Royston, Midland Road c.1960

Photo ref: R248036

I lived at 59 Station Road, Royston. My parents moved there in the very early 1960's and I was born in 1969 and my brother David in 1972. It was a semi, with what seemed to be a garden that went on forever. I was always at the shop on Station Road run by Gwen Miller and her husband Cyril. So it was us, the Haigh's at 59, then the Jobson's, and at 63 the Pagan's. We all loved going to Abeldy or ...see more

My introduction to the Monckton mining community began on a bitter cold March Monday morning in 1944. The wartime Minister of Labour Ernest Bevin had decreed that I should become one of his boys. So here I was at 5.30am on a Monday morning at the pithead baths arrayed in my work clothes and new boots with their shiney steel toecaps climbing the wooden steps to No One pit top. The activity there was ...see more

Summer time, I had gone fishing on Royston Canal. The local fishing club had replenished the canal with fresh water trout for the anglers. These fish were so tame that all you need do was to hold out your hand with a few maggots and they'd come and feed from you; they were farmed trout. They knew nothing of predators and would calmly swim alongside Pike. Pike were soon to get so fat from feeding off the trout ...see more

I'm Not sure whether that was the actual date but as a child of five I recall my mother standing on the top step of our home where she would watch me go over the brow of the bridge on Midland Road on my way to school: as I got out of the door and began to walk on the causeway I noticed that there was a glinting on the Kerb and when I focused my eyes, I could see a whole line of pennies which were ...see more