by Peter Hewis, former Minister of Hinckley’s Unitarian Church
and ex-Hinckley Councillor Previously printed in MAXIMA Summer 1996

Hinckley’s little gem’, that’s how someone described the Great Meeting Unitarian Chapel. The Chapel looks like a large old house and is tucked away between Druid Street and Baines Lane.

Over the years the factory of Atkins has been built around the Chapel on two sides. From Druid Street you see an avenue of lime trees leading through the burial ground and then a red brick building. On Baines Lane you use a Right of Way bought by the Chapel for five shillings in 1720!

Inside you find the warm atmosphere of Eng1ish and Austrian Oak panelling and pews, you see huge apple tree embroideries based on a William Morris design and created by the ladies of the Atkins family in 1902. On the gallery pews you see holes where candles were used to light the building, there are ancient boards bearing the Ten Commandments and large corner pews made for the Chapel Band before the days of an organ. No wonder the Chapel is a listed Grade II* building. Several memorials use quotations from George Eliot who had a close connection with Unitarians and who was taught music by Elliot McEwan of the chapel.

The beliefs are unique too for Unitarians regard Jesus as a man, a great and noble human being. They were the first denomination to welcome women as Ministers a hundred years ago and in 1906 an Indian Hindu and a Japanese Buddhist preached in the Chapel. In recent times many from Hungary and Romania have preached in the Chapel and a few years ago the Japanese Tea Ceremony was performed in the building. When divorced people wanted to marry again the Chapel was the first to let them make a new start and when other churches would not bury suicide cases the Unitarians showed compassion.

Town life has also benefited. The hospital, library, Co-operative Society and at least one building society owe their foundation to the Chapel and its members. For more than forty years children have been taught to swim at the Chapel’s swimming club held every Monday evening in the old baths and now in the Leisure Centre. In the early eighteen hundreds a Sunday School started so that poor children could learn to read and write. In recent years the Chapel has provided the town and County with many councillors from each of the main political persuasions.

Hinckley’s little gem has certainly made its mark over the years.

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LINKS
Visit David Woods Oral History site:

“Oral history is not just about Kings and Queens and what happened in 1066. Oral history is local history of local people like you and me. How they lived, worked and spent their money”

www.oralhistory.co.uk

We would like to thank David Potter, when he was Editor of the Hinckley Times, for allowing access to many of these photos 

Alf Biggs (b.1923)

The only thing was, that even now I find the locals (Hinckley) are a bit strange…I don’t know, it’s difficult to explain their attitude, they’ve got a most peculiar attitude. Now I’m what you might call a light hearted person and I can see the funny side of anything…I’ll just give you a typical example. I was walking round in Gateway a couple of months ago, and an announcement came over the tannoy…and it struck me as being funny right from the start. ‘Will Mr. Baker the butcher please go to the side entrance there’s just been a delivery of meat,’ and I said, ‘Oh, he’s going to get the chop,’ and they looked at me and I thought, ‘All right, perhaps I may have a peculiar sense of humour,’ you know, and about ten minutes later a woman came up to me and she said, ‘Hey, I’ve just seen what you meant!’ ‘Oh,’ I thought, ‘oh no.’

A lot depends on who you are and what you are. If you’re the type of person who finds it easy to communicate with other people then you’ll get on anywhere no matter where you are, but if you’re the sort of person that goes with the attitude that you’re better than they are then you won’t get anywhere.

***
Anon

They’re like that the people of Hinckley, they don’t take to outsiders, you’ve got to impress them if you want to become an insider as it were. 

And then they sort of take possession of you, which is fatal. You get one family who wants to take possession of you and nobody else is entitled to have much to do with you. That’s how they are because the reason is, the people of Hinckley are so involved with each other and
they’re all inter-married you’ve got to be dreadfully careful what you say to them because they’ll let you say – this in times gone by – they’ll let you say…they want to know what you’re talking about and then when the conversation is finished they’ll let you into the trick because they’ll say, ‘That’s my brother,’ or ‘That’s my sister that you’ve been talking about.’ They’re so inter-married. It’s like it now.

