Mary Marolle, daughter of Robert Calvert was passing through the village in 1838 when the coach she was travelling in went out of control and overturned; in the accident she sustained serious injuries. Her injuries were so severe that she died after lingering for several days, aged 25. She was on route to meet her husband in Leicester; this sad story is depicted on her headstone in Saint Peters Church yard which is situated near the main entrance. The photo below is of her headstone.

 

 

Mary Marolle's headstone

The stone tells the tragic story of her death, click the image to enlarge

 

 

Sarah Hutton (part 2)

Story told by a neigbour

If you had not met Sarah before you might have taken her the wrong way, she didn't beat about the bush and said things as they were. I suppose  loosing six of her nine children must have taken its toll on her, but she did'nt complain and got on with life. Her neigbours liked and respected her for doing so, my gran used to go up to the paper shop and post office for Sarah always getting herself 20 woodbines for going.  My mam used to wallpaper for Sarah, and when asked if she liked it Sarah would say "im non bothered, you could have put newspaper up for me" thats how she was. She made my brother believe that dandilion and burdock was made out of real dandilions.

Sarah once broke her arm but she never had it set, she must have gone through some pain with that but she stuck it out. She could not lift that arm afterwards, thats how Sarah survived in life.

 

 

By her Grandson Kenneth Smith

Sarah Hutton was born in the year 1891 in the village of Banby on the Marsh East Yorkshire, now called Humberside. When Sarah first moved to Ferry lane we are not sure, but she moved in a hurry to get away from her parents .Sarah married a little late in life about the age of 27 or 28 to a Robert Hutton, he was  lot older than her. Sarah’s parents did not approve of her marring Robert and threatened to disown her if she did, age was the problem but marry him she did and moved to Ferry Lane, which year that was I do not know. Sarah had nine children, unfortunately only three survived my Mother who was Alice, May and George. Sarah had a hard life in more ways than one, Robert her husband worked on the railway for a number of years but he was not in very good health. Sarah had to nurse him and look after him for a very long time as well as looking after the children. There was no NHS in those days but she did get a little help from the parish I remember her saying. Sarah’s family was well known in Kirkfield Place , which was a close knit community made up of mostly of miners and their family’s all sharing the same type of hard lives, but happy ones. My Grandma was a very proud lady, I remember on one occasion my sister Betty and I thought we would help her by hanging out her washing on the line which ran across the yard while she was out. When Sarah returned she took all the washing down and re hung it, I asked her why and she said it was not hung out properly, saying what will the neighbour’s think? Sarah never had much in life, but what she had she shared and nothing ever seemed to get her down. If it had not been for her giving us food when we came home from school and at weekends making stew, which she would add a few vegetables to in the week I would not be here to write this today. I have very fond memories of a kind and remarkable lady, my Grandma Sarah. She sadly passed away at the age of 83.

 

 

I went down Lime Pit Lane today, with the intention of taking some photos, i thought i saw a couple walking with a ferret on a lead. On closer inspection i realised that it was in fact a meercat. Named Bronson the meercat was bought from a pet shop by the couples son, Bronson does not mind the cold English weather, but does like to stand in the sun at any given chance to get a warm. Thank you to the couple for being obliging and allowing me to get a photo.

 

Bronson the Meercat

Photo taken in nature reserve car park

 

  

 

 

By Brian Robinson

When we were kids in the late 1940s or early 1950s we often left the safety of our home area at Lane End and wandered down the Nagger Lines to the old toll bridge. We would stop at what we called the Water Works near the ferry to play in the woods and overgrown area where there were some areas of stagnant water with steep brick slopes at the side. This would be regarded as highly dangerous now but we thought nothing of it and played there for hours. One of the features there was a plant which smelt and tasted strongly of aniseed. (No doubt someone will now tell me it was poisonous!)

