What's Up With Seacroft?
With Jack, Bill, Doreen, Amy and Sheila
Courtesy of Geraldine Beattie and The members of the Kentmere Community Centre Good Neighbours Scheme
Your early memories of Seacroft?
Courtesy of Geraldine Beattie and The members of the Kentmere Community Centre Good Neighbours Scheme
Your early memories of Seacroft?
Jack: It was all countryside was Seacroft, all open fields. You come to the village where the Old Lion and Lamb pub was and there was the blacksmith.
He always wore a beard and a top hat. He was a really nice chap, and before you turned into the Methodist Church was the duck pond which has been gone now many years and then behind the church was Laburnum farm where I lived as a child. We used to go to school at St James’s, the old building, it’s still up now. All the Village Green was holy ground, you daren’t walk on it.
Cricket matches were played Saturdays and Sundays. It was a wonderful atmosphere on the village green. People used to gather round and watch the cricket, go round with the collection box, have a pint of beer. It was wonderful, kids running around. You used to have galas on there. All that’s gone now. It was wonderful.
What year was that?
Before the war – 1933/1934. As I say, it was a really wonderful place to live in Seacroft. Where the Windmill is now, the scouts from Sheffield used to come camping once a year. But remember it wasn’t a roundabout. It was a crossroads, and when you turned to come into Seacroft you didn’t see it. It was a big hill which was taken away and, the lane that led down to Crossgates that was all open fields, the gypsies used to come in their old fashioned caravans, park up, light a fire, load up the heather and the pegs in their baskets, go down into the village knocking on doors and selling their heather and their pegs and back to their caravan, dogs running around. Then the next morning they’d pack up and off to another town. It was wonderful to see them going off, six pegs for a penny
Bill: Not many people know where the toll bar is, Pogson’s Cottage –there used to be a sign there telling you how many miles it is to York and Tadcaster and people used to wait there and see the pony and trap going down on a Sunday morning trimmed up with ribbon on their tails. Very rare you saw a car. I used to sit there when I was about eight or nine marking all the horse and carts that went by. Just sat there writing them down, how many horse and carts and how many cars. I think there were about two cars in an hour and the rest were all horse and carts Galloping down. It was wonderful to see.
When they came round emptying the bins in them days it was a horse and cart with a big stacked cart – it was a right physical job for the lads that did it.
Bill: There was a Victorian post office down there and some people from America used to come down and take photos of the Victorian post office and the blacksmith there. The horses used to pull in, kids looking in, the blacksmith there messing about – it was wonderful to see. Pigeon Cote Farm was in North Parkway, Pigeon Cote Road, North Parkway the fantail pigeons belonged to the farmer.
He always wore a beard and a top hat. He was a really nice chap, and before you turned into the Methodist Church was the duck pond which has been gone now many years and then behind the church was Laburnum farm where I lived as a child. We used to go to school at St James’s, the old building, it’s still up now. All the Village Green was holy ground, you daren’t walk on it.
Cricket matches were played Saturdays and Sundays. It was a wonderful atmosphere on the village green. People used to gather round and watch the cricket, go round with the collection box, have a pint of beer. It was wonderful, kids running around. You used to have galas on there. All that’s gone now. It was wonderful.
What year was that?
Before the war – 1933/1934. As I say, it was a really wonderful place to live in Seacroft. Where the Windmill is now, the scouts from Sheffield used to come camping once a year. But remember it wasn’t a roundabout. It was a crossroads, and when you turned to come into Seacroft you didn’t see it. It was a big hill which was taken away and, the lane that led down to Crossgates that was all open fields, the gypsies used to come in their old fashioned caravans, park up, light a fire, load up the heather and the pegs in their baskets, go down into the village knocking on doors and selling their heather and their pegs and back to their caravan, dogs running around. Then the next morning they’d pack up and off to another town. It was wonderful to see them going off, six pegs for a penny
Bill: Not many people know where the toll bar is, Pogson’s Cottage –there used to be a sign there telling you how many miles it is to York and Tadcaster and people used to wait there and see the pony and trap going down on a Sunday morning trimmed up with ribbon on their tails. Very rare you saw a car. I used to sit there when I was about eight or nine marking all the horse and carts that went by. Just sat there writing them down, how many horse and carts and how many cars. I think there were about two cars in an hour and the rest were all horse and carts Galloping down. It was wonderful to see.