***
Alf Biggs

In the 33 years that I’ve been up here it’s certainly grown, I mean, there’s all these new houses and that. I thought it was more like what you might call a farming community. At one time of day you used to get two rows of traffic, one up and one down, oh yeah it used to be a heck of a job up Castle Street at one time…I mean it was no wider than a country lane. Recently they were just the old type village shops, you know…in fact I would almost go so far as to say that when I got here it was a hick town – almost! Oh, yes, definitely improved.

1. OUTBREAK OF WAR

Mrs. Payne

We were at home, it was on Sunday wasn’t it? September. We were all at home I know when Mr. Chamberlain said we were at war with Germany. I can hear him saying it, we had one of these old sort of wirelesses that you had to have a battery to, you know, you had to have batteries at the back of it…we all sat around listening.

2. HOUSING AN EVACUEE

Anon

It was the 3 September 1939, I was terrified – the first air raid we had at home – my husband was in the Army and I had this little boy. My cousin was sleeping with me in this cottage and we got up and we’d go blackouts. We were that frightened we daren’t put the electric light on, we got a candle ‘cos the fire had gone out you know, there were no electric heaters in those days. So it were cold. Daren’t fetch the boy out of bed because he had bronchitis if he got cold. We made some tea and I held my gown around the stove – I mean it’s laughable isn’t it – so he couldn’t see up there. I mean it was stupid. And I got that cold that when we got back into bed we couldn’t sleep could we and when we went to work the next day we felt no good. So I said to my cousin, ‘I’ve made up my mind, I’m going to stay in bed. If he bombs us I shall be with the baby, we’ll die together.’ She said, ‘I’m not getting up either.’ Course she didn’t stop long with me she went into munitions, she left me on my own like. My second baby died sudden in my arms with a bad heart. Sent for my husband home form North Africa, he never come, and for weeks he was writing to me as if the baby was still alive and I didn’t hear from him when he was at the front and I thought I’d lost him as well.

I had an evacuee after that. I had a girl for a start, then her mother fetched her back to London to look after her baby sister, then I had the brother. The girl was alright but she

had ticks in her head when I first had her. When I had the lad he came with this rubber sheet, and he must have been seven, and I said, ‘What you got that for?’ He said, ‘To put on the bed…I wet the bed.’ So I took him to the doctor. He said, ‘We’ll soon cure you m’duck, I’ll give you some medicine and you get out of bed when your ‘Auntie’ goes to bed and she’ll get you up in the morning.’ And he didn’t do it no more. He must have been embarrassed about it. That had been neglect somewhere hadn’t it?

***

Margery Milton

Well it were just black, it really was black. You had to get accustomed to the dark before you could really…even out of my own back door, I was going down the entry which I’ve done hundreds of times and I ran at the wall, you just couldn’t see a thing. When I went into munitions up John Street I used to bike to work before eight o’clock in the morning during the blackout. I mean, there wasn’t the traffic about obviously but it was a bit eerie.

***

Margery Dorman (b.1915)

We rented the first house, up Wolvey Road near The Three Pots Hotel but it were a bit remote. You needed transport really but we hadn’t got a car. We used to bike it a lot and use the buses. We were married in ’37 and the war started in ’39 and I was expecting a baby at the time and she was six month old when he went abroad and when he came home she were at school. Dreadful. He wrote regularly, me and his mother used to send parcels. When he went in the army I was on me own and then a Coventry family got bombed out and I took them in and let them use the house – there was a man, a woman and a daughter. I used to take mending, off from the factory, at home. Just got enough rations, you know. Sometimes, we’d got a miner lived next door and they used to get extra rations of meat stuff like that and she used to let me have some of her coupons and he used to get coal, plenty of coal – we were all right in that respect.

3. GIVING BIRTH DURING AN AIR RAID

Mrs. Perigo

I can remember my husband and I were in the bedroom when we heard the drone of the German planes – awful, menacing noise. We both ran to the window, it was a casement window. I remember fiddling with it and pushing it up. We both stuck our heads out – we were waiting for bombs to start raining down on us, you know, and they just went over. I think they were making for Coventry.

