Bentley and Arksey as an Outsider - Part One

Mike's Memories

Here at Bentley Village, A History I am always happy to receive material for new articles, and when Michael (Mike) Hoyland got in touch to say he wanted to share his childhood memories, I was only too delighted to bring him on board. Mike's memories of growing up in the Bentley area in the fifties and sixties are rich, vivid and very nostalgic.

Since I first wrote this introduction in 2014 Mike has sadly passed away at his home in Norfolk, but I do know he was keen to have his memories published so they would live on long after he had departed. 

This is the first of six posts written by Mike, I hope you enjoy them. 

Contents Of Part One

• The Cottage On Chapel Street
• My Family
• Scawthorpe Bound
• The Perils Of Childhood
• We'd Never Had It So Good!
• School Days
• National Health Orange Juice

The Cottage On Chapel Street

My Family

I was born in 1950, the first child of Sheila Betty Griffin and Norman Hoyland. I spent some of my early days at my grandparents Harry & Ethel Griffin, on The Avenue just before the junction of Victoria Road and Elm Crescent, on the right hand side heading toward the pit.

My Dad was a face worker at Bentley Pit in the early 50's. Previously, he had been conscripted into the army in the late 40's and left as a Lance Corporal of the Kings Own Yorkshire Light Infantry (KOYLIs). He met my mother at a dance at Bentley Park Pavilion. He and his army mates came over from Wheatley for the dance and apparently he stayed out so late ensuring that my Mother (to be) got home safely that he had to walk home because the buses had stopped running. Sounds pretty timid now but I can assure you in the post-war days of 10:30 closing hours people were very rarely out beyond the bus time-tables. If you were the local bobby would be having a conversation with you at some point. My Dad (to be) was probably okay because he was in uniform.

My mother who had started her working life as a draughtswoman at the pit, stayed at home and looked after my sister and I until the late 50's when she started work in a mobile grocery van which patrolled Bentley and Scawthorpe on alternate days excluding Monday and Sundays. The proprietor was called Roy Wills and the van was a converted ambulance with access to a platform and a counter through the back double-doors. The van acted as a mobile shop but Roy used to take orders and delivered to many a doorstep for people who could not get out to do their shopping. My Mother eventually left the job to work at the John Carr Wood Yard down Watch-House Lane where she worked until retiring in 1982.

In the early 60's, Roy Will's delivery van was in head-to-head competition with Thompson's Mobile Stores, run by Mr Thompson who owned a very early mini-market on the Bentley High Street. His vehicle was a converted red bus which had large megaphone speakers on the roof. He would pull up on the street to the call of "Thompsons the mobile stores for groceries and provisions". There was also a grocer on the High Street who sold vegetables from the back of his horse and cart. The manure from the horse was targeted by many of the local gardeners for their rhubarb patches.

My earliest memories of life and Bentley are of living in the farm cottages in the photo (below). Three separate dwellings, two on the left had front doors. Ours on the right had only a back door. My parents moved us there in 1952 or thereabouts. Some of my misty memories stick from a year or so later, when I was 3 or 4 years old.

The cottage on Chapel Street

These cottages were sited behind the present day library in Bentley. To the right of this picture is the Bay Horse pub. To the front and left of the picture was a small row of terraced houses leading to the old library and the Bentley High Street.

The Bay Horse Inn

Scawthorpe Bound

We left the cottages in 1954 to move to Petersgate in Scawthorpe. It was a brand new house, in the post war boom, as the man said "We never had it so good". Certainly I can recall as a child that my mother was so proud of her new house that she ensured that it was spotless at all times. Even in the face of dirty pit clothes, muddy football boots, bikes in the kitchen, a dog and holding down jobs herself it was always spotless. We were "flitted" by Jack Rose and his horse and cart. He lived in one of the back-to-backs near the pit. It was a nightmare going over Jossey Hill on top of a horse and cart, at 4 years old, clutching a goldfish bowl and not really knowing what was going on.

One of my aunts moved into the cottage with her husband after we left, Roy and Mavis Machin. They left in 1956 and moved to Park Lane/Truman Street. After some recent discussions it looks like the cottages were demolished at some time between 1956 and 1961. Any more information on that date would be welcomed.

My great Aunt Annie lived in the middle cottage with her "partner" who we knew as "Uncle Bert". I found out many years later that they actually owned their dwelling and the one our family lived in. That must have been pretty good going in those days to own two properties. Uncle Bert was a classic pipe smoker; trousers and braces over the top of a collarless shirt with a pin-striped waist-coat. He was my hero when he rescued me from a toad, the first I had ever seen, which stood in my path when I was heading back from the outside loo to the back door. I was about 3 years old and this toad was a dinosaur in my eyes. He calmly picked it up and transferred it over a nearby wall into some undergrowth.

The cottage had one big room downstairs with a floor of massive stone tiles. And it was cold. There was a huge cast-iron fire range against the end wall below the chimney stack. There were ovens and flat plates which could be swung over the fire to provide a flat base for a saucepan or kettle. I still have a lovely scar from a burn on my left elbow from one of them.