When they came round emptying the bins in them days it was a horse and cart with a big stacked cart – it was a right physical job for the lads that did it.
Bill: There was a Victorian post office down there and some people from America used to come down and take photos of the Victorian post office and the blacksmith there. The horses used to pull in, kids looking in, the blacksmith there messing about – it was wonderful to see. Pigeon Cote Farm was in North Parkway, Pigeon Cote Road, North Parkway the fantail pigeons belonged to the farmer.
Sheila: I lived in the houses that were built on Pigeon Cote Farm. I’ve brought a few photographs belonging to my husband’s, grandmother and father. This is Seacroft Hall, Darcy Wilson’s. Top of South Parkway. That’s St James’s Church on the village looking down towards Leeds. This is John Smeaton’s water wheel, down Foundry Lane and Moresdale Lane, and this cottage here was pulled down when I was a little girl of five and a half and when I was a little girl we used to play in the rubble. When we lived in North Parkway that was later on in life, the stream was still there, we called it a beck and we used to play duffs, jump over and sometimes fall in.
Bill: Are you talking about Foundry Lane? All them little streams in the gardens, yes I remember them. And that’s the village as it was all those years ago. I’m going back a lot of years. I remember the blacksmith with a top hat. He just carried on working with it on.
Jack: He was an engineer and he made a chair from horseshoes and that went to the top end of York Road. We helped him to put it on the horse and cart.
Bill: We had short trousers, caps, we’d all hobnail boots (that was good for sliding on paths) and socks half way up with holes in.
What was it like in the houses?
Jack: An old gas stove. Coal range but my dad adjusted it to gas but my mother when she did Yorkshire puddings, she used to shove the coal under and forget the gas and the Yorkshire puddings were beautiful.
Bill: In those days in the 20s and 30s it was all horse and carts. The horse and carts used to come round with milk, fish, the coal was emptied down the grate, if you were a miner you got the coal free the coal was dropped into the cellar. Jack: Where the pub is at Crossgates near the roundabout used to be a mine. and if you go down 8 feet you’ll come to a 2-foot seam of coal.
Jack: And it was Wilson’s from Seacroft that run them mines. That’s where their money came from. To fill in a two-foot mine was easy with concrete. The old mines in Wakefield and Methley were five-foot and six-foot seams, they were filled up. I was a miner for 23 years. I was union secretary for 13 years. I worked at Market Silston, Water Lane. I lived on York Road. When I came out of the army I bought a two up two down for £100.
Jack and Sheila: St James’s school you went till you were about nine and then you’d to go to another one. It closed down in 1966. I got confirmed in 1966 and we went in there to get ready and we had to wear little white veils with hairclips and I was 33 then. That school wasn’t being used and it was dilapidated. It rotted away. They let it rot away.
Bill: Are you talking about Foundry Lane? All them little streams in the gardens, yes I remember them. And that’s the village as it was all those years ago. I’m going back a lot of years. I remember the blacksmith with a top hat. He just carried on working with it on.
Jack: He was an engineer and he made a chair from horseshoes and that went to the top end of York Road. We helped him to put it on the horse and cart.
Bill: We had short trousers, caps, we’d all hobnail boots (that was good for sliding on paths) and socks half way up with holes in.
What was it like in the houses?
Jack: An old gas stove. Coal range but my dad adjusted it to gas but my mother when she did Yorkshire puddings, she used to shove the coal under and forget the gas and the Yorkshire puddings were beautiful.
Bill: In those days in the 20s and 30s it was all horse and carts. The horse and carts used to come round with milk, fish, the coal was emptied down the grate, if you were a miner you got the coal free the coal was dropped into the cellar. Jack: Where the pub is at Crossgates near the roundabout used to be a mine. and if you go down 8 feet you’ll come to a 2-foot seam of coal.
Jack: And it was Wilson’s from Seacroft that run them mines. That’s where their money came from. To fill in a two-foot mine was easy with concrete. The old mines in Wakefield and Methley were five-foot and six-foot seams, they were filled up. I was a miner for 23 years. I was union secretary for 13 years. I worked at Market Silston, Water Lane. I lived on York Road. When I came out of the army I bought a two up two down for £100.
