Road to the Dales

by Gervase Phinn

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘Yes, you are. Would you be so good as to decamp, pack up your things and depart.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because, as I have said, this is my land.’

  ‘I’m not doing any harm,’ the man said amiably.

  ‘That is beside the point. This is my land.’

  ‘Where did you get it from?’

  ‘I got it from my father,’ the noble Earl explained calmly.

  ‘Well, where did your father get it from?’ the man asked.

  ‘From his father.’

  ‘Well, where did he get it from?’

  ‘He got it from his father who got it from his father who got it from his father, right the way back many centuries ago when my ancestor acquired it.’

  ‘Well, how did he get it?’ the man asked, making no effort to move.

  ‘He fought for it,’ Lord Scarbrough replied.

  ‘Well, I’ll fight you for it!’ came the reply.

  It is an amusing account, but I guess it was one of my father’s tall tales.

  After I had read Walter Scott’s epic story Ivanhoe, I cycled out one bright Saturday morning to Conisborough Castle, near Doncaster, where the novel is set. This towering Norman fortress with its ninety-foot circular keep and six mighty buttresses was a deserted roofless shell when I was a boy, but it had retained its grandeur. The castle rises majestically from a mound overlooking the River Don, and for me it is the most impressive medieval building in South Yorkshire. I recall sitting on the perimeter wall staring up at the imposing edifice and imagining knights in glittering armour, gallant Crusaders, dastardly villains, jousting and sieges, dark dungeons and great battles.

  Other places of interest around the town to which I would cycle included Cusworth Hall, which now houses the Museum of South Yorkshire; Keppel’s Column, a towering pillar with a viewing platform at the top, erected in 1778 by the second Marquess of Rockingham to commemorate the acquittal of his friend Admiral Keppel, court-martialled after a naval defeat at the hands of the French in 1777; Hoober Stand, a strange triangular and tapering 518-foot structure with a hexagonal lantern, built in 1748 to celebrate the victory of the Duke of Cumberland at Culloden Moor in 1746; and the Needle’s Eye, a bizarre folly dating from 1780 and sited at the edge of Lee Wood on the Wentworth Woodhouse estate. The Needle’s Eye is a strange triangle of stone with a huge urn on the pinnacle and a gateway through the centre. The story is that the second Marquess of Rockingham, who appears to have been very fond of follies, once boasted that he could ride a coach and horses through the eye of a needle. To prove his point he had this quite useless monument built and galloped through it in his carriage. I was intrigued by such fanciful tales.

  The town centre of Rotherham was and still is dominated by the great red sandstone church of All Saints, with its magnifi-cent 180-foot spire. Built in the thirteenth century, it is one of the finest examples of Perpendicular architecture in Yorkshire. A walk away was the Bridge Chapel of Our Lady, with its battlements, parapets and pinnacles, a rare survivor of medieval times. There are only four surviving bridge or chantry chapels in England, and Rotherham’s is reputedly the finest example. For a time it was used as a prison, with a cell in the crypt, an almshouse, a dwelling and a tobacconist’s shop. I remember in a history lesson being told that the retinue of the ill-fated Queen of Scots intended to break their long journey to Fotheringhay Castle at Rotherham, but her regal group was stopped as it crossed the bridge. The worthy burghers of the town, in true Yorkshire fashion, refused Her Majesty entry when they discovered they had to pay for her board and lodging. She was sent on her way to Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire, where she received greater hospitality.

  As a teenager I was rather different from other boys my age in finding such old stone structures – castles and churches, follies and abbeys – of interest, and the stories behind such buildings fascinated me. I still feel a thrill when standing on a battlement or amidst the ruins of an abbey or in a great cathedral, imagining times past.

  Of course I didn’t spend all my time searching for ruins and visiting churches and monuments. Other destinations for me were Elsecar Reservoir, Worsborough Dam, Sprotborough Canal, Swinton Lock and the ‘hell hole’ (a dark and sinister stretch of water) at Whiston Meadows. I would visit the surrounding villages of Hooton Roberts, Firbeck, Tickill, Laughton, Letwell, Thorpe Salvin and Wentworth, all with their own distinctive characters and set among open country.