If we continued down to the river we were always cautious of the residents (Mr. and Mrs. Warrinder) who lived in the old stone cottage (the old pub?) on the river bank on the left side of the road. If we came too close Mrs. Warrinder would yell and scream at us and we were quite frightened of both of them as they chased us off. Mr. Warrinder had a magnificent white bushy beard. We were only kids at the time but a legend had been built up about this couple and we didn't want to dabble in the occult. They were both obviously (to us) very old and capable of anything.

Some years later when I was working on a paper round I delivered to the Warrinders who had moved to an old cottage near the present health centre near the quarry and opposite the Waggon and Horses. They were a lovely couple and every week after she had been baking Mrs. Warrinder saved me a bun as I delivered her paper. Mr. Warrinder didn't have much to say, but he was friendly.

 

 

 

My mam an dad got married in 1957 and there first house was in Kirkfield Place on Ferry Lane, it was a two up an two down terrace house.The toilet was across the yard, and the bath was an old tin bath that you had to fill up in front of the kitchen fire. The only source of running water to the house was to an old pot sink in the kitchen, during the day you would have to use the toilet across the yard and at night you would use a chamber pot. Mam would say if you was a woman you would have to be desperate to use the toilet at night usualy holding on till morning. The men on the other hand used the chamber pot but it was usualy full to the brim by 2am and if it was too cold outside they would open the bedroom window an pee straight into the yard! On one occasion a neighbour said to my mam, did you hear it raining last night kath? bye eck it was peeing it down. Well i suppose she was right about it peeing down but wrong about the rain.

 

 

I supose theres a few people out there thats been through it, your dads getting ready to go out to pub on a Sunday dinner time saying ill see you at half 2 love. And when half 2 comes theres no sign of him, 3 o clock comes around an theres still no sign of him then 4 o clock an so on. Meanwhile your all sat round the table waiting for him watching your dinner go dry then around 5 o clock your dad staggers through the door saying is there any dinner lass im bloody starving. Now think on that your dinners been in the oven for near on 3 hours so its not going to look as good as it did at 2.30, your best bet was to close your eyes and point your fork towards your dinner plate and chew it with a smile on your face just to show that them who had made it that you was enjoying it. Now think on this went on for years and years, until one lady from Ferry Lane got sick of it and one Sunday herself and her kids waited until 2.30 for her husband to return from the club He didn't return so she said to the kids get your dinner i wont be long and she picked up her husbands dinner a knife and fork, and not forgetting the brown sauce she marched up to the end of the Ferry Lane and up to the old Victoria Club at the end of Lime Pit Lane. She went in and put the dinner down in front of her husband saying if you cant make it back for 2.30 i will be fetching your dinner up here! right im off home to get my dinner before it goes cold! She had the club in uproar and her husband never lived it down, the Sunday after her husband was sat at the kitchen table for 2.30 and they all enjoyed dinner together.. He always kept good time after that day he had his dinner in the club...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As told by Colin Parfitt

