Memories are made of this

Coronation Celebrations 6th June 1953 Kenmuir Rd,Ewenfield Rd top right King George coronation bridge from Warners shop to the opposite side of High Street June 1911,Finedon Hall,Finedon Hall, Parade of the tin soldiers , Land Army rationing
Mr Warner

I met my wife in Market Street at the top of Midland Road and she was fourteen and a half at the time. We married in 1940 at St Barnabas Church in Wellingborough. Allen was born in 1946 and Brian in 1950.

Dad and Mr Frisby and Jack Mason started up a fundraising group for the blind here. He was an active man and also a treasurer of the carnival also chairman of the Gladstone. We, as a family, also had about 65 pole of garden allotment.
Dad worked the Ironstone Pit down Sidegate Lane which is where the Wellingborough tip is now. He finished his working life at the white hut, which was just before you got to the waterworks.

He used to use a red flag to stop the traffic when a train came and he used to work from 6am until 3pm. The train carried the Iron to the furnaces on Rixon Road, which was just at the top of Nest Lane.

Mum used to do the cleaning for Mrs Shelton the butchers wife and then washing for Issitt’s the fish and chip shop, which is where Swans old shop used to be, and she also looked after us and enjoyed knitting .As a family we all belonged to the Free Gardeners and paid so much a month, which cleared us with the doctors. This society used to provide the buses, which would take us down to Finedon Railway Station where we would go to places like Mablethorpe, Skegness and Southend for the day.

I used to play half back for Finedon Wesleyan and also played in the second team for the Dolbens.

Some of the streets and yards I remembered included
Bird Cage Row. The Loves, Peggy Allen, the Chimes all lived there and it was a lovely little row of houses. The Stanley’s, Soames, Pothecarys, Langley’s, Cholertons also Lucy and George Smith, (their dad was the chimney sweep) Edie, Letty, the York’s brothers and Hazeldines lived in Albion Yard.

You could go from Regent Street and come out in Ivy Lane. Mary Ann Warner, my grandmother also lived there and she had eight children. Francis Warner also lived there. I think that there were about ten houses there at the time and they were at the back of the Old Post Office. Wilson’s, Mr and Mrs Addis and family, Barnaby’s, Tom and Maria Marlow, Harry Newton, The Williams Family, Jack Bruce, Osborne’s and Mr Wyman.
Widows Row Was down from Church Street. I remember that there was a little alleyway. It used to be my job to take meat up there every Christmas. Johnny Hawthorne gave a bullock to Teddy Shelton the butcher who would then give it to all the widows here. Bernard Foster also took meat around. The animals were kept down the grove he had three fields and he kept sheep, cattle and pigs as well as hens and ducks and my father would go and feed them before going to work.

Bobbies Entry The entry would run from Wellingborough Road to Well Street. Underwood’s, Cockney Bill Haines and the Keaches lived there.

Blissetts Yard The back of Pearson’s Factory and it would back onto Wellingborough Road very near to where Rose Hill is.

Shitten Alley Wink Sharman lived there also Dink Wesley’s mother. Annie, Albert, Maud and then Shitten alley There was a brook there and the sewerage pipes ran down to Harrowden Lane; there was a farm on one side and a sewerage farm on the other.

Old Characters I remember a chap, who every Christmas, used to drink twelve pints of beer whilst the clock was striking twelve. This man used to live in the row of houses near to the Prince I think.
I left school at fourteen and went to work at Nutt’s Shoe Factory.