Mum's Memories

Whilst researching our family history I came across some sheets to hand out to family members so that they could recall events that had happened in their lives. These sheets have various titles such as "schooldays", "recreation" and "earning a living". Each one of these has prompts at the top of the page to help trigger memories. These are my mother's memories of her life in the old Meadows. The memories are not in any particular chronological order and are reproduced here as they were written.

"I was born at 12 Midland Terrace, Midland Cresent, The Meadows, Nottingham in 1938. It was a rented house with two bedrooms, one kitchen come living room with the sink and cooker in the corner under the window. A table and four chairs, dad's big wooden arm chair and a pegged rug on the hearth with an open fire.

The front room or parlour had a leather three piece suite, a tall table in the window with an aspidistra on it. The stairs were just inside the back door. There were two bedrooms. The front bedroom had a double bed, (mum and dad's ) a wardrobe and dressing table. The back bedroom just had two beds, a double ( mine and Joan's ) and a single bed ( Alan's ) and a wardrobe.

The house was situated in a terrace with six houses on each side and a yard in the middle which the front rooms faced on to. The backs of the houses had a private fenced off yard each with a toilet ( flush ) and a coal house adjoining the house. We had a shed in the yard which housed all sorts of junk and the rabbit called "frisky", which I remember escaping one night when we had a storm and the shed was blown down in the wind.

The war started while we lived in this house and my dad was in the Auxiliary Fire Service. He was away most of the time working in Ramsgate, Margate and Deal in Kent. We were not very well off and mam used to take in mending. She used to take up ladders in ladies stockings with a hook with a wooden handle, very fine work it was and she charged sixpence a ladder.

We had a slot meter to pay for gas and electric which took the old pennies. When the gas man came to empty the meter mam would get a rebate and we knew we would have a treat. One day when the gas man came mam was standing on the chair crying. "What's a matter me duck?" He said. Mam said. "I've got a mouse. "Well they've got to live somewhere!" He said, and left.

We didn't have a bathroom, a television or a fridge, as I said the toilet was outside, bare brick covered in cobwebs and spiders. The bath was a big tin one and Friday night was bath night in front of a big coal fire on the hearth. We didn't have a washer. Washing was done on Monday in a copper built in to the corner of the kitchen. It had a brick built surround and was heated with coal which was pushed in a hole underneath.

Mum aged about 2	Mum aged about 7

During the war, when the sirens went, we used to go to the shelters which were on an expanse of wasteland facing the back of our house and siding on to the gun factory (ROF) and going on to the River Trent at the back. The Germans bombed the canteen at the gun factory and a pub called the Cremorne, which had a fairground in it's back yard. Some of the owners of the fair (The Proctors) died in the air raid and they found one body up in a tree. They also found buckets of money (takings from the fair) charred black.

They lit beacons all down the River Trent as decoy fires to try and divert the planes away from the gun factory and the power station which was next to Clifton Colliery. Some good targets in that area if they had ever managed to hit them.

The main railway line also ran behind the gun factory. When I was small up until I was about fifteen I used to watch the tanks rumbling down Kings Meadow Road, sometimes three or four a day. The houses would shake and the windows would rattle.

My mam (Dolly Brown) was a cleaner at the ROF, my sister Joan worked in the offices and later my son, Karl, made firing pins for the guns. He worked there from leaving school until it closed down when he was twenty nine.

During the war I remember going to the shelters with mam, Alan, Joan and most of the neighbours from the terrace. There was Jack Perks, who was a coal man, his wife Bet and their children John and Margaret. The Shuttleworths, Charlie and Ena. Charlie was a baker. Mrs Briggs, an old lady who looked after us in the mornings and saw us off to school while mam went off early morning cleaning at the ROF. My aunt Mary and uncle Tom (my mam's brother) also came with us with their son Tommy and his wife Joyce.

