for appointments. One was left on the top of my pile of post which I just could not decipher, except that is was for an appointment with Mr Lawson. I pondered, asked others, rang the Doctor who I thought had sent it and

Doesn’t it seem a strange coincidence that one particular day on my 1.30pm list of patients to be called from the office window, Mr Finney and Miss Haddock were next to each other. We didn’t usually have patients’ Christian names on the list, so I just called out: ‘Finney, Haddock’, before realizing even what I’d done. You can imagine the peels of laughter from the waiting room.

Perhaps others reading this brief article would be able to add many stories of their ‘long, long waits’ in the Out Patient Department in those early days. Appointment systems and computerized action have now made things so much easier.

At 75 years old, I now look back with real appreciation for all the learning processes that have proved invaluable down the days of my life.

I left Beckett Hospital in 1960 to begin training at a Missionary college in Birkenhead: from this college many students went out to China to serve with the China Inland Mission, founded by another son of Barnsley, John Hudson Taylor. It has been my great privilege since those days to be fully involved in the work of Missions, at home and abroad.

FIFTY-SIX YEARS ON!Margaret and Ron Storey.

THE CHILDREN’S WARD at Beckett Hospital decorated for Christmas, c.1914.

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Barnsley History Day

The Civic Hanson Street • Barnsley 10am-3pm Telephone 01226 327000

Create the Barnsley people’s poem with Ian McMillan

Meet sporting legends

50+ exhibitors and displays

Fun things to do for all the family!

Medieval knights in battle

Treasures for the new Barnsley People’s Museum

Have-a-go family history

1940’s Café!

www.wearebarnsley.com

Barnsleylive.co.uk

For things to do and places to see in Barnsley this year!

Experience Barnsley: Find out more about the Barnsley People’s Museum being created in the Town Hall

BARNSLEY Metropolitan Borough Council