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I was born in 1928 in Pelham Street, Mansfield wrote June Ingleby (nee Rice) from Australia. A couple of years later we moved to the Ravensdale Estate, to Sandy Lane and a few years later to Hibbert Road on the same estate.
I started my schooling at Newgate Lane School and later won a scholarship to Queen Elizabeth's Girls Grammar School. I began there the same year that WWII broke out, 1939.
Like one of your other correspondents, I learned about discrimination, snobbery and downright meanness. I was a coalminer's daughter who had dared to look higher than a job in a factory.
I was born in a little three room cottage....a cellar, a kitchen and a bedroom, piled one on top of the other on Pelham Street, just at the end of Greenswood Yard, and that is where my memories begin.
My dad was a coalminer, and mum had worked at the 'Old Mill'. Mum and her sisters had been on the stage in a juvenile troupe for a few years, but juveniles grow up and eventually the girls came back home.
When I fell head first down the 21 stone steps of the cellar, it left more than a bump on my head, for it left me with an indelible memory....It hurt! I also remember the little grocery shop on the other side of the road that sold cream buns.....one of the rare treats we could afford.
Two years and three months after my birth, mum unexpectedly produced a son, and as time passed, accommodation became a problem and we were given a Council house on the Ravensdale Estate....61 Sandy Lane.
Just down from the railway bridge and almost opposite the Working Men's Social Club, it was great fun to watch the beautiful Shipstone's Greys standing outside the Club while the men downloaded the barrels on chains into the cellar....
Our favourite play area I think was the railway embankment, where we slid down the grassy slopes on pieces of cardboard ,and the more daring of us slid down the brick edge, usually earning us a clout over the ear when dad found out.
If this got boring then there was always sitting on the edge of the bridge, trying to spit on the roof of the bus as it passed under....As we got older, many of us had our first kiss under that bridge...
Under the bridge and to the right was the sweet shop, its windows permanently smudged with sticky fingers as we tried to decide how much we could buy with that ha'penny we were given.
On the opposite corner was the 'Beer-Off', but it was years before I learned that this stood for Beer off licence -- it was nothing to see kids sent there with an empty bottle to buy beer and lemonade, or dandelion and burdock for Sunday dinner.
Further on and turn left and we were on our way to our local 'Bug Hut' the Rock picture house: fourpence front stalls, fivepence back stalls. If you could evade the usherette, you could buy a fourpenny ticket then wait in the lavatory until the lights went down and sneak into the back stalls.
If you were caught you faced the embarrassment of being marched down the centre aisle with the usherette flashing her torch madly, then ceremoniously unscrewing the dividing rope and marching you to a front stall seat.
We took the risk, sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. And what would be a trip to the pictures without a newspaper of chips and fish bits on the way home...
At age five I became a student at Newgate Lane School, in the 'Infants'. Miss Braddon was the headmistress and a lovely lady as I recall -- couple of years later a Nursery School was established in the same grounds, and this was run by Chrissie Barnett.
At around seven years of age, we graduated to the 'Big School' where boys and girls had separate cloakrooms and separate playgrounds, playgrounds separated by tall iron barred fences.
I loved school, so my memories are very happy and I remember the teachers with great affection. Miss Glossop the head teacher and Mr Ward the Headmaster (they eventually married, which did not surprise the more romantic schoolgirls in the class....we had already decided that they were right for each other.)
There were Mr Ayres, Miss Keeling and Mr Chamberlain, who all the girls swooned over because he looked like Lord Byron and he had a limp. Sadly he ended up in Ransom Sanatorium.
And I had my first big crush on a young student teacher who shall remain nameless, as he eventually married the sister of one of my friends and I don't want to cause embarrassment....
On the way to school in Gladstone Street was a small shop run by a Mrs Russell, selling sweets and such, but in the hot weather she made ice-cream. Thick, creamy and churned by hand and served (according to desire) with or without raspberry vinegar. I can still see that blood red syrup trickling down over the ice-cream...
Around the corner and on the left, going on towards Newgate Lane there was sometimes a greengrocer's stall, and in season we could buy for a ha'penny a slice of pomegranate. We picked the seeds out with a pin and ate them on the way to school.
The third bedroom at 61 Sandy Lane was very damp and I shared the second bedroom with my brother. However, it was against Council Rules for siblings of opposite sexes to share a room after a certain age.
So we were moved to 25 Hibbert Road, where for the first time I had my own room, and for my tenth birthday a small bedroom suite to furnish it. Such joy.
Most of the people in Hibbert Road had children, so we weren't short of playmates. On one side of our new home were the Humphreys, on the other side the Garners, and beyond them the Lindley twins, and so on down the street.
Patterson Place was a cul de sac, so an excellent place for playing and in the winter the hill provided a perfect slide for our sledges, which were made out of everything from old babies prams to tin trays....so long as they slid they were fine.
We had the fields to chase over and the woods beside the River Maun, and the innocence to strip down to our underpants to swim in the river....
In the winter we gathered under the street lamp and played Chasey and Relievo, or Kick the Can to keep warm. As we got older 'Truth or Dare' began to be one of the games also. The hormones were beginning to stir.