Jack and Sheila: St James’s school you went till you were about nine and then you’d to go to another one. It closed down in 1966. I got confirmed in 1966 and we went in there to get ready and we had to wear little white veils with hairclips and I was 33 then. That school wasn’t being used and it was dilapidated. It rotted away. They let it rot away.
Doreen: I didn’t move to Seacroft until 1957 on 47 Barncroft Drive. I was never really part of it because I was so busy working. I’m learning more about Seacroft now.
What it was like at school, at home, holidays? We always went to Scarborough. My dad liked Scarborough, I don’t know why. Climbing up and down them hills. We enjoyed it. Camping that was. Amy: I remember more the other side of Seacroft, Wetherby Road. We lived in Easterly Road and this was all the army camp during the war. Boggart Hill Drive. 1939, they came round and they drilled Foxwood Farm, it was too damp – the army stayed down here but they had their guns on Wellington Hill – Boggart Hill Drive, the army camp was there. We used to catch all the shrapnel in our garden. Of course all the bottom was all farms.
Jack: Foxwood Farm – it was at the other side of the beck and it was an old building, I think there were four bedrooms to it, brick built and their main thing was milk, they had cows and they had a milk delivery.
Bill: He used to get up at 5am. Very tall fella and she was small. We used to go down and see all the chickens running around. David Young’s there now. When they were building Fearnvilles – there was a fall out with the owner that were building them and the gas board. So gas never got laid, it was all electric. It was 25 years later when they’d all died off that gas board came in.
How did you feel when it started changing?
Jack: If you go down to bottom of Asket Drive or Boggart Hill Road and there’s a field full of houses which was known as soldier’s field. The army used to come camping there and the last time they used it was when the last tattoo was on – it was a Scotch regiment that had that field and my children used to play there until the yanks took it over. They had it built for the yanks from France and what have you. They used to get in a big car, that did eight mile to gallon to drive to Dib Lane for groceries and then they’d drive back 200 yards. They never walked. You never saw an American walking.
Bill: They used to come round with a horse and trap and the milk churn was on an axle basis.
What it was like at school, at home, holidays? We always went to Scarborough. My dad liked Scarborough, I don’t know why. Climbing up and down them hills. We enjoyed it. Camping that was. Amy: I remember more the other side of Seacroft, Wetherby Road. We lived in Easterly Road and this was all the army camp during the war. Boggart Hill Drive. 1939, they came round and they drilled Foxwood Farm, it was too damp – the army stayed down here but they had their guns on Wellington Hill – Boggart Hill Drive, the army camp was there. We used to catch all the shrapnel in our garden. Of course all the bottom was all farms.
Jack: Foxwood Farm – it was at the other side of the beck and it was an old building, I think there were four bedrooms to it, brick built and their main thing was milk, they had cows and they had a milk delivery.
Bill: He used to get up at 5am. Very tall fella and she was small. We used to go down and see all the chickens running around. David Young’s there now. When they were building Fearnvilles – there was a fall out with the owner that were building them and the gas board. So gas never got laid, it was all electric. It was 25 years later when they’d all died off that gas board came in.
How did you feel when it started changing?
Jack: If you go down to bottom of Asket Drive or Boggart Hill Road and there’s a field full of houses which was known as soldier’s field. The army used to come camping there and the last time they used it was when the last tattoo was on – it was a Scotch regiment that had that field and my children used to play there until the yanks took it over. They had it built for the yanks from France and what have you. They used to get in a big car, that did eight mile to gallon to drive to Dib Lane for groceries and then they’d drive back 200 yards. They never walked. You never saw an American walking.
Bill: They used to come round with a horse and trap and the milk churn was on an axle basis.
The butcher used to come out with the jugs and the fishmonger used to come round with a pair of scales, a housewife would come out, have a slice of fish, he’d chop it and weigh it and then they’d go to the next street. Then the knocker up man used to come round and knock them up at 5 am, 6d a week, knock, knock get up Mr Smith, time to go to work, then he’d go to the next street.
Amy: You’re talking about the 20s and 30s now before Seacroft, Bill.
