Version 1

I lived at 5, Willow Lane until I was 6 years of age. We then moved to Beadon Avenue at Waterloo. I often remind myself that dad, your greatgrandad, said we lived in Birkby, because it was a so-called better address. For a labour supporter he tried to put on a few airs. I usually say Hillhouse which was a respectable working class area, but the  maps say we lived at Shearing Cross. Newtown is the other possible name. Two hundred years ago everyone, rich and poor, lived in Huddersfield town centre. Space got tight and the town expanded north to start with, hence Newtown.

Willow Lane went from St John’s church to Bradford Road. Willow Lane East, where greatgreatgrandad’s mum and dad lived, was the other side of Bradford Road. I was christened/baptised in St John’s. Just down from there was Ben Shaw’s pop factory near where my pal Stuart Gibson lived. Then came the railway bridge that allowed the coal train down to Newtown sidings once a day. They say that the line was going to connect to a station with a hotel, but plans were shelved at the time of the first world war. Then houses on one side and a wall and the waste land on the other. The Hancocks lived there. The houses finished at the Slubbers Arms and we lived across the road. At the end of Willow Lane East was the bridge that took the main railway to Leeds and beyond that the cooling towers at the gas works.

At the time of writing in 2017, the pop factory has gone, the railway bridge has been dismantled, the waste land is an industrial estate and the cooling towers have been demolished. People came from miles around and stood on Kilner Bank to see the towers go. The Slubbers is your basic pub, but has a name for real ale. 

5, Willow Lane has been a sandwich and a clothes shop. It is now a home again. It was a corner house and the front door faced out into the road, neither up nor down. A track separated us from the wasteland. We had a square back yard with terraced houses on two sides. The track and a wall shared with the Engine Tavern on Bradford Road were the other two sides. The yard was below the level of Willow Lane. All the houses had steps up from the yard to reach the back doors. So two storeys in front and three behind. The bottom floor was our coal cellar, but when the houses were built I’m pretty sure people lived in it. A cellar dwelling in other words. It had a door and a window facing the yard, covered a bit by the steps. The window had lots of panes of glass in, so I don’t think it started life as a coal cellar. The front of the cellar was below road level but you could still see it had once been a window. My dad went down into the cellar and counted the coal sacks through that window space when they delivered by horse and cart.

There were two downstairs rooms. A back kitchen overlooking the yard. The opposite wall was a massive cast-iron range. The fire heated the house and the oven for cooking. Next to it was a cupboard with a sink in it. I think I remember a more modern cooker as well. The front room was only used when people came for tea. I think there was a three-piece suite. We had to go through it to get to the stairs to go to bed or use the toilet. Two upstairs bedrooms and a bathroom with toilet. Unheard of. Most people had a outside toilet down the yard.

A washhouse in the back yard I’m not sure was ever used. Washing machines were certainly about. But, like the cellar dwelling, a piece of history. We are told that when people left the countryside to find work in the towns, there was a high risk of disease, especially infections. Washing became very important and all houses were built with a washhouse.

Greatgreatgranny lived down Whitestone Lane not far from us. The house was part of a square with outside toilets at the end. She had a key hung behind the front door with newspaper. She had a big range too and a great sideboard which looked like something from a fairground. An upright piano. My mum, your greatgranny could play. Strange but a piano was not uncommon in what they call Victorian times. Her back kitchen was cold and damp and smelled of gas. Two upstairs bedrooms with chamber pots, called guzzundas, for going to the toilet in the middle of the night. A bit smelly even when empty. When we slept there we were kept awake by the repeated deliveries down the coal shutes at Hillhouse sidings. They had their lights on all night. She lived alone, a widow. She wore health service glasses and tied her long hair up in pigtails. 

We left Newtown/Shearing Cross in 1953. Dad bought a house in Waterloo. Amazing though I didn’t realise it at the time. Before that we’d rented off Mrs Thurkill down Bradford Rd. Greatgreatgrandad didn’t like her much.

