YOUR memories of Cottingham

These are all your yesterdays.

Here, former Cottingham people remember a village very different to the modern, bustling centre of today.

Join Yorkshire Pride in a trip down Cottingham's Memory Lane...

I was born at Rydale Villa (now the Natwest Bank) next to the Weslyan Chapel in Hallgate in 1918 and lived there until I married in 1950

In my day shops were privately owned which gave the true village feeling where everybody knew everybody else (and their business!)

I remember the Hatfields, Leaks (the butchers), Miss Grantham with her shoe shop next door, mr and Mrs Hutton who sold us swets, the Misses Fairbanks next to Thompsons at King Stret corner

There was "Crutchey" Scott who repaired our shoes, and John Boynton the gas fitter who was also captain of the fire service. Maisie Wright was a chemist who wore a woolly cap in the shop and was a stalwart of the church Sunday school. And the Akam family - Mr Akan and his son George used to light and put out the gas lamps. Mr Akan Senior - I have seen him nip off puppy dogs' tails and put them in his pocket.

The milk deliveries were made by the Misses House, Annie and Laura and John Cockerell in his horse and trap. Mr Coupland, who had a wooden leg, ably managed to balance his milk container on one side of his bicycle and place his leg on the other.

Miss Rollett was my Brown Owl and Miss Brimlowe my Guide captain. our Guide night was on Friday, so too was the church choir practice.

One of my friends was Freda Fulford whose mother kept the King Billy - we played and travelled to the Boulevard School together. I remember the "cart girls" who came daily from Epworth by horse and wagon. They had the privilege of leaving the class five minutes earlier than the rest of us.

I also remember the friendly rivalry between the market gardeners of Dunswell Road, most of whom attended the Primitive Chapel.

And how many still remember the Blue Ribands Dance Band, all lovely village boys who gave so much pleasure to the community (two gave their lives for their country also). - Elsie Murlin Harrison, (nee Pye), West Sussex.

*Pictured above is Snuff Mill off Newgate. Snuff was made on the premises in the late 18th Century.

I have many happy memories of Cottingham having lived there from being two until I was 15, leaving to live in Hull during the war years.

Initially my family lived in a flat over the then Co-operative shop in Hallgate (my father bneing the manager). The shop was directly opposite the Methodist Church.

I remember a small shop where Jacksons supermarket now stands beloning, I believe to a Miss Fairbanks where, when one opened the door, a bell fastened to the back of the door heralded your arrival.

There was a small sweet shop a few doors away from the school where I used to buy toffees at five for a halfpenny - 10 for a penny, luxury indeed!

I attended the schoolmin Hallgate until I was 14 walking there down a pathway from Northgate between fields beloning to a market gardener and coming out at the side of the school.

A Miss Brimelow was the headmistress of the “big girls.”

Iremember the Brownies on a Monday night at the old King Street Rooms at the corner of Finkle Street - Miss Rollitt was Brown Owl - my mother taking me to the buttercup fields down a lane off Northgate (now housing), fishing for tiddlers newts and frogspawn in the old drain land on Dunswell Road, the lamplighter riding his bicycle with his long pole over his shoulder and walking with my family to Kenilworth Avenue to catch a tram at the terminus to go to Hull. - Mrs Mary Bleasby (nee Bell)

Written by The Editor - 16/03/2001 14:14:27

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