Memories from Gleadless

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Louise Treloar of the ‘Action Desk — Sheffield’ Team on behalf of Mrs S Hastwell and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was born in 1939 in Frechville, and moved to Gleadless when I was a year old. There were four of us, and my mum used to make lovely Yorkshire puddings, and rice puddings. We had 2 uncles in the army, and one who was a bus conductor, Uncle Jack. My father worked in Orgreave Pit, and he’d had an accident in 1934. He was in hospital for 2 years, and he had a scar from his chin to his leg. When he came out, he had an operation on his side, and he couldn’t join the forces.

Our grandma lived down the garden from us. The war didn’t affect us much — we had some fun! My sister and I sat near the door, and joked about, “Ooo, we might get killed.” When they were bombing, our family and some friends came round, and we made cups of coffee for them all. We closed all the curtains, and stayed up til 4am.

Mum and Dad went out once, and my older sister babysat for us. We hid in a cupboard to try to scare her. When she couldn’t find us, she went to get our neighbour, Mrs Beatty. She thought that there was a ghost upstairs, but it was only my brother and me!

Pr-BR

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