Pat Brooke's Story
I was born on Saturday 25th March 1944 in the front downstairs room of 164 Tarnside drive, Seacroft, then designated ‘Near Leeds’. My parents had moved there from the Harehills area and were the first occupants of a four-bedroomed semi-detached in the days when you had to have a reference to be allocated a house on the new Seacroft estate. Our house was in the top left-hand corner of a square, facing down onto Tarnside drive, and we had a downstairs bathroom, what luxury! Also being a corner house we had a huge garden which was more like a small holding and always a bit too big to manage, although we kept chickens and grew our own vegetables.
One of my earliest memories of Seacroft is Sunday mornings when my dad used to walk me and our dog, Raf (names after the RAF, in which my eldest brother served) up to the village to watch the cricket on the Green outside the Cricketer’s arms. I usually got a bottle of lemonade and a packet of crisps (Smith’s of course, with the little blue bag of salt inside).
The winter of 1947 was dreadful, with heavy snow from autumn right through until spring. After the war Britain was almost bankrupt and rationing and power cuts were a way of life, and I recall vividly my sister Brenda and I walking through the fields along the hedge line with snow piled as high as I was, to buy candles from a shop in Seacroft village. Right through that winter there was ice on the inside of our bedroom window when we woke up in the morning, my Mam used to warm oven plates in the gas cooker at night, wrap them in old sheeting and put them in our beds to warm them up before we got in.
My first school was the Grange in Seacroft village. I started there when I was three years old and funnily enough I ended my working life there, at the Grange medical centre- I guess I came full circle. I loved that old house and it grieves me to see it fall into ruin when it is such an integral part of old Seacroft. After school my sister used to pick me up and sometimes we went to the sweetshop on the other side of the road. It was down a little slope and was run by two sisters – Brenda and I used to buy yellow sherbet in cone-shaped bags. Further down the road there was a memorial garden.
I recall my class being taken one summer day on a ‘nature walk’ to find frogspawn. Our teacher took us into a little copse where there was a pond, it was in the grounds of a big old house with lots of windows, on the same side of York Road as the Grange, but set back behind the trees. She warned us that we must never go into that house to play as it was dangerous. I never knew what it was, but years later read in the Skyrack Express that it was Seacroft Hall and was demolished in the early 1950s, and a school now stands on the site.
Another early memory is of Seacroft Gala. This was an annual event, much anticipated by the population, in which floats with bands and people dressed in various styles would parade round each street in the Estate, finishing up on the village green. When I was three, my Mam and another neighbour, mother to my playmate George who was six months older than me, came up with the idea of entering the two of us in the Gala fancy dress competition. We were subsequently rigged out in homemade costumes as bride and groom, and our families were delighted when we won first prize. George got a banjo and I a doll, but as it was being handed to me a girl dashed out of the crowd, grabbed the doll and ran off! The thief was never caught, and as I’d not really wanted to be dressed up in all that finery anyway, and was in a bit of a mood to start with (see picture), I was put out to say the least.
A lengthy spell in hospital with peritonitis at the age of four meant that I lost my place at the Grange school, but after a stint at Coldcotes School (which I didn’t enjoy) I was transferred to the newly opened Parklands Junior Mixed School, which I loved. Our headmaster was Mr. Michel, a kind man who gave interesting talks in Assembly. He always made sure we had nice pieces of music to enter and exit to, I particularly remember ‘Morning Song’ by Grieg, I think of Mr. Michel whenever I hear it. He told us that we should never walk across the grass verges on the estate and make tracks through them, but always walk on the paths – my first introduction to environmental awareness and I still follow his instruction 60 years on. We had a variety of teachers, both male and female, and I particularly recall the large Miss Lancaster (not very child-friendly and nicknamed the Lancaster Bomber) and Mr. Wanless who was from the North-East and spoke with the most interesting accent. But my favourite was Miss Cunningham – young, pretty, kind and smiling – we kids used to fight for position after’ school to walk her to the bus stop. (Yes, those were the days when teachers travelled by bus.)