I don’t remember being unhappy on Willow Lane. The grief came later. It was a humble beginning, but my mum and dad did the best they could with what they had. It can be easy to drop into the ‘we had it hard’ and have a competition about it. It is important to remember that our lives were not full of luxuries and it didn’t make us sad. We were together and that’s all that mattered at the time. Having lots of stuff does not make us happy. For me today, trying to make sense of the world, reflection, family, music and friendship are important. As a younger man, my career dominated everything. A professional lifestyle. You too may come to these questions as you try, with mum and dad’s help and school, to find what is important to you. 

Version 2

Willow Lane, Hillhouse/Newtown, Huddersfield

It begins at 5, Willow Lane until I was 6 years of age. We then moved to Beadon Avenue at Waterloo. I often remind myself that dad, your greatgrandad, said we lived in Birkby, because it was a so-called better address. For a labour supporter he tried to put on a few airs. I usually say Hillhouse which was a respectable working cum middle class area, but the maps say we lived at Shearing Cross. Newtown is the other possible name. Two hundred years ago everyone, rich and poor, lived in Huddersfield town centre. Space got tight and the town expanded north to start with, hence Newtown.

  Willow Lane went from St John’s church to Bradford Road. We lived at the Bradford Road end. Sounds like the popular stand at a football match. The railway bridge marked the other end, and I suspect that Birkby started just the other side of it. It had a wall that held it up like a triangle, or it kept the soil back. Me and Stuart Gibson used to slide down it and get holes in our trousers. A man took a picture of us once. People came to live here in the 1880’s when they stopped living over their work in town. Most of the streets were named after trees or bushes, which sadly contained no trees or bushes. And they were quiet really. 

  Willow Lane East, where William Addy lived, was the other side of Bradford Road. I was christened/baptised in St John’s. Just down from there was Ben Shaw’s pop factory near where my pal Stuart lived. Then came the railway bridge that allowed the coal train down to Newtown sidings once a day. Before the first war, the Midland Railway Company intended to build a station at Newtown with a big hotel. The line came from Red Doles and Mirfield, but it was only ever a coal siding for the gas-works. A small tank engine and a few coal trucks then connected the sidings with the gasworks on Leeds Road. Quarter of a mile on public roads, under the main line viaduct, over the canal – the Beaumont Street Flyer, lead by a man waving a red flag.

  Willow Lane only had houses on one side – quarter of a mile stone irregular terrace with plenty of passages and snickets through to the back. The Hancocks lived there. It finished at the Slubbers Arms on the corner with Halifax Old Rd and we lived opposite. Looking aross Bradford down Willow Lane East was the bridge that took the main railway to Leeds and beyond that the cooling towers at the gas works.

  The other side of Willow Lane was a wall stopping us from straying onto scrubland and the railway. Dad had a special pass to cross the track to get to his allotment and chicken-run. We lived in Hillhouse or Newtown but kept chickens in Birkby. The land between the wall and the railway track was a wilderness. We never strayed onto it, we went there on purpose. It was our playground. Elderflowers. Older brother flew his first balsa-wood, paper and glue plane there. Or rather he crashed it several times, until it dawned on us that it didn’t work.   

   

 

  The backyard neighboured with The Engine Tavern on Bradford Road. My dad said men got drunk there, but that didn’t stop him from hopping over the wall and touching the Rugby League Challenge Cup one Sunday night in 1953. Fartown beat St Helens the day before at Wembley. They were ardent supporters of Huddersfield Rugby League on Mum’s side. So were dad and older brother. Come to think of it they were allardent supporters of most things local or northern, except for Lancashire. Cumberland was accepted because some of our best players came from there. I wasn’t allowed to go, too young and the crowds too large.