  There are two parks in Rotherham and both were favourite haunts of children in the 1950s and 60s. Clifton Park, on the corner of Clifton Lane and Doncaster Road, was created to serve the leisure needs of a growing population. The opening ceremony was by all accounts a memorable affair, attended by thousands who were entertained with fireworks and bands. The high point of the festivities was perhaps not the ascent by Captain Whelan in a hot air balloon but when one of the town councillors became entangled in the ropes and was unceremoniously lifted off the ground by his legs as the balloon rose. Fortunately, the poor man managed to disentangle himself. The park had a children’s paddling pool, a cenotaph, gardens, lawns and picnic areas. Sometimes on warm summer Sunday evenings my parents would take me to the park to sit by the domed and pillared bandstand and listen to the Salvation Army or one of the colliery bands.

  I preferred Boston Park. There were fewer park-keepers hovering around to tell children to keep to the path, and more space and freedom. At the entrance stood a small squat building, ‘Boston Castle’, with battlements and small square mullioned windows, erected as a hunting lodge by the Earl of Effingham, who originally owned the land. The local newspaper, the Rotherham Advertiser, once described the folly as ‘a castellated pigeon cote’. The Earl was something of a maverick and supported the American cause in the War of Independence. When he leased the area to Rotherham Corporation for conversion to a park he insisted that the opening ceremony took place on 4 July 1876, the centenary of the Declaration of Independence.

  Certain memories stick like burrs. When I was fifteen I had my first and last camping experience. With two of my friends, John and Paul, I took the bus to Sheffield and then the train to Bamforth station in Derbyshire. We equipped ourselves from the Army and Navy Stores in Rotherham with all that was deemed necessary for our expedition – sleeping bags, groundsheets, rucksacks, large khaki ex-army anoraks, boots, woollen balaclava helmets and substantial gloves. We also invested in a compass, metal water flasks and billycans. John brought the tent, which he had borrowed from his Uncle Norman, a seasoned camper.

  ‘Don’t you think it’s a bit cold to go camping?’ Dad asked me, as I was packing my rucksack.

  ‘No, we’ll be as snug as bugs in a rug when we’re in our sleeping bags,’ I told him, confident that this was going to be a really exciting experience.

  ‘I should have thought you’d have been better waiting until the summer,’ said Mum. ‘It gets very cold in October, you know.’

  The same advice was proffered when we were on the train.

  ‘Camping, are you?’ asked the ticket collector. ‘Not the weather for camping.’

  I have to admit, as I stared out of the steamy carriage window at the cold, grey autumn sky and the dark clouds hovering ominously overhead, to some slight apprehension.

  After a brisk walk from the station we decided to erect the tent in a field. I had had an idea, when I had first seen the rather compact canvas bag which John had brought with him, that Uncle Norman’s tent might be a trifle small for the three of us. When it was taken out my fears became all too real.

  ‘Is that it?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s a bit small,’ added Paul.

  ‘We’ll be all right once we’re in,’ said John, trying to sound cheerful.

  We set up the tent under a tree at the side of the field after some difficulty. It had not occurred to any of us to bring a hammer to knock in the metal securing pins and we spent a largely unsuccessful hour bashing away with a large rock. After we had gathered some w
ood for a fire it began to rain, so that was abandoned and we clambered into the tent cold, wet and hungry. This was not turning out as we had expected. It rained and rained all night, the ground around us became a quagmire and a cold wind shook the tent. We huddled together inside our sleeping bags, hardly speaking and praying for the morning. I lay awake listening to the pattering of the rain on the canvas, and this was accompanied, when my two friends fell into deep sleep, by a nocturnal chorus of gurglings, snortings, wheezings and trumpetings. Then, when I eventually drifted off, I was awoken by a movement below me. Some creature was burrowing underneath the groundsheet. I shot up and out of the tent, waking my friends in the process. In the half-light I caught sight of glistening eyes. The ground was wet, the morning a cold misty grey and before me stood these mysterious shapes with shining eyes. I shot back into the tent and in a strange, muffled voice told my companions what I had seen. It took some courage for all three of us to stick our heads through the tent flap some time later, shaking with cold and fear. The mist had cleared and the cows observed us impassively with big sad eyes.

