Graham
My feedback
2 results found
-
3,212 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Graham
supported this idea
·
-
9,321 votesOpen - Digitisation underway ·
AdminThe British Newspaper Archive
(Head of Data Development, The British Newspaper Archive)
responded
Dear Readers
We are sourcing what we can from the Library’s holdings and have added 1940-1941, 1943-1950 in the last 24 hours.
https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/titles/id/staffordshire-sentinel
Thank you all for your continued interest in this title, and Happy Reading!
Regards
Team BNA
An error occurred while saving the comment Graham
commented
As a very young boy I can remember the big earth scrapers working on the new sports field for the senior school.
10 years later everyone in the school was involved in digging out for a concrete base on which to stand the new sports pavilion.
The pavilion was actually bought second hand from an RAF base somewhere in the Midlands.
It was erected but was never used, apart from storing materials for bonfire night in the last year that I was there.
We also dug out to make bases for the cricket practice nets, this was a really professional job.
We dug out the soil and then threw in a load of old bike frames before the concrete was poured in.
Opposite the sports field at the bottom of Heathside Lane was the Rec.
I was told on good authority that “Rec” is short for recreation ground.
In its early days it wasn’t grassed over, it was just a black ash playing surface.
On a sunny day you could see the bits of glass glinting in the sunlight.
It was grassed over eventually but I can’t remember exactly when.
Don’t tell the city council, they’ve obviously missed some good bits of ground they could have sold off.
Further up Heathside Lane was a long line of allotments where the bungalows are now.
A chap named Brian used to have his racing Greyhound’s kennels there.
I seem to recall that the British Legion Club was there too and that was of a Nissen hut design.
Graham
supported this idea
·
For several decades 26 Brookhill Road was home to three generations of my family. This was where my grandparents raised their three daughters. It was also my home for over twenty years.
My mother Lilian (named after her mother and both known as Lily) was born in 1913. She would have seen very little of her father during her infancy as the Great War was being fought in Europe.
My grandfather, Percy Tomes, returned home at the end of the war (WW1) but my grandmother’s brother, Robert Edwards, did not. Robert was the thirteenth child and only son born to my great grandmother. Sgt. R.H. Edwards MM of 11 Bn. Sherwood Foresters died in October 1918, four weeks before Armistice was signed.
I remember my grandfather as a stern solemn man, always smartly dressed with a button hole. He was a Mason and Hon. Secretary of the Woolwich Branch of the Old Contemptibles. Until the day he died, he represented the ‘Old Contemptibles’ on remembrance day at the Cenotaph in Whitehall. He was also a Pearl Insurance Agent and had a brass plaque on the wall by the front door for all to see. This was cleaned everyday by my grandmother who also whitened the half dozen steps to the house daily. My grandfather faithfully attended commemorative services at the Garrison Church, proudly wearing his medals. He frequently returned home for lunch with a complete stranger he had met at Church. My grandmother would quietly set another place at the table.
My father came from Yorkshire, married my mother at Woolwich in 1936 and worked as a lorry driver in Leytonstone, East London, before war broke out. I was born in December 1939 when another World War was escalating. My father had leave for my christening early the following year. My father’s uncle and aunt from Yorkshire were my godparents