  5, Willow Lane was a corner house and the front door faced out into the road, neither up nor down. A track separated us from the wasteland. We had a square back yard with terraced houses on two sides. The track and a wall shared with the Engine Tavern were the other two sides. The yard was below the level of Willow Lane. All the houses had steps up from the yard to reach the back doors. So two storeys in front and three behind. The cellar might have been lived in at one time, which would date it to the first half of nineteenth century. Whilst it was used as a coal cellar in the 1950s, the window and frames facing the courtyard suggest someone may have lived there previously. Web browsing shows there was a Willow Lane, Hillhouse in 1853, but no clue as to the housing. Hygeine was fine as we had modern inside facilities. The wash house in the courtyard was part of a nationwide movement to facilitate cleaner clothing as part of countering the cholera epidemics of the 1830s. The bottom floor was our coal cellar, but when the houses were built I’m pretty sure people lived in it. A cellar dwelling in other words. It had a door and a window facing the yard, covered a bit by the steps. The window had lots of panes of glass in, so I don’t think it started life as a coal cellar. The front of the cellar was below road level but you could still see it had once been a window. My dad went down into the cellar and counted the coal sacks through that window space when they delivered by horse and cart.

  There were two downstairs rooms. Our kitchen range was big, black and occupied most of one wall. Next to it was the sink in a cupboard. Directly opposite, a window and our back door overlooked a grassy communal yard and outside toilets. The front door opened straight onto the road, but we needed a flight of steps with railings to get in the back. I played, ate and got washed in that kitchen. Granny Addy soothed my earache with a glove warmed on the range fire. Dad cut my hair in the middle of it. A chair on a square of newspapers, a set of mail-order mechanical shears and the monthly ‘short back and sides’. I looked like a ginger coconut.  The front room was only used when people came for tea. I think there was a three-piece suite. We had to go through it to get to the stairs to go to bed or use the toilet. Two upstairs bedrooms and a bathroom with toilet. Unheard of. Most people had a outside toilet down the yard.

  A washhouse in the back yard I’m not sure was ever used. Washing machines were certainly about. But, like the cellar dwelling, a piece of history. We are told that when people left the countryside to find work in the towns, there was a high risk of disease, especially infections. Washing became very important and all houses were built with a washhouse.

  We had a street party in our kitchen in 1953. We were the only family with a television. Grown-ups kept popping in to glimpse bits of the Coronation while we kids sat round a table, eating sandwiches and jellies. 

  I had my tonsils out in 1953. It was done by a Mr. Ironside. Those in the trade tell me he performed radical surgery. In other words there is very little left in the back of my mouth. It all still seems to work. Anyway Dad moved the television out of the kitchen and into the room. Usually we only sat in there on Sundays, and then only if people were coming. We used it everyday, as a corridor between the stairs and the kitchen, but we only ever sat in it on Sundays. I was more or less forced to eat loads of jelly and ice-cream, so all in all my recovery was terrific. And Denis Compton hit the runs that won back ‘The Ashes’ for England.

  We moved house and district in 1953. The house on Willow Lane was rented from Mrs Thirkill who lived on Bradford Road. Dad went with the rent every week. I never saw her but she must have been dressed in black with a black hat and a broomstick. It was normal to rent in those days as the economic cycle was unpredictable. You needed to move quickly when times were hard. Dad managed to convince a building society that he earned enough to pay off a £4 per month mortgage. So we left for the suburbs. I remember the day we moved. Granny took me on the bus. Two buses to be accurate. I struggled back to my old school for a few weeks, but then changed to the new local primary. I was six years old. Big brother had passed his 11-plus and was at ‘the college’. 

  I don’t recall any particular toys or hobbies. No pets. I played out in the local streets, no crossing Bradford Road. And on the wilderness. When it was time to come home, dad stood at the front door and shouted down the lane. No other dad did that. I went to Sunday School and appeared in a play. As an angel god forbid.

  I don’t remember being unhappy on Willow Lane. The grief came later. It was a humble beginning, but my mum and dad did the best they could with what they had. It can be easy to drop into the ‘we had it hard’ and have a competition about it. It is important to remember that our lives were not full of luxuries and it didn’t make us sad. We were together and that’s all that mattered at the time. Having lots of stuff does not make us happy. For me today, trying to make sense of the world, reflection, family, music and friendship are important. As a younger man, my career dominated everything. A professional lifestyle. You too may come to these questions as you try, with mum and dad’s help and school, to find what is important to you.