My Mam was a lover of the cinema, and our treat each week was to go to the Regal, a short tram-ride from the Melbourne up to Crossgates terminus. I adored these trips, and recall the anticipation as we went passed the liveried doorman, paid our money (I think it was 1/6d stalls, or 2/– upstairs) and walked up the steps on the red carpet that you sank into. Inside the seats were also red, (plush material, very luxurious) and the walls were decorated with Roman-style nymphs with amphorae on their shoulders. In this setting we two watched all the great epics of the 50s – The Robe, Demetrius and the Gladiators, Carousel, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Calamity Jane (my special favourite) and many more. At the end of the film the National Anthem was played, with the young Queen Elizabeth sidesaddle on horseback riding across the screen at the Trooping of the Colours. Some shameless people used to slink out whilst the rest of us stood, eyeing such perpetrators of disrespect with disgust. then it was out to the tram and back to the Melbourne fish shop for a bag of salty chips to eat on the way home along Foundry Lane and Moresdale Lane. On the way we used to pass a big tree that had a huge white ‘B’ painted on it – Mam told me it was because of the black-out during the war, but I thought it was my sister Brenda’s tree.
Our local shops were either Mr Ploughman’s, down near the new Catholic church (our lady of good counsel), or Mr. Black’s near the then bus terminus at the top of South Parkway. These were, of course, in the days before supermarkets, and I well remember standing and waiting in the queue to be served, and watching cooked meat being sliced on one of those big circular implements and waiting for someone to take a finger off. A very happy day was when sweets finally came off the ration, and my Mam said to me, ‘Come on, Pat, let’s go down to Mr. Ploughman’s and buy a Mars bar!’
When I was married in 1965 I stayed in Seacroft. My new husband and I lived in a maisonette over the Yorkshire Bank in the newly-built Seacroft Centre, just opposite the old windmill. the Centre was officially opened on the Monday I went back to work after the honeymoon – I was so annoyed that I missed seeing the Queen, who passed right under our balcony to perform the opening ceremony for the Centre. Eventually I lived for 31 years in Whinmoor, not far from the Coal Road, where my Dad used to take me blackberry-picking as a small girl.
My memories of Seacroft are wide-ranging and varied, but overall I remember a happy childhood in an area that was filled with diversity. Our ‘new’ house was a good place to grow up in, our family was a stable one and our surroundings pleasant, with neighbours who cared for one another. the old village was charming and gave one a sense of history and constancy, and somehow the old world and the new met and gelled together.
One of my earliest memories of Seacroft is Sunday mornings when my dad used to walk me and our dog, Raf (names after the RAF, in which my eldest brother served) up to the village to watch the cricket on the Green outside the Cricketer’s arms. I usually got a bottle of lemonade and a packet of crisps (Smith’s of course, with the little blue bag of salt inside).
The winter of 1947 was dreadful, with heavy snow from autumn right through until spring. After the war Britain was almost bankrupt and rationing and power cuts were a way of life, and I recall vividly my sister Brenda and I walking through the fields along the hedge line with snow piled as high as I was, to buy candles from a shop in Seacroft village. Right through that winter there was ice on the inside of our bedroom window when we woke up in the morning, my Mam used to warm oven plates in the gas cooker at night, wrap them in old sheeting and put them in our beds to warm them up before we got in.
My first school was the Grange in Seacroft village. I started there when I was three years old and funnily enough I ended my working life there, at the Grange medical centre- I guess I came full circle. I loved that old house and it grieves me to see it fall into ruin when it is such an integral part of old Seacroft. After school my sister used to pick me up and sometimes we went to the sweetshop on the other side of the road. It was down a little slope and was run by two sisters – Brenda and I used to buy yellow sherbet in cone-shaped bags. Further down the road there was a memorial garden.
I recall my class being taken one summer day on a ‘nature walk’ to find frogspawn. Our teacher took us into a little copse where there was a pond, it was in the grounds of a big old house with lots of windows, on the same side of York Road as the Grange, but set back behind the trees. She warned us that we must never go into that house to play as it was dangerous. I never knew what it was, but years later read in the Skyrack Express that it was Seacroft Hall and was demolished in the early 1950s, and a school now stands on the site.