Sheila: We all lived quite near. I was born near St James’s Hospital. I was born near St James’s, Beckett Street and my grandad used to go round with a handcart and sell fish, flowers, rabbits and his name was Haddock. When I was born I was a Haddock.
The school I went to was down Beckett Street, then I moved up here and then I was taken to Potternewton, because I had callipers on for two years, and when I came back there was no room in Crossgates school where my sisters were and we all got evacuated and when we all came back a year later there was no room in Crossgates School so my mam took us all down to Gipton Coldcotes but that’s not there any more either. Amy: I went to St Augustine’s and we had to walk there and back from Easterly Road.
Jack: I went to St Anne’s and two classes below me there was a young fella called Jimmy Saville and I know JS quite well.
Jack, Amy: What was it like in the classroom (32 in mine, 36 in ours)? It was Standards in those days Standard 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 –
Bill: If you got to 7 you were a brilliant person – if you didn’t go above 3 you went to a special school. Jack: There was that mentality that you were there to learn and you always had the attention of the teacher and nowadays they’re all talking and throwing stuff about. There was…
Amy: Discipline.
Jack: We were separated from the girls. Boys on one side and girls on the other.
Bill: You couldn’t mix with the girls, a bar going across that you could reach through and shake hands.
Did you get dinner at school?
Jack: You took tuppence ha’penny a week and you got a quarter of milk and there were quite a few that couldn’t afford that.
Bill: Sometimes they used to keep you in after 4pm and do a big sum and the mothers used to go down and say you’re keeping them too long.
Was it a good education?
Jack: It was 3Rs and the only country that took the 3Rs off us was Germany and they are still doing the 3Rs. In 1960 I was at Leeds University and the professor there was an old barrister of law and all day long he had a sup from this silver flask – it was whisky. I was doing Industrial Relations and Economics. The union sent me there. I enjoyed it because when I passed it wasn’t the Coal Board that took me over it was ICI. I worked for ICI for a number of years there were happy times.
While I was at University everybody was cheering because Lady Chatterley had been passed and Richard Hoggart was involved. The NUM was paying the University, Arthur Scargill was one of them who went through like me.
After school
Amy: Skipping, whip and top. Jack: At St James’s three nights a week it was a play centre. Teachers stayed on for one and a half hours a week doing all sorts, playing indoor football.
Sheila: I went to Coldcotes on Gipton and same thing was happening. I used to stay for Art and Sewing. I do hand sewing, not machines I can’t do with machinery at all. We had to have permission from parents. But I used to walk home from school and go to the shop with me penny.
Doreen: I feel like a foreigner because I went to school in Middleton, South Leeds. I went to St Mary’s in Middleton. I grew up there and we lived in a Miners cottage and I left at 14.
Amy: I did – was 14 on 12th December – tailoring factory – St Augustine’s was closed for 12 months during the war for the refugees to come in from London and we had to go to Coldcotes for 12 months. Jack: The Jewish children came to our school (a rabbi used to come and pray with them – St Anne’s). A lot of them went to the North Street area – a Jewish area, Roundhay Road and they finished up in Alwoodley. It was the same with the Polish down Hunslet, they finished up in Chapeltown.
How did you feel about the estate coming?
Bill: It was a matter of the time. It had to be done for the slum clearance. They came from the Marsh Lane area, Richmond Hill near Mount St Mary’s Church. I got married there.
Bill: It was built by Irish immigrants – in fact I’ve got a photograph of 1927 of Mount St Mary’s, Old Leeds, the Bank. Does anyone know why they call it Cavalier Street? The Cavaliers camped there.
Jack: The Red Roses came over and camped on the Coal Road where coal used to go from here right down to Harewood to Harrogate and that were all horse and cart. The pass wouldn’t take a cart. That’s where the Roses regiments set up.
Amy: Austhorpe Road – that’s where they had the Yorkshire regiment and they moved over to Selby. Sheila: There was a pub called the Crooked Billet – they hold a mock scene there.
Jack: She never had pumps that landlady, she used to dip in barrel. She had that pub a long, long time.
Doreen: My cousin used to live at Stutton.
Sheila: They say the beck ran red with blood. It happened at the top of Penda’s Way.