Back in the 1940s the Lane was a much different place to today. We lived in a old row of houses just after the Bridge opposite Bramleys Field. Our House was number 15. I think there was five houses in the row that backed onto the railway banking. Our neighbours were my grandma Mrs Annie Barber, who was my mums mum, there was Bill Bero and his wife, my cousin Melvyn Butler lived next door. I remember running round to my Granny's house to get sweets, she always had some. She was very old when i was little but i remember she always wore a apron and because of a stroke she had could not move her arm. I went to Lofthouse gate school up to being 11 when it was onto Stanley Secondary Modern. They were good days, better than now, in the summer months all the kids on Baker lane would play cricket in Bramleys Field opposite our house, sometimes even the parents would get involved. My brother Freddy still had a wind up grammar phone which we would take to the 19 acres to sit and listen to with other members of our family. We had a big family in Stanley at the time, i had several cousins and we all would mate around together, old and young.  My Grandad, my dads dad was a welsh man who came to Stanley in the 1880s looking for work, rumour had it he got a woman pregnant in Wales and did a runner. I remember my best friend and playing in the Lane. Not traffic in those days, we would play in the road for hours! Sadly my friend died at the age of five or six, he got ill and i never saw him again. It was common back then kids dying. As i got older my cousin came to live with us after his dad died, that would have been 1955 when i was 13. I shared my bedroom with him which i wasn't happy about. he was a bit older than me and we used to fight all the time, i once hit him in the face and made him cry, at the time i thought it was great. My older brother and his mates would climb up to the top of the old railway bridge and scratch their names into it but i would never dare get up there. My dad was a hard bloke, very strict but well respected by all in the village. He got into many a fight because of his temper. He worked on the Waterways most of his life, before i was born he was the lock keeper at Methley.  My mum was a lot different, small and quiet she would never speak back to him. I remember them falling out, he locked her out of the house in the rain, we dare not open the door to let her in for fear of what he would do. We had a row of  toilets in our yard that were for the whole row, bath time was normally Sunday night and it was in the tin bath in front of the fire in the kitchen, i was always last in being the youngest. My mum and dad would go down to the Ship Inn on Ferry Lane Sunday nights leaving my older brother Freddy in charge of me and my sister. Most of the houses that stood at the bottom of Baker Lane were demolished in the early 50s as were a few rows of terrace houses that stood opposite Armitages Row near the top of the hill. One Christmas just before we moved i remember my dad winning some money, that was the best Christmas we ever had, we all got good presents that year. I got a red pedal car, my pride and joy for years it was, my sister got a shiny new doll and pram. We moved from Baker lane in about 1955 when our houses were condemned, a lot of houses in the village were knocked down around that time and were replaced by the big council estates that are still there today.

 

 

Dummy Moore 

Mr Moore or as he was known in the village Dummy Moore, he got the nickname because he was actually deaf. A lot of the land he farmed was behind the Travellers pub, streaching as far as Lime Pit Lane.  My dad told me stories of how they would ride on the back of his cart, and of other times when he would chase them off his land. One of the boys who was my dads age (born in 1930) once upset Mr Moore by making fun of him. The next time the lad bumped into Mr Moore he was on his own and the story goes that Mr Moore picked the lad up by the throat and gave him a good hiding. He obviousley didnt know his own strength because the lad could hardley breath for a week afterwards!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

George the parrot, hes the one on the right

 

 

 

One bonfire night many years ago, the residents that worked down the pit smuggled some gelignite out and used it on the annual bonfire in penny square. The bonfire stack was huge and putting the gelignite in the fire caused it to explode, blowing every window out in the square and beyond. There is also a story of a man being stabbed in the square, probably around the 1930s. It is said the residents of the square were a rough lot who worked down the pit and got into a lot of fights around the village. Part of the square still stands today on Ferry Lane, albeit a row of three houses. The square was built in the 1870s and is one of the oldest buildings on the Lane today 

 

 

In a cottage on Ferry Lane lived a woman called Martha, she had been blind from birth, the village folk would say that her being blind was through neglect as a baby. She would walk round the village on Saturdays selling tea, her only source of income. She wore a black coat and carried her tea in a black oil cloth bag. The tea was wrapped in five thin layers of lead foil and was called Kola Kandle. When selling her tea she was accompanied by one of the village boys.

 

 

so terrified of electricity, he attached as many old bike tyres as he could find to himself and his flat cart.  When walking around the village he looked like the Michelin man!

 

 

Mrs Holdford lived in the bungalows on Balk Cresent which are still there today, She was well in to her 90's, every day she would walk down to the shop for her 40 Woodbines and 10 or so bottles of stout. When she got to the shop she would just walk to the front of the que no matter how full the shop was, no one dared to speak or dare to tell her off for pushing in. When she had been served and out of ear shot the shop full of customers would start talking about her and how many Woodbines she smoked, and her bottles of stout. People thought she wont last long if she does not cut down. In the end it was not the woodbines and stout that killed her,Old Mrs Holdford got knocked down and killed by a double decker bus.

