I was born in 1945 in Mytholmroyd and moved to 18 Lower Mill Bank Road in 1946. Me mum was a housewife and dad worked in cattle haulage. Me dad was one of eight children. I had a sister born 1950 and brother in 1954. Our family moved to Sowerby in 1960 when I was fifteen, and when me uncle died in 1984 we moved to Upper Deer Play where I’ve lived ever since.
Our cottage on Lower Mill Bank Road had mullion windows and was a small space. Me mum tried to make the kitchen bigger by creating a recess for a wash machine and cooker, so she started tunnelling under the road. Unfortunately, the road foundations gave way and had to be reinforced, but her recess is still there. Like most of the cottages on our row, there was a back door from the bedrooms onto Mill Bank Road. None of the cottages had inside bathrooms, so everybody used the dry closets. There were four back-to-back on the field side of Lower Mill Bank Road, now used as rubbish stores. They were home for lots of spiders.
I went to Mill Bank School and me teacher was Miss Womersley. Joseph Armitage was Head Teacher. There were three classrooms with combined classes in each.
In 1928 pylons were installed from Deer Play across the Ryburn valley to Norland. This was the longest span in England. Every year men would come and paint the pylons and I would climb after them. I got a massive wheel and pully ropes and had plans to erect an aerial runway across the valley. In 2013 an engineer came to dismantle the pylons. He told me if I had come within two foot of the load bearing line I would have been fried. There were 33,000 volts going through at the time.
I was impressed with the pylons and when I left school I applied to be a linesman. However, I didn’t have enough GCSEs. The company said they would hold a job for me while I went to the Technical College to top up me qualifications. However, while I was at College I read about Dempsters in Elland (at the bottom of Ainsley’s) and applied for a job with them. This was a great success and I only had four jobs in me working life. Me main job was maintenance of gasometers, oil storage tanks and conveyances for the coal mining industry. I loved working at Dempsters and willingly worked many overtime hours. All me colleagues had engineering backgrounds. There was plenty of work to be had in the 1960s. The jobs were mainly in engineering, building and textiles and all of them physically active; a big difference to most of today’s jobs which are sedentary.
The Co-op had money to buy up farms and properties but had little farming experience. They owned Kebroyd Hall and Delf Field Farm and appointed me grandad as farm manager, to live at the Hall along with me auntie Winnie. The Hall had a library and a dance hall. Without consultation, the Co-op sent me grandad four hundred sheep which was inappropriate because the land was not fenced in, and all the sheep strayed. Grandad also fell out with the Co-op again over lighting in the barn. They installed gas lighting which could have been explosive and made life really difficult for him.
Me grandad became ill in 1923 but he refused to go to hospital. Had he gone it might have saved his life. Me grandma was left with eight children. Uncle John who was 14 and still at Triangle School, and the rest of the family, had to take over the farm. Grandma’s father, who lived near Carlisle, would come down to check up on things every two weeks. He eventually bought the farm in 1926.
There was just one telephone box in Mill Bank. Brookside Cottage, now Damside House, had one but there were very few other private phones. The people at Damside also had one of the first cars in the village.
Me and two others used to deliver the Halifax Courier newspaper for Triangle Post Office. Ken Haigh would do Cottonstones and Robert Miles and I did Oak Hill and Mill Bank. Between us we delivered 128 papers every Friday night.
There was a blacksmith across the road at Saughterhouse Farm where there were 2-3 cottages. The blacksmith operated from the end barn where he shoed the farmer’s horses. He was a character and would let us boys muck about in the forge and give us little bits of twisted iron to play with.
Mr Noble (nicknamed Donkey) converted a glider (without the wings) as a hen house, in a field opposite the church at Cottonstones. He had been in the Army and the rumour was he had been a paratrooper. Donkey was in his forties then and I was about ten years old. Geoffrey Noble, his son, was very fit and used to do Cossack dancingTraditional Eastern European folk dance featuring energetic kicks, squats, and acrobatic movements, often performed by Cossacks with Jack and Christine Alderson on Sunday afternoons at the chapel.
I played with Terry Reid who lived on Lower Mill Bank Road in one of the cottages that was demolished. Terry would have me and me friends jumping off the fifteen-foot wall, pretending to be paratroopers. It was dangerous. We had cuts and bruises every night but fortunately no serious injuries. It was a miracle that we never broke our ankles.
Bobby Whiteley lived at Ivy Houses and taught at the Sunday School. He would welcome us boys into the Sunday School to play in the evenings. Andrew Whiteley also lived at Ivy Houses and Mrs Halstead recalled the pantomimes with enthusiasm. Jack Alderson would also provide a bit of religious teaching and he would open the Sunday School in the evenings for us children. There was no divide between church and chapel and harvest festivals were enjoyed by all.