Bill: We learnt all that at school. I don’t know whether they teach that now. John Smeaton is not far from there. He’s the one who made the lighthouses and the water wheel.
Sheila: Water wheel was at Moresdale Lane. Jack: Oakwood Lane was only a path and there used to be a beck that came down South Parkway from the top to the bottom and it’s still there – the beck’s still underneath.
Doreen: The beck goes down to Dib Lane –
Jack: – and under the roads right through to Roundhay Park. It goes into the River Aire. What kind of advice would you give youngsters today to have a good life?
Jack: Emigrate. The thing is there’s no parental control like there used to be. It’s not what the children can get up to, it’s the parents that should be brought into it. I think if there were more after-school activities, Boy Scouts, Girl Guides. All that happened in our time. I was a Catholic but I was still in the 54 Boys’ Brigade at the Baptist Church on York Road. Boys’ Brigade, Girl Guides, going away to camp was fabulous.
Bill: The discipline was there in those days. It’s lacking these days. Amy: Mothers didn’t work, the mother was home.
Sheila: I’m sorry but my mother did. She started off as a cleaner in an office in Leeds. After that she went into tailoring. Well she was in tailoring as a girl. before she got married. Of course, then she had four children in four years, then my dad was away at war for four and a half years, and he came back and after 18 months he got killed, over here on York Road by a car. He died when I was 13 and we put in for a transfer and all I wanted to do was go back to Seacroft. I was 14 and I was in the first lot that was taken up to 15 leaving and I had no friends in that area. I eventually came back in 1961. Jack: My mother did. She used to paper a room for 10 shillings.
Did you ever go to the Princess Cinema?
Amy: Cinemas: the Ritz, the Regal, the Clock, the Gaiety, Miners at Garforth.
Jack: When you walked through Barnbow you came to the back of Garforth golf club and you walked up and you were in Garforth. Celebrating
Amy: We weren’t allowed to play with a ball on a Sunday and you couldn’t put washing out on a Sunday. This was my father, he was very strict.
Sheila: You did what your parents told us. My mother just looked at us.
Jack: There’s a lack of activity areas for the children. Amy: But you didn’t have activity areas. You made your own entertainment.
Jack: Every Sunday we used to take the dog for a walk.
Sheila: The seasons, we had hopscotch, whip and top, kick out ball in the street. This was before Seacroft. We used to play kick out ball on Moresdale Lane.
Jack: Everybody put their name in a hat – get the ball in the hat, they had to run and if you threw the ball and hit Lucy you got a point. Leapfrog. Played jump on back – you’d run and jump on their back.
Amy, Doreen: Conkers – you’re not allowed all that now.
Bill: You could buy a dartboard, hang it on the toilet wall and mark your score on the board. Every street used to do that. All our toilets were outside and the dustbin, four people shared the toilet.
Jack: Children’s day was the main thing in Leeds. It should never have been stopped. It was beautiful. 40,000 people used to come. The last crowd of children went to Roundhay Park to say goodbye to Prince Charles. He got out of his car, ran and got in his helicopter. He never even waved to them. That was in the 50s.
Sheila: Flower shows, we used to have vegetable competitions. In fact our hut got burned and Philip lent us one. St Richard’s Church had an active community – the guides and brownies have finished – there’s not enough call for it. It’s still going. I went to the 100 year of guiding at Wetherby a year last September. Some of them walked but I ran and we all got a medal. Last October there were 500 kids on that race. Things can happen.
Jack: It’s only a few weeks when I was at York to see a friend who’s an officer with the cadets. We don’t have any of that over here.
Doreen: I used to go to East Leeds and there was a cadet thing there.
Sheila: Grange School, that’s empty now, the stables were used.
Doreen: Aren’t the David Young Academy doing anything with Scouts and Cubs?
Sheila: We used to go out chumping, I’d go out with my kids. Girls that weren’t as boisterous as some. My eldest sister she was the nurse and she’d be in St John’s Ambulance and she had the plasters.
Doreen: My son went to Foxwood and he stayed on till he was 19, he then went to Sheffield Poly and failed his degree, too busy playing football, and then he went back into education and he’s a lecturer at university.
Amy: Everything’s changed. All this security with children.