At the time of writing in 2017, the pop factory, Ben Shaws, after more than a hundred years, has been taken over and closed down by more recognisable national soft drink brands. The coal trains stopped a long time ago and the railway bridge has been dismantled. The waste land is now Newtown industrial estate, builders merchants and the like. The gas works cooling towers have been demolished. People came from miles around and stood on Kilner Bank to see the towers go. The Slubbers is your basic pub, but has a name for real ale. St John’s is still there. Number five, where we lived, was empty for a while and then lived in and then empty again. Once it was an American designer clothes shop. Afro-Carribeans, not dad’s words, with grandiose ideas. The corner shop on Bradford Road is a Bollywood video hire place. The gas-works has been blown up. People came from all over just to watch.

  In the 1990s, I used to gaze at the hustle and bustle of Willow Lane. Lorries delivering and cars cutting through from Birkby, busy workers with things to do and places to go. I could see a small boy walking alone toward the old railway bridge, and I try to picture another small boy, aged six, with red curly hair in a battered cowboy outfit. Back in 1953, I’d roamed safely and easily up and down the lane, part of my square mile sized world. Forty years later, I drove importantly through the lane to attend private patients. Not so important inside. 

17 Beadon Avenue, Waterloo, Huddersfield

Semi-detached two bedrooms, through lounge and a kitchen. And an inside toilet with bath. 6 miles from the town centre. You could walk it, but the red 73 trolley bus, took quarter of an hour. I lived here until I went to university. Mum and dad moved about a bit then and finished up on a hill in Salendine Nook behind the Spotted Cow, opposite New College where both older brother and me went. 

  Beadon Avenue had a great view at the back, looking towards Lepton Edge and a quarry. The garden was roughly 20 yards long, divided into grass and allotment with a stone path up the middle. The grass had wavy edges, don’t ask why, mum wanted them. The top border next to the house was retained by a wall constructed of bricks made by Uncle George in a machine. The three borders were full of bedding plants. The front garden wasn’t postage stamp, but it was a lot smaller. Another Uncle George wall, in an arc, cut the garden in two. Grass at the back, plants and trees at the street front. We were unadopted for ages and I was never sure what that meant. It got a tarmac top eventually. We had a nice cherry tree, which blossomed, in the front. Very respectable. The boundaries between houses were concrete posts and wire to start with. Unpleasant and I can’t remember if we altered them.

  There was a cellar, access down the back steps. Dad put in a light, but he couldn’t stand up. He liked his tools and wood, so he organised a bench. I think it was a big old sideboard from Willow Lane. He dug down into the foundations and then he could stand up. We kept the coal in there. We lit the fire with a gas poker, a gas pipe coming out of the floor in the lounge. Barbaric.

  Older brother and I shared the front bedroom. It had an integral wardrobe which dad converted into a study for Steve. He went to university as I got into New College so I moved into the wardrobe then. We did have somewhere to store clothes, made by dad out of wood. We’d just buy one now. We had a crystal set on a shelf between the beds. It’s a magic radio with headphones. The wires went into the wall. Older brother worked for Sanderson’s across the road during the university holidays. An oddjob man, painter and decorator. Steve learned all sorts about knocking houses about and applied them to ours, including sinking the crystal set wires into the wall.

  The back garden was a cricket pitch, and fair play to dad, he did his time bowling. He could get a bit sketchy about the flowers and bedding plants. Didn’t stop him from hitting a maximum into the garden below ours.

  Primary school was Dalton Juniors. I did okay and passed the eleven plus. The teachers never had any doubt, but I think mum did. We had a soccer team which played in the Red Triangle League. We came third to Stile Common and Netherton. Dad took me to watch Huddersfield Town. Soccer kept me sane I think. I was a clogging right back.