  I arrived back home later that afternoon. Mum met me at the kitchen door and asked, ‘Did you enjoy your night under canvas then?’

  ‘It was marvellous,’ I lied.

  Bonfire Night was always a special time. A month before 5 November, along with my friends, I would collect branches, tea chests, boxes, old chairs, rickety tables, crates, planks of wood, anything that would burn, and we would start constructing our bonfire. We had the ideal place at the back of the house – the allotment – and on a patch of earth the conical structure soon took shape.

  We would make a guy out of old clothes, stuff screwed-up paper in the arms and legs and paint a face on a piece of cardboard. He would be wheeled through the streets on a trolley made of pram wheels and two planks and we would ask passers-by: ‘Penny for the guy?’ With the money we collected we would buy fireworks.

  In October fireworks were for sale at the newsagent’s and I would buy a thin rectangular box on the front of which, in garish reds and blues, the caption ‘Light up the Sky with Standard Fireworks’ was emblazoned. This small collection would be added to over the coming weeks up to 5 November. There would be Catherine wheels, blockbusters, squibs, jumping jacks, traffic lights, penny bangers, Roman candles, golden fountains, silver rain and rockets in brightly coloured cardboard tubes with a cone on the top and a thin wooden stick down the side.

  Mr Morgan devoted a special assembly at Broom Valley Juniors to the terrible dangers of Bonfire Night. His dramatic account told of boys (it was always boys) who had been maimed, disfigured, burned and scarred for life by not taking sufficient care. His cautionary tale was told each year of the foolish boy who had been dared by his friends to put a penny banger in an empty oil drum which had subsequently blown up, searing his face to such an extent that the whole of the skin had melted. It was a horrific picture. The message about the dangers of fireworks was rammed home by my Auntie Nora, who had been sister-in-charge of the Casualty Department at Doncaster Royal Infirmary and related yet more stories of accidents and tragedies.

  When it was dark, children and parents assembled on the allotment and gathered around the bonfire. The air was full of wood smoke and cordite and the rockets shot up into the dark sky and burst into sparkling rain. The adults supervised us as we took it in turn to light the twist of touchpaper on the fireworks and the sparklers. There was always a sense of disappointment when the wonderfully described firework fizzed and there followed a modest few seconds of showering sparks. Sometimes a firework failed to ignite and after a short period we would approach cautiously, prod it with a cane and place a bucket over the top. Later we would throw it into the bonfire where it would explode.

  The rockets were always saved for last and were put into milk bottles and lit with a small twist of rope. They shot into the night sky, to explode to the accompaniment of ‘oooohs’ and ‘aaaahs’.

  My father would not countenance a guy being put on the fire. It might have been a decision he made when I, as a small child, had been terrified by the image of a human form in the flames. I had been taken to the municipal bonfire at Herring-thorpe playing fields when I was six and, sitting on my father’s shoulders, had watched fascinated as the huge bonfire crackled into life. And then I saw him in the half-light – a man perched on the very top, with fat legs and a floppy hat. I could just make out a smiling face. I screamed and screamed and pointed to the figure in the flames.

  ‘There’s a man, there’s a man on the fire!’ I cried, as the flames licked around him. People laughed.

  ‘It’s just a guy,’ my father told me. ‘It’s not real.’

  Perhaps that was why my father never allowed us to put a guy in the bonfire, or perhaps he found the image of a human form burning distasteful. Whatever the reason, when I had children of my own, having a guy on our bonfire was taboo.

  21

  When I was growing up the favourite place to visit, particularly if the weather was cold and wet, was the cinema. Rotherham and the area around had a goodly number of picture palaces – there was the Tivoli, the Empire (later renamed the Essoldo, then the Classic and finally the Cannon), the Whitehall, the Cinema House, the Regal (which became the Odeon and then the Scala) and the Hippodrome, and a bus ride away in neighbouring Sheffield there were a good few more. In the late 1950s and early 60s, when television got a firm foothold on people’s leisure pursuits, the cinemas all closed down save for the Odeon, which became a bingo hall.