Jack: Before the war, there was always work. You could leave Burtons and go to Sumries and get a job.
Doreen: I remember leaving Mathias Robinsons and going to work at Schofields just like that.
Sheila: I went to Coyne and Wilkes. I was really shy and the manager got a bit obstreperous and he says you’re an old woman cos my mam said I had to stand up because I got varicose veins when I was 15, you’re a big baby and stop crying. And I said make your mind up am I an old woman or a big baby. I’m going home. And I came out and thought my mother will go mad. I was more frightened of my mother. I thought about this chap. I came out and got on my bike over Barnbow fields. His father was a commissionaire at Alexandras on Temper Street and I went over there and he says I’ll have a word with the boss for you and he said when can you start? Tarnside Drive, that was the next street to me. They were the first houses to be built.
Bill: Oldest building in Seacroft is in Seacroft Green. It used to be a school called the Grange. Boots for the bairns. I got a pair. My name is William, I didn’t actually live in Seacroft as a child. I came here in 1937 and I liked it. In Moresdale Lane we were the first people in Marsh Lane to get out of that area. Those days were happy days. You don’t get it today. Money was money and quality was quality and happiness was happiness. Jack: The farm just behind the church, there were some cowsheds taken over by an engineering firm. We used to go down and watch them on the lathes.
Bill: One thing that the children liked in 1933, Seacroft had a flying circus came to the Red Lion and you could queue up and go on the plane for half a crown. They weren’t for working class. I was one of the children standing there watching it. 1936 they started knocking houses down on the Bank.
Jack: Me, Charlie Walford and Ronnie Lister had a bogie a piece and we chopped it up and went round selling it for 6p a bucket. After the two weeks I gave my mam £2 17/6d and all I got was a crack in the face because she wanted to know where I’d got it from. I fetched in more that week than my dad did.
Amy: I was in Easterly Road and I moved up to Seacroft when I was married. It was like coming back home. We liked having an inside toilet, a bathroom. We all used tin baths, roaring fire, who’s next, same water for four children. We were happy but we were even happier to come back here to this lovely green area and our house.
Amy: You’re talking about the 20s and 30s now before Seacroft, Bill.
Sheila: We all lived quite near. I was born near St James’s Hospital. I was born near St James’s, Beckett Street and my grandad used to go round with a handcart and sell fish, flowers, rabbits and his name was Haddock. When I was born I was a Haddock.
The school I went to was down Beckett Street, then I moved up here and then I was taken to Potternewton, because I had callipers on for two years, and when I came back there was no room in Crossgates school where my sisters were and we all got evacuated and when we all came back a year later there was no room in Crossgates School so my mam took us all down to Gipton Coldcotes but that’s not there any more either. Amy: I went to St Augustine’s and we had to walk there and back from Easterly Road.
Jack: I went to St Anne’s and two classes below me there was a young fella called Jimmy Saville and I know JS quite well.
Jack, Amy: What was it like in the classroom (32 in mine, 36 in ours)? It was Standards in those days Standard 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 –
Bill: If you got to 7 you were a brilliant person – if you didn’t go above 3 you went to a special school. Jack: There was that mentality that you were there to learn and you always had the attention of the teacher and nowadays they’re all talking and throwing stuff about. There was…
Amy: Discipline.
Jack: We were separated from the girls. Boys on one side and girls on the other.
Bill: You couldn’t mix with the girls, a bar going across that you could reach through and shake hands.
Did you get dinner at school?
Jack: You took tuppence ha’penny a week and you got a quarter of milk and there were quite a few that couldn’t afford that.
Bill: Sometimes they used to keep you in after 4pm and do a big sum and the mothers used to go down and say you’re keeping them too long.
Was it a good education?
Jack: It was 3Rs and the only country that took the 3Rs off us was Germany and they are still doing the 3Rs. In 1960 I was at Leeds University and the professor there was an old barrister of law and all day long he had a sup from this silver flask – it was whisky. I was doing Industrial Relations and Economics. The union sent me there. I enjoyed it because when I passed it wasn’t the Coal Board that took me over it was ICI. I worked for ICI for a number of years there were happy times.
While I was at University everybody was cheering because Lady Chatterley had been passed and Richard Hoggart was involved. The NUM was paying the University, Arthur Scargill was one of them who went through like me.