The staircase was like climbing a cliff-face; it went directly from in front of the back door, straight into the main bedroom at the front of the house. We had to pass through the main bedroom to get to my bedroom at the back. In the photo, the top right hand window is the front bedroom. The small window below was a pantry.

There was cold running water but I cannot help but think that the hot water came from a big pan on the fire. I recall that it was definitely used to fill up a zinc bath so my Dad could wash all the pit muck off him after his shift. It used to make us all laugh when he came home with only his eyes and mouth showing and the rest of him pitch black. It can't have been too long after that he started to use the pit-head baths because I never saw him again in his Al Jolson disguise.

We had electric lighting but there were still many houses and streets at the time with gas-lighting.

The loo was down the bottom of a small garden at the back of the house. The less said about that "in" convenience the better.

The wall at the front provided a good deal of entertainment through jumping it, climbing it, running along and falling off it. It was also ideal as a horse. Two cycle brake-calipers tied with rope to act as stirrups. Christmas cowboy outfit and I was Roy Rogers. On one occasion I was a little over-enthusiastic as I threw pebbles over my shoulder at the advancing Indians and ending up producing a perfectly round hole in the window of the house at the other end from us. "Who, me? No it was like that when I came ......the bigger kids did it and ran off". Some grown up talk of payment and a few shillings changing hands and me in serious trouble for days.

The Perils Of Childhood

To show how different things were back then, my mother asked me (told me) to walk round the corner to go to the corner shop, Heinz's, to get a bottle of pop. Dandelion and Burdock. My sister, who was born in 1953 was taking all her attention and we needed some pop and I was doing nothing. I was 3 or 4 at the time. I was also asked to take our little ‘57 terrier with us for some exercise. Having negotiated the road both ways, purchasing the pop and getting the customary gift of a few sherbet lemons from Mr Heinz, my trip back met with disaster. The dog decided to go a different way in front of the Bay Horse, I got tangled up in the lead, tripped over, dropped and smashed the bottle of pop on the big concrete slab in front of the doors and ripped a hole in my knee and chin. I still have the scar on my chin. There was murder and mayhem when I got home dog-less, pop-less, covered in blood and crying.

To the left of the cottages was a patch of waste-land which contained a fabulous nettle patch higher than me. Some of the older kids used to trample down pathways in the nettles and make dens. One day, whilst exploring the nettle "paths" I heard my mother calling me so I set off at a run along one of these paths, tripped over on a bend and went headlong into the nettles. I went home screaming and yelling this time and covered in stings. Doctors, chemists, calamine and bed and in the dog-house yet again!!

My Dad, Norman (Nobby) Hoyland was a face-worker at the pit. I remember he was once brought home in one of the pit ambulances. It was like a normal ambulance for the time but a deep blue colour with the letters NCB on the side. My mother was having fits when she saw it pull up outside the cottage until my Dad climbed out of the back with his arm in plaster and a sling, alive, walking, talking and smiling. "A lump of muck fell on me" was all he would say. Not until I was much older did he clarify that a lump of muck could be the size of a brick or half of the roof.

One of my uncles, Mo Griffin, used to visit us regularly at the cottage when he was in his early teens. He was always a source of much joy and laughter and still is in his 70's. I remember he took me to Bentley Park one day where he met up with a whole bunch of his friends. They were in their early teens, strong and boisterous and were playing on this swing which has long been forbidden. It had a horse's head and a series of seats behind it in a long line. It hung from a frame by four corner poles and could be swung back and forth gaining quite a height and quite some momentum. I was meant to stand still while they swung, played and had a good time; however I walked in front of this beast and remember waking up in Mo's arms as he was passing me to my parents at the cottages. Another trip to the Doctors, aspirin, bed and in the dog-house again. I carried a cracking black eye for weeks after. On reflection methinks I should have died back then. I was lucky not to.

The wooden horse at Bentley Park.
Photo courtesy of Graham Westerman

As children, we sustained a hell of a lot of injuries by being out on our own but recovered from them with scars and memories. We had fewer cars to deal with so most of the danger was born of the crazy interaction of the many kids messing around together looking for all sorts of ways to have a good time or disagree with each other and to push whatever boundaries, physical or authoritarian, were put in their way. Anything could happen at any time and often did. Parents ended up laughing or crying but grateful that the war was behind them and they were not still facing the prospect of bombing.

We'd Never Had It So Good!

In the 50's the streets were littered with kids playing football, rounders, hidey, hop-scotch, cricket, skipping, tiggy, war, cowboys and Indians, Tarzan swings, the list was endless. Strangely, even though we had enough to do and more than enough friends to do things with, early television, for the few who had them, had a magnetic drawing power.

There was full employment and rationing had been lifted so many couples started having families big style. How different this was for people who had had to endure the earlier decades of the century. All the shops were thriving, people were optimistic and the pubs and clubs were full of people celebrating their lives every weekend.

When I walk the streets these days it is unusual to see many youngsters about. I suppose there aren't that many but what few there are tend not to use the streets for diversion. I guess there are pockets here and there and always will be. Some of whom will be getting up to the same old stuff that we did and getting ASBO's rather than the local Bobby's "fear of God" lecture as a consequence.

