Sounds You Remember

[DJ360 6,353]

What sounds do you recall from your youth?

 

I heard a plane overhead the other day.  Hardly unusual when you live pretty much mid way between Liverpool and Manchester Airports, but something about the sound sent me back 50/60+ years into a reverie about sounds from the past.  Thinking about it.. it wasn't just the sounds.  It was something to do with what they made you imagine..  What thoughts they provoked in your mind.

 

There's a sort of parallel with photos.  They don't just represent the image you see, but also the people in the image, the lives they are living, the thoughts in their heads and the world they inhabit...

 

So back to the Sounds. Jet planes heard while in school in the 50s and early 60s.  Hardly any were passenger aircraft then.  So mostly military.  Hawker Hunters, English Electric Lightnings, Vulcan Bombers, Gloster Javelins etc.  Where were they going?  What were they up to?  What were the crew seeing from 'up there'.. and what were they thinking?

 

Church bells.  Especially from Bulwell St Mary's.  I might still be in bed a couple of miles away. or wandering the fields close to home near Bestwood Estate... but those bells somehow connected me to that church and to the people in and around it. They.. especially the bell ringers.. were announcing their presence.  I was where I was too.. but I wasn't  heard.

 

I heard random steam train whistles and the odd 'clank' of shunting trains during the day.. but they became much more audible .. and interesting... at night when I was in bed.  Freight and passenger sets running through Bulwell Common at speed. The same questions.  Where are they going? Where have they come from?   One particular noise may be lost forever now.  The one where a long line of coal trucks or similar is 'braked' and the clank of one coupling link into the next travels along the train like a wave.. Clackalacka lack lacka.. for maybe 30 seconds or more.

 

I do believe I could sometimes hear steam winding engines from nearby collieries. but that could be fantasy on my part.  Dunno.

 

Sunday lunchtime.  Every house in the street had 'Two Way Family Favourites' on the radio and the sound escaped with the steam.. from kitchen windows, opened as the Sunday Roast and veg were cooked.  1812 Overture alongside the Dambuster's March, Joan Sutherland, The Everly Bros. and Orbison.

 

Some young lad on Leybourne Drive, which backed onto our street.. used to come home every night quite literally 'whistling in the dark'.  I asked my Mum about that and she told me he might be scared and whistling to seem as if he wasn't.  Before that I didn't understand the deeper meaning of 'Whistling in the Dark.'

 

Sometimes just the echoing clatter of heels on the pavement.  Who is that?  Where are they going?

 

Col

[loppylugs 8,336]

I was going to say church bells too, Col.  When I was just a pup our house backed towards the Trent.  I couldn't see the river it was too far away, but I could hear the bells on Sunday nights from Holme Pierpoint  (spelling?)  I suppose it was strange in a kid my age, but I wasn't so much thinking of the people at church then.  Rather in my minds eye I could see folks in Victorian clothes being there.

 

Explosions of some kind of signal device they put on the rail lines on foggy nights.  The track from Nottingham to Grantham ran just behind our house.

[Oztalgian 2,858]

I spent my youth living within a few hundred yards of our local pit and the sound of the steam winder was an ever present background noise along with the noise of the hooter at the mine. I knew that if I was still in bed by the six o'clock blower I was likely to miss my bus and be late for work.

The pit also dumped its waste via an aerial cable way from the washery and on a still day you could hear the half a ton of waste fall from the bucket on to the pit tip and the sound of the bulldozers levelling it off.

The siren at the local fire station as it called the part time brigade into action.

The CO-OP or Northern Dairies milk floats and the jingling chains on the coalman's truck as he brought the next ton of coal in the hundred weight sacks

 

The sound of a the local Bedford OB bus as it struggled up the hill out of the village.

 

 

 

[Oztalgian 2,858]

1 hour ago, DJ360 said:

Sunday lunchtime.  Every house in the street had 'Two Way Family Favourites' on the radio and the sound escaped with the steam.. from kitchen windows, opened as the Sunday Roast and veg were cooked

This is well worth watching for some memories as is reading the comments

 

[plantfit 7,098]

The single bell from Holy Trinity church Farnborough road Clifton at 09.00 on a Sunday morning shortly followed every fourth Sunday by the Boys Brigade band marching up the road with their drums and out of tune bugles,the grating sound of the old 105E Ford Anglia starter motor as it was trying to start up,and that un-godly sound of the Hoover vacuum cleaner as me mam was cleaning up.all when I needed my sleep

 

Rog

[BulwellBrian 107]

The sound of Rolls Royce testing jet engines at Hucknall, and like Col trains at Bulwell Common.

[Cliff Ton 9,955]

Factory whistles and sirens always come to mind.    https://nottstalgia.com/forums/topic/11100-factory-whistles-and-hooters/

 

[Mess 516]

Always loved to hear the distant sounds emanating from Goose Fair.

I lived on Russell Rd 1961-72 and it was always busy with families coming from and going to the fair but the background was the constant hum from the generators mixed with the music blaring out.

A seemingly endless trail of mums and dads with their tired out young kids crying because they didn't want to leave or because their balloon had popped.

The lights at night and the smell of the onions and candy floss just added to a very exciting time of year.

Won't be long now me duck.

[colly0410 1,180]

I'd lay in bed in Bestwood Village & hear the whine of a Bristol Lo-decker (B8 later 141) pulling away from the welfare/bowling green stop, then the Makemsons bus growling/pulling away from the pit baths/Bestwood hotel stop. I'd hear the slipping conveyor belts screeching at the top of the Lancaster Drift,  the chugging & turbocharger whistle of a class 40 (I think) loco hauling coal from Hucknall, Calvo, Linby & Newstead pits on the Leen Valley line, boozers from the Bestwood hotel/welfare shouting their goodnight's to each other then whispering "shhhh you'll wake the kids up!" Too flipping late I'm already awake..

[DJ360 6,353]

On Southglade Road. probably early 1960s:

 

Cuckoos.. the sound coming from over towards Bestwood Woods.  ( Now known as Bestwood Country Park)  Also, at night, Owls hooting and occasionally Foxes 'barking'.

 

When we went over onto the fields in Summer, they literally 'hummed' with milions of insects.. Bees and others. hovering over the Ragwort and all the other flowers.

 

Also Skylarks.. Hovering high over the fields with that twittering call.  Their nests were a real find and even then we would try not to disturb them.  In big decline:

 

https://www.bto.org/about-birds/species-focus/skylark

 

Again.. across from Southglade and over beyond what is now 'The Ridgeway'..  The fields would often be overrun with 'Peewits' . otherwise known as 'Lapwings'.

 

 I haven't seen one for years and they seem to be in sharp decline. 

 

https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/bird-and-wildlife-guides/bird-a-z/l/lapwing/decline_and_conservation.aspx

 

And in Primary School....  A teacher on Piano and the rest of we unruly mob on Castanets, Triangles and Tambourines.   Quite horrific...

 

 

 

 

[mary1947 1,879]

Steam Trains.

Every thing about them. 

Even the song Six- Five-Special 

[IAN FINN 571]

The sound of the spitfire flying around Hucknall and Watnall was that the Flying Officer getting his hours in?

[IAN FINN 571]

The smell of the smoke when the train went under the bridge you were standing on and swirled around you.