After school
Amy: Skipping, whip and top. Jack: At St James’s three nights a week it was a play centre. Teachers stayed on for one and a half hours a week doing all sorts, playing indoor football.
Sheila: I went to Coldcotes on Gipton and same thing was happening. I used to stay for Art and Sewing. I do hand sewing, not machines I can’t do with machinery at all. We had to have permission from parents. But I used to walk home from school and go to the shop with me penny.
Doreen: I feel like a foreigner because I went to school in Middleton, South Leeds. I went to St Mary’s in Middleton. I grew up there and we lived in a Miners cottage and I left at 14.
Amy: I did – was 14 on 12th December – tailoring factory – St Augustine’s was closed for 12 months during the war for the refugees to come in from London and we had to go to Coldcotes for 12 months. Jack: The Jewish children came to our school (a rabbi used to come and pray with them – St Anne’s). A lot of them went to the North Street area – a Jewish area, Roundhay Road and they finished up in Alwoodley. It was the same with the Polish down Hunslet, they finished up in Chapeltown.
How did you feel about the estate coming?
Bill: It was a matter of the time. It had to be done for the slum clearance. They came from the Marsh Lane area, Richmond Hill near Mount St Mary’s Church. I got married there.
Bill: It was built by Irish immigrants – in fact I’ve got a photograph of 1927 of Mount St Mary’s, Old Leeds, the Bank. Does anyone know why they call it Cavalier Street? The Cavaliers camped there.
Jack: The Red Roses came over and camped on the Coal Road where coal used to go from here right down to Harewood to Harrogate and that were all horse and cart. The pass wouldn’t take a cart. That’s where the Roses regiments set up.
Amy: Austhorpe Road – that’s where they had the Yorkshire regiment and they moved over to Selby. Sheila: There was a pub called the Crooked Billet – they hold a mock scene there.
Jack: She never had pumps that landlady, she used to dip in barrel. She had that pub a long, long time.
Doreen: My cousin used to live at Stutton.
Sheila: They say the beck ran red with blood. It happened at the top of Penda’s Way.
Bill: We learnt all that at school. I don’t know whether they teach that now. John Smeaton is not far from there. He’s the one who made the lighthouses and the water wheel.
Sheila: Water wheel was at Moresdale Lane. Jack: Oakwood Lane was only a path and there used to be a beck that came down South Parkway from the top to the bottom and it’s still there – the beck’s still underneath.
Doreen: The beck goes down to Dib Lane –
Jack: – and under the roads right through to Roundhay Park. It goes into the River Aire. What kind of advice would you give youngsters today to have a good life?
Jack: Emigrate. The thing is there’s no parental control like there used to be. It’s not what the children can get up to, it’s the parents that should be brought into it. I think if there were more after-school activities, Boy Scouts, Girl Guides. All that happened in our time. I was a Catholic but I was still in the 54 Boys’ Brigade at the Baptist Church on York Road. Boys’ Brigade, Girl Guides, going away to camp was fabulous.
Bill: The discipline was there in those days. It’s lacking these days. Amy: Mothers didn’t work, the mother was home.
Sheila: I’m sorry but my mother did. She started off as a cleaner in an office in Leeds. After that she went into tailoring. Well she was in tailoring as a girl. before she got married. Of course, then she had four children in four years, then my dad was away at war for four and a half years, and he came back and after 18 months he got killed, over here on York Road by a car. He died when I was 13 and we put in for a transfer and all I wanted to do was go back to Seacroft. I was 14 and I was in the first lot that was taken up to 15 leaving and I had no friends in that area. I eventually came back in 1961. Jack: My mother did. She used to paper a room for 10 shillings.
Did you ever go to the Princess Cinema?
Amy: Cinemas: the Ritz, the Regal, the Clock, the Gaiety, Miners at Garforth.
Jack: When you walked through Barnbow you came to the back of Garforth golf club and you walked up and you were in Garforth. Celebrating
Amy: We weren’t allowed to play with a ball on a Sunday and you couldn’t put washing out on a Sunday. This was my father, he was very strict.
Sheila: You did what your parents told us. My mother just looked at us.