School Days

What few friends I had in those early years were mainly children of my Mother's friends. I do recall occasionally sneaking across the road from the cottage and joining in with the kids during their playtime at Cooke Street School. How perverse is that? Going to school when you didn't have to? The teacher even caught me one day and led me into the classroom much to my embarrassment. I can't help but think that my Mother was in on it because not long afterwards I was enrolled at Cooke Street.

I started in the nursery class which included a few kids I already knew but were older than me. Dick Cross is the only one I can remember clearly. He and his family lived somewhere near the laundry in one of the terraces. We ended up in the same year at Don Valley High School in the 60's and also played football, rugby for the school and Rugby League in the early Bentley Amateurs together. Sadly Dick is no longer with us.

Cooke Street School

Those early school days seemed to be all about activities, milk break, playtime, being read to, dinner break, playtime and then having a sleep in the afternoon. Small fold out canvas camp-beds arranged in lines in the classroom. There were little pink fluffy blankets like sleeping "pockets" with embroidered sheep in the corner. I don't think I ever slept. I just used to lay there getting bored. Watching the motes of dust play in the sunlight through the windows. My mother used to get me to bed so early I don't think I ever had the need for an afternoon nap. Not like now!!

At some point I moved to the older class which wasn’t as much fun. They were doing some serious learning and not just activities. The first day the teacher was showing pictures of objects up on the board and asking firstly what the object was and then what the letter was at the front of the word for that object. One of the first pictures I saw was that of a kite and then I saw all these older kids stretching their arms into the air until one of them was chosen. “K for kite” was the answer. This seems pretty easy thought I. The next picture came up; I shot my hand in the air and was immediately chosen, probably because I was the newcomer to the class. “ K  for kite” I said. I have no idea what the picture was of but I gathered pretty quickly that this was not the answer. The outburst of laughter I received was embarrassing but rewarding since I was now recognized by all the class as a numpty with courage. The pictures continued and I gradually got the drift of what was going on so sat eagerly awaiting the kite to show its face again. The teacher sensed this and the last picture she showed was the kite. She turned straight to me with a raised eyebrow and said “Michael?”. “K for kite Miss,” said I. I received my second round of laughter and applause of the morning. It must have been traumatic to remember this scene all these years later.

Part way through that second class we moved to Scawthorpe. However I had to continue attending Cooke Street until I could be enrolled at Castle Hills Infants School on Jossey Lane. The daily two way trek between Scawthorpe and Bentley was a stressful activity from what I can recall. More often than not, one of my Aunties, Ennis Kerry, used to walk over the hill from Bentley and take me to Cooke Street then either she or another relative would collect me later in the day.

Castle Hills School

A quite terrifying aspect of the journey over Jossey Hill was when one of the farmers from the bottom of Jossey Lane was herding his cows over the hill either to or from their grazing fields in Castle Hills. We had to scrabble over the fence and take refuge in the nettles. At the age of 4 a herd of cattle snuffling and snorting down the hill toward you was the stuff of nightmares. I still have a strong aversion to cattle and them to me. I now live in Norfolk and go fishing regularly on the broads. I have often had to turn down some excellent fishing due to their being cattle in the field. Much to the amusement of my friends.

A high spot though was if a train was coming through as we were crossing the hill. If one of the signals was up we would wait to give a wave to the driver and were occasionally thrilled when he blew his whistle in response. These were the old steam trains which, although not very efficient, were wonderful to behold as they pounded along the lines with steam and sparks everywhere. In the early 90's I was taking the same journey over the hill with my youngest son, Julian, who was then about 3 years old. One of the modern, diesel high speed trains was heading toward Doncaster at full-tilt, a white-shirted driver, complete with shades, in control. I perched my lad on the bridge and we waved at the driver. You got it, we got a lovely daaa-dah in acknowledgement. Simple pleasures.

National Health Orange Juice

I can remember that one of my treats in the cottage was a glass of orange juice. The juice came from the chemists or Doctor’s as part of the program to ensure kids got the vitamins they needed in their early days. I have no idea whether or not it was real sugar in this juice or if my Mother was not mixing it correctly but it was lovely. It came in a thin, rectangular bottle, and was as sweet as nectar.

Orange Juice and Cod Liver Oil

In my late 30’s, whilst working in Saudi Arabia, I lived in shared accommodation with a group of other expatriates. One of my friends and I used to pool our food and take it in turns to do shopping and cooking. One day he came back with some obscure orange squash with Arabic written all over it. Having poured himself a glass, he took a sip and his eyes lit up. He said “What does that taste like to you”? After one sip, my eyes also lit up and I said National Health orange juice, early 50’s. For a brief moment in time we were connoisseurs of fine orange juice in the desert lands. I have never come across a drink similar since. If anyone knows of a source, you will bring energy to my ailing taste buds.

__________

Mike Hoyland 2014


For part two go to Bentley and Arksey as an Outsider - Part Two.



Edited by Alison Vainlo 2014, updated 2020.