 

 

As Told By Mary Clements nee Fox

Prior to joining the Royal Navy my brother joined the L.D.V.-Local Defence Volunteers (Look, Duck and Vanish!) - Home Guard, which was formed at the colliery. Consisting of miners, he learned Morse and signalling and consequently he was a signaller in the Royal Navy.

My sister went to work in the pit canteen, which was erected for the wartime years to feed the miners and Bevin boys and also the outcrop workers. My Aunt and Uncle took a young Scottish man (an outcropper) in as a lodger, and a hostel was built for the Bevin boys (still standing today).

In my last year at Infant school (1939/40)we should have gone to the swimming baths but this was cancelled due to lack of transport. We had to practise going in to the air raid shelter, in twos.

I started at Grammar school in the September of 1939. I was there until the end of the war. During that time a lot of teachers were called up and therefore we had a lot of replacements. I guess everyone tried their best! Obviously foreign camps were out of the question, so we had 'harvest' camps. I went to Bromsgrove in Worcestershire, by train, and was given 'raspberry picking'. So we were all doing our bit towards the war effort, agricultural wise, and a great time was had by all.I can only remember going the once, but these camps were all through the war, whether there were different locations I couldn't say. we still had school uniform, supplied at Rawcliffe's Outfitters in Leeds (with clothing coupons in 1951 of course) so clothes were worn to grow into! My Gaberdine raincoat was practically ankle length, and it lasted all my school years. I wasn't the only one; there wouldn't be the coupons to keep buying clothes that just fitted.

You had to carry your gas mask at all times, plenty of air raid shelter practice, lots of make do and mend (most of my clothes were remade from my mothers), we walked to school and back on most days (2 miles each way). There was a school special bus, but that was a mile walk. My brother and sister had a bike, but I never did, probably due to the war.

Another Aunt and Uncle of mine took in a boy evacuee, along with lots of other families in Stanley. Unfortunately I do not know any more details.

Home Life: naturally we missed by brother. He was only 17 1/2 /18 years years old when he went into the Royal Navy. His ship was sunk whilst on the Russian convoys, he survived and came home on survivors leave, but we didn't know anything about it until after the war. I wrote to him as often as a schoolgirl would, and had a couple of salor penpals from one of his ships when I was in my teens.

Leaflets were distributed about aircraft silhouettes for recognition, enemy as well as allies. These were stuck on the wall in the garage were we could see them at all times. I knew them all, every night we used to turn the light off and stand in the doorway and watch the hundreds of bombers going on their raids and recognise them. My cousin's husband was one of the bomber pilots, the sight and sound was awesome. On the kitchen wall we had a very large map of the world and every night we would all sit around the table in silence and listen to the none o'clock news ( after Big Ben had struck nine) and follow the action on the map. We knew every capitol of every country and also their national anthem.

Every Saturday morning a friend and I used to go to town for our mother with ration books and queue. Maybe we would get an egg, then on to another shop and queue again, maybe a link of sausage, and then another shop and queue for maybe a cake (as dry as old sticks), maybe nothing. We were told which shops to go to, it took all morning but we didn't mind, I guess we felt grown up, and better still, away from mother's eagle eye! Another friend of mine, her mother was a nurse at Pinderfields Hospital situated between my home and Wakefield (renowned for its burns unit), we both used to spend our weekends with her on the ward she was designated to, the leg ward. Prefabricated huts were erected at the rear of the hospital for the influx of wounded service personnel (still in use)It became an Emergency Hospital, plenty of men in royal blue jackets ad trousers, white shirts and red ties (uniform of the wounded). We did lots of jobs to help out the nurses, like making tea, going around with the tea trolley, rolling bandages, talking to the men and reading to them, writing their letters, chatting etc. They were like our big brother;they certainly treated us like their kid sisters! Do this, get me that etc. and we would jump. Loving every minute, bearing in mind, these men came from all over, some were allies, not many could have family visits as they were too far away. Transport wasn't all that frequent, at the end of one of the visits, one of the wives came to me and thanked me for being there, she said it helped both her and her husband to know that there was someone like my friend and I around, obviously as a girl I wouldn't understand fully until I was a lot older the heartache on both sides. Sadly she died not long after, when I think about it they wouldn't be very old. Maybe twenty plus! Some were very ill and some, brandishing their crutches as they tried to speed up and down the ward, going to the local pub, returning back to the ward late, over the limit, in the dark bumping into the table in the middle of the ward, not quietly vocally or physically! We would hear about it the next day. As life is, it could be sad, also very amusing.