Jack: There’s a lack of activity areas for the children. Amy: But you didn’t have activity areas. You made your own entertainment.
Jack: Every Sunday we used to take the dog for a walk.
Sheila: The seasons, we had hopscotch, whip and top, kick out ball in the street. This was before Seacroft. We used to play kick out ball on Moresdale Lane.
Jack: Everybody put their name in a hat – get the ball in the hat, they had to run and if you threw the ball and hit Lucy you got a point. Leapfrog. Played jump on back – you’d run and jump on their back.
Amy, Doreen: Conkers – you’re not allowed all that now.
Bill: You could buy a dartboard, hang it on the toilet wall and mark your score on the board. Every street used to do that. All our toilets were outside and the dustbin, four people shared the toilet.
Jack: Children’s day was the main thing in Leeds. It should never have been stopped. It was beautiful. 40,000 people used to come. The last crowd of children went to Roundhay Park to say goodbye to Prince Charles. He got out of his car, ran and got in his helicopter. He never even waved to them. That was in the 50s.
Sheila: Flower shows, we used to have vegetable competitions. In fact our hut got burned and Philip lent us one. St Richard’s Church had an active community – the guides and brownies have finished – there’s not enough call for it. It’s still going. I went to the 100 year of guiding at Wetherby a year last September. Some of them walked but I ran and we all got a medal. Last October there were 500 kids on that race. Things can happen.
Jack: It’s only a few weeks when I was at York to see a friend who’s an officer with the cadets. We don’t have any of that over here.
Doreen: I used to go to East Leeds and there was a cadet thing there.
Sheila: Grange School, that’s empty now, the stables were used.
Doreen: Aren’t the David Young Academy doing anything with Scouts and Cubs?
Sheila: We used to go out chumping, I’d go out with my kids. Girls that weren’t as boisterous as some. My eldest sister she was the nurse and she’d be in St John’s Ambulance and she had the plasters.
Doreen: My son went to Foxwood and he stayed on till he was 19, he then went to Sheffield Poly and failed his degree, too busy playing football, and then he went back into education and he’s a lecturer at university.
Amy: Everything’s changed. All this security with children.
Jack: Before the war, there was always work. You could leave Burtons and go to Sumries and get a job.
Doreen: I remember leaving Mathias Robinsons and going to work at Schofields just like that.
Sheila: I went to Coyne and Wilkes. I was really shy and the manager got a bit obstreperous and he says you’re an old woman cos my mam said I had to stand up because I got varicose veins when I was 15, you’re a big baby and stop crying. And I said make your mind up am I an old woman or a big baby. I’m going home. And I came out and thought my mother will go mad. I was more frightened of my mother. I thought about this chap. I came out and got on my bike over Barnbow fields. His father was a commissionaire at Alexandras on Temper Street and I went over there and he says I’ll have a word with the boss for you and he said when can you start? Tarnside Drive, that was the next street to me. They were the first houses to be built.
Bill: Oldest building in Seacroft is in Seacroft Green. It used to be a school called the Grange. Boots for the bairns. I got a pair. My name is William, I didn’t actually live in Seacroft as a child. I came here in 1937 and I liked it. In Moresdale Lane we were the first people in Marsh Lane to get out of that area. Those days were happy days. You don’t get it today. Money was money and quality was quality and happiness was happiness. Jack: The farm just behind the church, there were some cowsheds taken over by an engineering firm. We used to go down and watch them on the lathes.
Bill: One thing that the children liked in 1933, Seacroft had a flying circus came to the Red Lion and you could queue up and go on the plane for half a crown. They weren’t for working class. I was one of the children standing there watching it. 1936 they started knocking houses down on the Bank.
Jack: Me, Charlie Walford and Ronnie Lister had a bogie a piece and we chopped it up and went round selling it for 6p a bucket. After the two weeks I gave my mam £2 17/6d and all I got was a crack in the face because she wanted to know where I’d got it from. I fetched in more that week than my dad did.
Amy: I was in Easterly Road and I moved up to Seacroft when I was married. It was like coming back home. We liked having an inside toilet, a bathroom. We all used tin baths, roaring fire, who’s next, same water for four children. We were happy but we were even happier to come back here to this lovely green area and our house.