Jill Sparrow

If we'd tried explaining that to Miss Colthorpe, we'd have had detention for two weeks for being insolent! Just wasn't worth it...so we walked, in all weathers!

Sounds about right. I don't think it was scheduled to run very often anyway but certainly didn't turn up as often as it was scheduled!

There was a number 2 which, supposedly, ran along Gregory Boulevard and passed the Manning but it was no good relying on it because the damned thing either never turned up at all or was late! So, I used to walk instead. There was always a queue for that bus, mainly adults presumably going to work. Manning girls had more sense than to risk it due to the sanctions imposed on latecomers! I don't know where the 2 went after reaching the end of Gregory Boulevard. Outer space, perhaps, because it took a month of Sundays to reach the start of Gregory Boulevard again!

I remember catching the bus from Hanley Street. We had a number of choices which passed the bottom of Bobbers Mill Road over the years: 1, 7, 16, 22, possibly 32 and 74 but not sure about those, it's a long time ago!

I remember my auntie Emily talking about the Denewood Crescent ghost. After their house in Garden Street was CPOd by the council, they were offered the tenancy of number 123 Beechdale Road, Bilborough. The house stood almost opposite the lower entrance to Denewood Crescent. All the neighbours were aware of the story as it was in the NEP and even some of the national papers. Auntie Emily was quite accepting of ghosts. She often hinted at peculiar goings on at Garden Street which wouldn't surprise me because as a very young child, I also had an experience there which I've

Very interesting photos, CT. The white houses on the left side of Churchfield Lane would have been built in the late 20s. I knew the Breedon family who lived in one of them. Their daughter was at Berridge. The 1937 shot is curious. The grassy space of the earlier photo is now being developed. As a child, I remember a seat and small garden area surrounded by a chain link fence there. It was a place for veterans of the Great War to sit and chat, my grandfather among them. They spoke of things they wouldn't discuss with anyone else. Newquay Avenue is still to be completed, Lynmouth Cr

Sounds a bit extortionate, Catfan!

Oh, this is fantastic! Must be quite early as the land on the opposite side of Alfreton Road hasnt yet been developed and this was where my mother remembered playing with her friends and making daisy chains before the houses were built in the 30s on Churchfield Lane. Opposite our house is Fretwell Street and the corner shop, owned at that time by Mrs Brown. On the corner of Bobbers Mill Road and Alfreton Road is Towlson's sweet shop which much later moved over the road near to the Capitol Cinema. Interesting to see the rear of the houses. I can even see whe

1963 Dad and myself, photographed in front of Tom Cottee's greenhouse, our side of the hedge. Behind us is where grandad built the Anderson shelter! Happy days!

Other memories coming back. First semi on Bobbers Mill Road, number 194, collapsed shortly after being completed and had to be rebuilt. The whole area was originally a sand pit! Foundations obviously shifted. The Jordan family lived in that house when I was little. Josie Jordan went to school with my sister. At 192 lived Alf Smith, his wife and daughter, Muriel...a Manning pupil! At 188, Fred and May Brainsby with their daughters Audrey and Kathleen...Manning girls too! At 186, Harold Webb, his wife and family. 184 Eric and Jenny Smith, their children Susan and Philip. 182, the Swintons, 180,

Just before the first house on the road, you can see the garage where Nurse Heaton, the local midwife, kept her car. She lived further up Bobbers Mill Road. It was on the gates in front of this garage that my mum, as a 5 year old, was climbing with her tomboy friends when she fell off and bashed the left side of her head, resulting in damage to her eye muscles and a pair of wire framed spectacles with sticking plaster over one lens!

Wow, CT! Where did you find that? The houses were around 10 years old then and I can even see the greenhouse belonging to Tom Cottee who lived at 8 Chadwick Road, the property that backed onto 190! The Chadwick Road houses were brand new then. They cost £500 each, beyond my grandmother's grasp though she would dearly have liked one but they were much smaller than the houses on Bobbers Mill Road. There were no Sparrows living at 190 in the 30s. The first tenants were my maternal grandparents, Louis and Edith Saunt. The houses were difficult to let due to the high rent. B

Dad's family lived at 12 Chapel Street in Beeston through the war years. Their back yard contained a well which was capped but meant that they couldn't have an Anderson shelter there. 12 Chapel Street and the surrounding cottages were very old. Georgian or earlier, some of them. All had outdoor privies, fuel stores and washing lines in their back yards. Not a trace of any of it remains.

Yes, I was wondering where you dumped the soil from such an excavation. The pit would have been deeper than most graves in those days when 5 were buried in a vertical column, as are some of my relatives in Northern Cemetery. You must have needed to shore it up with something to stop it collapsing?

Trust you, our Ben! You must have started early wowing the ladies!

Certainly can, CT. 190. I was born there and my mother before me!

According to my mother, her father constructed an Anderson shelter at the bottom of the garden of the house on Bobbers Mill Road. Of course, by the time I came along, it was long gone and a flower bed had taken its place. I'd got it into my head that there was some sort of wartime cavern under the soil which was where they'd all trooped down to in the middle of the night during wartime so, one summer when I was about 8, I spent weeks digging it up. All I found were pieces of what looked like concrete or stucco among the soil! Very disappointing! What I expected to find I don't really know!

Nonna, I'm very sorry to hear of your mum's fall and hospitalization. I've been through that with my own mum so can appreciate how difficult it is for you both. Hope she is soon able to come home and enjoy her cornflakes!

That would suit me! Couple of sprigs of holly from the garden, job done! Roll on spring!

My favourite back yard, of course, was the one behind number 4 Garden Street. To me, as a child, it seemed enormous and couldn't be accessed by anyone other than the occupants or the chap who used some of the outbuildings as storage space for his painting and decorating business. The entire yard was either cobbled or had the grey bricks laid in rows. There was no soil but uncle George had a large greenhouse in the centre where tomatoes and flowers flourished in season. Round the side nearest the house were various outbuildings which had fallen out of use and right down at the botto

I didn't live in a terraced house but spent a lot of my spare time during primary school years round at my best friend's house, 7 Hazelwood Road. Those houses were terraced. No one ever used their front door so I always went round the back, up an alleyway between numbers 11 and 13. I will never forget the ringing, echoing sound my feet made on those very same grey bricks between the two gable ends before I turned left at the end and passed the gates of 11 and 9 before reaching number 7. There was a tiny little yard, paved with similar bricks, no garden. Outside loo which I would ne

Where's Dick van Dyke?

Different addiction, same result!

The shop was owned by Eric Towlson and I remember it well from my childhood. Before Eric, his father ran the shop which was originally on the corner of Bobbers Mill and Alfreton Road. It was well remembered by my mother from her own childhood. Eric's wife was a teacher and their daughter was at Peveril with my older sister.

There seems to be an increasing desire on the part of some people to apply today's laws and standards to the events and situations of the past. It can't be done. Times change. They will change again as the pendulum swings in the opposite direction. I am reminded of, I think it was Hogarth's depiction of Gin Lane, where a mother is so inebriated that her infant is falling, unheeded, to the ground. I don't think it would be too difficult these days to spot groups of young women so intoxicated that they can't stand up. It's just history repeating itself in a slightly different way. As