It was certainly an era of children should be seen and not heard, speak when you are spoken to, and not until, not told anything and one daren't question. Very hard for the youth of today to understand.

School leaving age was fourteen, and to work, so that enabled you to go out. Being grammar school, leaving age was sixteen, so at the latter end I was able to go to dances (we learnt ballroom and old time at school). Walking home took one hour, in the black out, the door would be unlocked but everyone in bed.

Sweets were on ration, and each month my mother would ask me if I preferred the money so as to let my dad have my ration. I took the cash; naturally I would be offered a sweet now and again.

Our milkman had a small dairy farm about five minutes away from my home; he had a land girl and a young German POW. I often went after school, I learnt to milk a cow, and stayed for tea, as the farmers wife was a gentle lady and said the land girl and the prisoner of war needed some young company. They delivered the milk in churns with a pony and trap and they ladled the milk into our enamel white jugs, edged with blue.

I lived in a large house, being the manager's house, practically in the pit yard so my dad and sister didn't have far to work. It was detached and surrounded by rhubarb fields and sheds (our area was known as the rhubarb triangle) I often went and drove the tractor with the farmer sitting with me until he could trust me on my own, I would be about fourteen then.

Decoration in the interior of the house was all painted, no wallpaper, easy to wipe clean. For a change we used to get a colour wash (distemper), dip a sponge into it, squuze it, then dapple and stipple all over the walls, making quite an effective pattern. Mother used to make clipping rugs out of old materials. She was very good at feeding us all, a very good manager, it must have been difficult. I used to love grated carrot sandwiches for my tea, very moist. She certainly made sure that my dad didn't go without;as his working days were very long, going underground to check on the men at work, then back in the evening for paperwork in his office. He was a very fair man, his first concern was his working men and then that the coal output was as it should be. We always had a coal fire and cooked by coal oven, toasted bread at the end of a toasting fork in front of the fire, best toast ever! Blackout must have been a headache, as we had a lot of windows, the one on the stairs was huge.I guess it would be a joiner from the pit who made the framework and stuck on the blackout material making a shutter, which we could put up at night, and take down next morning. We used our cellar as the shelter, so when the siren went, that's were we would go, the window was shielded outside with a lot of sandbags. There was a searchlight unit based on Hungate Lane, Scholey Hill, Methley, a mile down the road, and when that was switched on it was better than any moonlight. It was situated near a place called Methley, and the villagers affectionately called it 'Methley Moon'.

We didn't have any iron railings or pans to offer for salvage for the war effort, and our windows never had sticky brown strips to stop them for shattering.

My brother met and married a Belfast girl who was in the WRNS. None of could travel to Belfast for the wedding owing to the war, it must have been heartbreaking for my parents and he would be without any member of his family.

By Wakefield Libraries & Information Services

 

 

My Grandmother Rhoda Parkin had a budgie called Peter,over the years Peter picked up quite a lot of words from Rhoda some of them we can not repeat,Rhoda would say whats your name and Peter would say Peter Parkin 80 Ferry Lane Stanley.And when my Grandad walked in Peter would shout 'get down cellar ya bald headed old bugger' chirp chirp 'an get some coal in'.

Peter Parkin died on the 22nd March 1958 which was the day Rhoda an Ernests Grand child was born..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Locomotive  passing Park Hill Pit