  On Saturday morning I would meet my friends at Adams’ General Store and stock up on sweets prior to going to ‘the pictures’. Sweet rationing had ended in 1953, so I was just the right age to sample the delights of what we called ‘spice’. Adams’ corner shop stocked a whole range of delicious confectionery: liquorice sticks and liquorice strings, pear drops, lemon drops, thick chewy brown slabs of McGowan’s toffee, Sherbet Dabs, penny Arrow bars (strips of soft toffee), humbugs, aniseed balls, jelly babies, extra strong mints, boiled sweets, lollipops, chocolate bars, dolly mixtures, blackjacks, gobstoppers that changed colour when you sucked them, aniseed balls, halfpenny chews, all of which we ate with no concern for our teeth or our weight. In the week of the Coronation Mrs Adams said we could choose something on the house – but costing no more than threepence.

  With our pockets stuffed with sweets we walked into the town or caught the bus to Sheffield and joined a jostling, noisy queue of children outside the cinema. The manager and usherettes must have had some sort of masochistic streak to take on hundreds of noisy, lively, misbehaved, excitable urchins every week. It must have been a nightmare for them, but for me it was irresistibly attractive. In the musty darkness of the cinema I could escape from the real world for a couple of hours and into the domain of pirates and princes, cowboys and explorers, aliens and villains.

  The manager of one cinema, a tall thin man in a baggy suit and wearing a black dickie bow tie, would appear just before the doors were opened and shout down the queue. He would never complete the sentence because we would all shout out the last word at the top of our voices.

  ‘Any messing about and you’re …’

  ‘OUT!’

  We would file in through the foyer under the watchful eye of the manager, who would have a martyred expression on his long lugubrious face. Should he see a boy (it was always a boy) whom he had sent out the week before for misbehaving, he would grip the miscreant’s collar and say, ‘Out!’ If the boy’s friends came to his assistance they would be threatened with expulsion as well, and they soon quietened down. None would want to miss the next exciting episode.

  Once inside the cinema the noise was indescribable, and various missiles – peanuts, sweets, popcorn – would fly through the air until the manager strode to the front accompanied by two beefy usherettes to warn us again.

  ‘I’ve told you once,’ shouted the manager, red-faced and angry, ‘any messing about and you’re …’

  ‘OUT!’ we all roared.r />
  Once the lights dimmed the cinema became a wild affair, with children shouting, cheering, jeering and jumping up in their seats, running up the aisle and spitting orange pips and shooting rice and rock-hard peas through pea-shooters. The lights would come on.

  ‘Now look,’ shrieked the manager, his voice an octave higher, ‘I’ve told you once, any more messing about and you’re …’

  ‘OUT!’ we all shouted back.

  The film-show at the Sheffield ABC would start with a raucous sing-song to the music of a Souza march:

  We are the boys and girls,

  Well known as the minors of the ABC,

  And every Saturday we line up

  And see the films we like

  And shout aloud with glee.

  We love to laugh and have a sing-song,

  What a happy crowd are we.

  We’re all pals together,

  The minors of the ABC.

  The black and white films would include a cast of brave and gallant heroes: the Lone Ranger and his side-kick, Tonto, Hopalong Cassidy, Roy Rogers, Zorro, Tarzan – all handsome, clean-living, clean-shaven, God-fearing, good-natured heroes who only resorted to violence (and then never to kill) as a very last resort. I liked Flash Gordon the best. Each thrilling episode would finish just as our hero was about to be crushed to death or blown up or zapped with a death ray. ‘Will Flash Gordon escape?’ came the zig-zagged letters across the screen. Of course I knew he would, he always did, but I couldn’t wait until the next episode.

  During one performance I was gripped by my collar and heaved out of my seat by the manager, charged with skimming the top of an ice cream carton. I had been guilty of throwing things in the past, but on this occasion I was innocent of the crime and felt the unfairness of the accusation deeply.

  ‘It wasn’t me!’ I protested.

  ‘Out!’ the manager ordered.

  ‘I didn’t do it!’

  ‘I saw you.’