  Like Willow Lane my playground at Beadon Avenue was the surrounding streets and fields. Up toward Fernside the countryside broke out, so me and my primary school chums were happy roaming around, sometimes going across to the the quarry on Lepton Edge which I think was Elliot Bricks. It had some massive old iron tubes to shelter in. Then Haighs the builders started a site just where we used to play. So we played there. It became messy after we did a bit of damage. Juvenile court which didn’t decide anything. I was already at New College and doing quite well. Meeting girls came on the scene then which slowed my schoolwork up a bit. I started going to youth clubs. Dalton St Pauls was our regular, a methodist church at Moldgreen. Monday and Friday nights and Chapel on Sunday if you could bear it. Table tennis, music, discussion groups and gigs. Denny and the Witchdoctors and the Strangers were the local favourites. It was a go ahead club with a chap called Edward Kilner at the helm. We went on holiday to Yugoslavia and had a weekend in London – the MAYC festival at Albert Hall. We also had a junior rugby league team, run by Martin, Edward’s assistant who was also a firebrand in the pulpit. I went out with his sister, once. I played on the team but not every week, because dad said I couldn’t do two games in one day. He could be a real pain. I managed the midweek evening matches. So a great youth club. The other week nights, in summer anyway, we’d parade and hang out in Ravensknowle Park. Standard. Bowling green, putting green, paddling pool, gardens, a bit of a Roman ruin. It also had a museum which I went in once. Stuffed animals, a papier-mache relief map of Huddersfield and some old cars. Only recently I discovered it is a memorial to two brothers who died in WWI. Then there was the rec. A massive open space with a see-saw and slide in one corner. This was our football and touch rugby pitch. I learned the dummy and the sidestep there.

  I got into reading in my last year at primary school. Miss Town read adventure stories every Friday afternoon before home time. Treasure Island was the best. I like the Famous Five series by Enid Blighton. She also wrote The Boy Next Door which really got me started at home. I remember something about tunneling under a fence. We were expected to read at New College and Literature was my best subject. From Prester John by John Buchan to Tale of Two Cities by Dickens. Graham Greene, Steinbeck, Orwell and so on. Nothing over serious and highbrow. We were encouraged to read Aldous Huxley and the like. I had a go, but they were my first 50 books. Discarded after a decent attempt. Older brother Steve like SF. I read all his stuff too. Other times and worlds, other possibilities. Despite all this I opted for the sciences at New College. I couldn’t do Latin and struggled with French. Geography and history were okay. 

It seems like a time of routines. We had breakfast in the kitchen. Cereal then treacle sandwiches. Everybody went to work or school. We had tea in stages depending who came home when. A bit of tele and bed. We brought the Willow Lane tele with us. A foot cube, black and white, which we had to hit regularly to keep it going. I learned later the solder joints went off with time and had to be encouraged to join up again. Was there only one channel? No choices. 

  Weekends were a break. Mum worked as a shop assistant and had to work Saturdays. I’m not sure where Steve went. In winter dad took me to a match somewhere and summer to cricket somewhere. The back garden was a good length for cricket, so I’ve no complaints about dad and sports introduction. Saturdays were my vulnerable time however to take the brunt of dad’s illness or anger or general discontent with his life. He cooked chips for dinner and they were always soggy and dripping in lard. I felt sick eating fat round meat and the gristley bits in liver. It was a challenge for him and misery for me. I couldn’t make sense of it. I got the blame full stop, from my first memories to age 15. Even then, when I was more or less doing everything mum and dad wanted, I was accused of using home as a hotel. Well you go and meet your pals don’t you at that age? It’s how I saw it then and now, so there must be something in it. It was normal for me.

  Sundays were better until I started to get bored. Dad would vac, mum would fill the kitchen with steam from washing and the pressure cooker and the floor got flooded. I remember a mangle then a tub with a tube which I think was the flood. Wet clothes on a frame coming down from the ceiling when it wasn’t fine outdoors. I was left to it. Playing with Bayko or the train set. Until homework set in. Forces favourites and Billy Cotton’s Band Show on the radio. We all had dinner together. We didn’t do lunch in those days. Sunday roast or a joint with Yorkshire pudding and or baked potatoes to start with. I had a massive appetite. Eight slices of toast for Sunday breakfast – small ones. Mum and dad then fell asleep reading the Sunday Express. I carried on what I was doing in the morning and got into reading as well. Went to a bit of Sunday School at St Michael and St Helens, joined the church choir, mostly for Evensong. Religion never meant anything to me, dad or older brother. As a teenager I started going to Dalton St Pauls, but it was really only for the girls. Once in the sixth form, Sundays were for study and meeting pals in the evening. (see also separate piece about Sundays)