Another early memory is of Seacroft Gala. This was an annual event, much anticipated by the population, in which floats with bands and people dressed in various styles would parade round each street in the Estate, finishing up on the village green. When I was three, my Mam and another neighbour, mother to my playmate George who was six months older than me, came up with the idea of entering the two of us in the Gala fancy dress competition. We were subsequently rigged out in homemade costumes as bride and groom, and our families were delighted when we won first prize. George got a banjo and I a doll, but as it was being handed to me a girl dashed out of the crowd, grabbed the doll and ran off! The thief was never caught, and as I’d not really wanted to be dressed up in all that finery anyway, and was in a bit of a mood to start with (see picture), I was put out to say the least.
A lengthy spell in hospital with peritonitis at the age of four meant that I lost my place at the Grange school, but after a stint at Coldcotes School (which I didn’t enjoy) I was transferred to the newly opened Parklands Junior Mixed School, which I loved. Our headmaster was Mr. Michel, a kind man who gave interesting talks in Assembly. He always made sure we had nice pieces of music to enter and exit to, I particularly remember ‘Morning Song’ by Grieg, I think of Mr. Michel whenever I hear it. He told us that we should never walk across the grass verges on the estate and make tracks through them, but always walk on the paths – my first introduction to environmental awareness and I still follow his instruction 60 years on. We had a variety of teachers, both male and female, and I particularly recall the large Miss Lancaster (not very child-friendly and nicknamed the Lancaster Bomber) and Mr. Wanless who was from the North-East and spoke with the most interesting accent. But my favourite was Miss Cunningham – young, pretty, kind and smiling – we kids used to fight for position after’ school to walk her to the bus stop. (Yes, those were the days when teachers travelled by bus.)
My Mam was a lover of the cinema, and our treat each week was to go to the Regal, a short tram-ride from the Melbourne up to Crossgates terminus. I adored these trips, and recall the anticipation as we went passed the liveried doorman, paid our money (I think it was 1/6d stalls, or 2/– upstairs) and walked up the steps on the red carpet that you sank into. Inside the seats were also red, (plush material, very luxurious) and the walls were decorated with Roman-style nymphs with amphorae on their shoulders. In this setting we two watched all the great epics of the 50s – The Robe, Demetrius and the Gladiators, Carousel, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Calamity Jane (my special favourite) and many more. At the end of the film the National Anthem was played, with the young Queen Elizabeth sidesaddle on horseback riding across the screen at the Trooping of the Colours. Some shameless people used to slink out whilst the rest of us stood, eyeing such perpetrators of disrespect with disgust. then it was out to the tram and back to the Melbourne fish shop for a bag of salty chips to eat on the way home along Foundry Lane and Moresdale Lane. On the way we used to pass a big tree that had a huge white ‘B’ painted on it – Mam told me it was because of the black-out during the war, but I thought it was my sister Brenda’s tree.
Our local shops were either Mr Ploughman’s, down near the new Catholic church (our lady of good counsel), or Mr. Black’s near the then bus terminus at the top of South Parkway. These were, of course, in the days before supermarkets, and I well remember standing and waiting in the queue to be served, and watching cooked meat being sliced on one of those big circular implements and waiting for someone to take a finger off. A very happy day was when sweets finally came off the ration, and my Mam said to me, ‘Come on, Pat, let’s go down to Mr. Ploughman’s and buy a Mars bar!’
When I was married in 1965 I stayed in Seacroft. My new husband and I lived in a maisonette over the Yorkshire Bank in the newly-built Seacroft Centre, just opposite the old windmill. the Centre was officially opened on the Monday I went back to work after the honeymoon – I was so annoyed that I missed seeing the Queen, who passed right under our balcony to perform the opening ceremony for the Centre. Eventually I lived for 31 years in Whinmoor, not far from the Coal Road, where my Dad used to take me blackberry-picking as a small girl.
My memories of Seacroft are wide-ranging and varied, but overall I remember a happy childhood in an area that was filled with diversity. Our ‘new’ house was a good place to grow up in, our family was a stable one and our surroundings pleasant, with neighbours who cared for one another. the old village was charming and gave one a sense of history and constancy, and somehow the old world and the new met and gelled together.