For most of us 1939 was the turning point in our lives, we were leaving childhood behind and adulthood and responsibility was in the foreseeable future. We began to think and talk about what we were going to do when we left Newgate Lane. A few of us had gained scholarship places, some were going to High Oakham Technical School and some to Ravensdale School, change was in the air.
In 1939 War was declared, my first week-long holiday at the seaside with a beloved aunt and uncle was cancelled and I took up my scholarship at Queen Elizabeth's Girls' Grammar School. Three traumatic experiences and not all beneficial...
I know that there have been many changes to Mansfield since we left in 1951. The Sandy Lane Bridge has gone and the railway embankment is flattened, 61 Sandy Lane has gone, and though 25 Hibbert Road is still intact there are cars parked outside the houses that didn't used to be there.
The Rock cinema has gone and so has the Granada Cinema where I stood in line for three hours to see Blood and Sand. Newgate Lane School continues to plod along, but the iron railings were never installed again after they were removed as part of the war effort.
Most of the coalmines have closed, and could I have ever envisaged a ring road in Mansfield?
Still, nothing can change My Mansfield, for I only have to close my eyes to be able to hear that rousing slogan, 'The best pictures in the town, we find them at the Pal, we always go on Saturday and know we always shall...' at our Saturday afternoon matinee at the Palace Cinema.
A few months ago a photograph of Newgate Lane Football Team circa 1938 appeared in the Mansfield newspaper seeking identification of the members, and it was through this that I have made contact with several of my old schoolmates by email and snail mail and something emerged which surprised me.
Although we were all very poor (coalminers were never very well paid until the war years) and by today's standards would have been considered disadvantaged, none of us felt that way. We all feel we had happy and memorable childhoods and regret that our children cannot have the same
experiences that we had.
Maybe it was because nobody ever told us how badly off we were, and we had nothing to make comparisons with....we were all in the same boat.
In 1951 we emigrated to Australia: mum and dad, myself and my brother .....it was hard for a few years, but it was worth our efforts, and we haven't regretted it.
When I retired I decided to continue my education.....and the following is a piece I did for a poetry assignment.....it earned me a good mark....and I hope you like it.
THE NIGHT COVENTRY DIED
The siren wails, vacate warm beds,
don automatically clothes laid ready,
Habit overriding senses.
Sleepwalkers, we join the dark worm
winding its way down the street.
Wait! Lock the door - why?
Neighbours join the queue, whispered greetings,
Why whisper? Who would hear?
There is only the silence.
Shaded torches create tiny fireflies
on the footpath, all else is darkness.
The siren urges a faster pace, we are tired.
children hang on hands and across shoulders,
An unbroken night a memory.
The shelter, raw rough orange bricks, wooden
seats, naked light bulbs covered with metal muzzles,
utilitarian.
Everybody got their gasmasks? ID cards?
A stupid question, we are well rehearsed.
Here is brightness; coloured berets, pixie hoods
multi-hued scarves, blankets and cushions for the little ones.
Then noise.
Roll out the Barrel,
Hang the Washing on the Seigfreid Line,
Later, as children doze,
nostalgia, Keep the Home Fires Burning.
Home Front and Fighting Front united.
I cannot sleep as the children do, nor am I an adult,
I am afraid.
I seek the comfort of my father's arm out in the darkness,
he puts his tin hat on my head, holds me close.
The relentless drone of bombers.
My father's arm tightens,
we wait for phosphorescent flares.
They pass over, we are not their target for tonight,
Our factory nestled in its wooded valley on hold.
Searchlights play tag with each other
briefly illuminating a dark outline.
AA guns fling handfuls of golden beads at ducks
of doom.
Black ducks flying south following the leader,
fanning out across the sky.
It's duck shooting season,
No limit to the bag.
A fairground shooting gallery,
knock over a duck and win a prize.
My father wipes his face,
kisses my forehead,
There are no words.
The sounds of destruction are remote,
the sky alive with an unimaginable
pyrotechnic display.
Rockets shoot high into the air,
one after the other as bombers make their run.
How can devastation be so beautiful?
The planes turn and make for home,
leaving behind a false dawn.
Fires completing what bombs began
People screaming, dying, rescue workers
prying out buried bodies, ignoring the dead and
concentrating on the living.
Triage maintained,
This is war.
We hear nothing but the drone of the returning bombers.
The searchlights are sluggish
they too are weary.
Finally the All Clear.
Mothers gather up children and the worm wends
its way back in receding darkness.
Families peel off with a murmured Goodnight!
Old habits die hard, Good Morning is for later.
A couple of hours sleep for the children,
who will doze later at their desks,
Teachers grateful for the reprieve.
My mother puts a generous
amount of our tea ration into the teapot,
frugality ignored.
We sit and sip the hot tea,
It was the 14th November and we had watched Coventry burn.
Newgate Lane School's 'top class' for 1938/39.
Those of us who are still alive are now well into our 70s, but as you can see, we were once young and full of life......
June Ingleby, Victoria, Australia, 2002
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