In one daytime air raid we were running to the shelter and mam said "Look at the poor sparrows flying round like mad, they don't know what's going off." But they weren't sparrows, they were shells being fired by the German planes. I remember when we got to the shelters  we all sat in rows on dirty benches and we had to whisper. Why, I do not know. We were in brick shelters with reinforced concrete tops, I don't think the Germans in planes could hear us talking. We were all glad to hear the all clear and go back to our own beds.

A family who lived in a house on Rutland Road, next to the ROF moved because they thought it was dangerous and moved to a house on Ryeland Cresent which was bombed a few days later. The mother, father and two daughters all died.

One night before the sirens went the grown ups decided it might be safer away from the area, so we all walked about a mile across the fields and ended up in a field at the side of the Trent, (right next to the power station) I think safer. We stayed there all night. Another time we went to Nottingham Castle and sheltered in the caves under the rock where a Welsh family sang all night. When my dad found out where we'd been he played hell. He said if a bomb had fell on the castle they never would have found us because it was all sandstone.

I can't remember how old I was, it must have been when I was about five, I had yellow jaundice and was quite poorly, I was off school for ages. Another time I had canker. That was horrible, I had big blisters all over my tongue and couldn't eat. I had my tongue painted with gentian violet, (an old remedy) my mouth was dyed purple for weeks but it worked.

Another time I remember playing on some swings and being kicked on the head. I was taken home and  my mum fetched a man from up the road. He must have known something about first aid. You didn't have the doctor because you had to pay. I remember the doctor coming once and my mum paid him two shillings and sixpence, 2/6 in old money which was a lot of money at the time. It was the equivelent of twelve and a half pence in new money.

Mum and her cousin, Christine Hill, on holiday at Cleethorpes in 1946/47	Same holiday, from left to right. Joan Corthorn, Joseph Corthorn, Flo' Hill, Barbara Corthorn, Christine Hill and Dolly Corthorn

It must have been near the end of the war my dad came back to Nottingham and was stationed at a big house on Queen's Drive where we used to take his dinner in a big basin every day. One day I fell down the front steps and cut my chin. A man came out and gave me a fireman's lift. (He carried me under his arm like a parcel.) H took me inside and bathed my chin and sent me home with a big pad on it.

We moved to 53 Midland Cresent around Summer 1945 because I can remember being invited to a street party in Newcastle Road, which was directly opposite our house. I didn't enjoy it very much because I didn't know anyone. We moved because the old house was too small and mam didn't think Alan, who was about thirteen, should be sharing with two girls, especially after Joan said she had seen something that looked like a teapot spout. We moved very quickly after that!

i can't remember how old i was but i can remember alan taking me to the swamps down the meadows at the back of the powerstation collecting coots eggs and taking them home for my mum to cook. another time i remember is when he used to take me looking for worms at night on the field at the back of the tips, it was pitch dark , but he wanted the worms for fishing, he used to push me over the fence with a torch and wait for me to come  backand put the worms in a tin.

I remember when i was little and lived at Midland Terrace our yard finished at some railings and beyond the railings there was a drop of about 3 ft . We used to play at shop using the wall as a counter. My Mum used to empty her tea pot down the drop on to the rubble. One day we werent,t down there but a little white haired girl called Barbara Dempster was playing on her own , and guess what she got the content of the tea pot all over her head . My mum had to take her home and apologise to her mum.

When i was about 11 years old I left Bosworth Road School and went to Trent Bridge  and made a lot of new friends, I still keep in touch with two of them. Pat Corden [who now lives in the USA and Barbara Gladwin who lives in Doncaster. I remember another friend , Maureen Kew who lived on Woolmer Rd . I once went with her on the train to Sleaford to see her uncle i think , bearing in mind we were only 11years old . my mother didnt know where we were going, she just let me go . as it happened we got back safely but you couldnt do that nowadays. I also remember when i was about 10 going down to the River Trent to play ,in the summer holidays with wellies on and oops i fell in , not far just got the bottom of my coat wet and my legs .When i got home my dad was chopping wood in the back yard , mum was hanging washing out, there was no oh im glad you are ok she did no more than take my wellies off emptied the water out and hit me with them. we didnt go down the Trent again that summer.

More memories to come!!