People would say if they’re selling so and so at so and so, didn’t matter what you were doing you’d drop it rush off to get in the queue. Food got scarce. I remember queuing up for half a pound of cream biscuits – queued for about nearly an hour. Then at another shop, two bananas and one orange. I only had my eldest daughter then. I remember going home with these bananas and these cream biscuits and saying to my daughter, ‘Look what Mummy’s got for you, aren’t they lovely?’ So I gave her these cream biscuits and she: ‘Pah, pah! Don’t like it Mummy.’ ‘Cos she wasn’t used to it you see, and the banana she looked at like this, she were scared stiff of it, she wondered what it was. I said, ‘Mummy will take the peel off for you and I’ll cut it up and put it on a plate.’ So I gave here a little bit…she said, ‘I don’t like it Mummy.’ I thought, ‘All that queuing!’ Mind you, my husband and I, we ate them after.

I mean you had one egg, two ounces of tea, a quarter of bacon and all things like that, just enough for one week. Sometimes we used to try and save up the milk and put it in a jar, shake it up like that so you could have some cream. It had its funny side, mind, the war, and it had its cruel side, but we muddled through.

We used the bedroom and the living…and they called them a Morrison shelter and they were made of metal and they came in pieces and they were assembled…and it was in the front room on bare boards. When the sirens went – we put all blankets inside you see – and when the sirens went my mother-in-law and my sister-in-law lived next door, they all came into our front room and we all went into the Morrison shelter. Well as I’d got advancing pregnancy I couldn’t crawl in there, you know, so I used to go and sit in the pantry on a stool, ‘cos I couldn’t crawl in there. Oh it was a great ugly thing, some people put them in the garden but my husband says, ‘Well we’ve got an empty room and it’s warmer.’

My daughter was born in the Coventry raid. And I can remember the midwife was there and I’d gone on and on and on, I don’t know where I was, and I can remember them coming in with an old tin bath – remember the old tin baths? My mother-in-law brought it up with her from Wales, she said it’ll do for bathing the dog ‘cos we had a posh bathroom in the new houses. Everybody used to bath in them old tin baths, you know. I remember my husband and my sister-in-law coming in and holding this tin bath over my head while I lay in bed and the shrapnel was coming down on the roof – bang bang bang bang – they were afraid it was going to come through onto me. The ambulance was trying to get to me…the stretcher was outside the gate but the ambulance couldn’t get through for the shrapnel and that. Eventually Carol was born about three days after…three days, three nights. ‘Oh dear,’ I said, ‘I don’t want any more.’ But I did eventually…I had to go through the same again, my husband said, ‘That’s it, no more.’

***

Margery Milton

We’d all been issued gas masks. I know we were issued them at the GFS on Monday evenings we used to meet there. And we just stood around the fireplace talking and sort of making a joke of it almost, but we always had to carry them around. Then, of course, you’d got your identity cards and your ration books and I did first aid classes. You did fire-watching, well, ARP. I remember the day after it had been announced when some of the Territorials had to join up immediately, you see and I can see those soldiers marching up Station Road – only young lads actually they were. That was the first time we heard and of course, everyone thought there’d be an air-raid that first day but nothing happened – nothing happened for quite a time.

***

Mrs. Perigo

One thing that I always remember is when the Scots Guards were off to war. They came up from Coventry road…playing the bagpipes, it was ever so thrilling, beautiful kilts they had, you know, and they went swinging off around where the bingo place is now and down towards the station, and I followed them down pushing Carol in the pram and I thought to myself after, I wonder how many will come back? They all started whistling when the bagpipes stopped, and getting on the trains at Hinckley Station.

***

Margery Milton

Back of our house we had a dug out in case of an air-raid. I can remember the first air-raid warning ‘cos I’d just come home from work, I was just putting my pajamas on ready to go to bed. The sirens went and down we went to the dug-out. Very confined believe me, but we didn’t use them that often. We used to sit in the pantry World War Two.

4. THE NIGHT COVENTRY WAS BLITZED

Mrs. Payne

I remember one night…it was when Coventry was bombed badly we had a lot of incendiaries on the farm and some of them went so deep they’re still down there somewhere…even though they’ve built on all that ground they’re still there. I think they got a bit mixed up with the Hinckley water tower – it was a great big tower – I think they thought they were at Coventry then. They weren’t, so we got a lot of the flak as they called it.

***

Harry Beazley

That night of the Coventry blitz – the moon – you could have read a newspaper. It started at seven o’clock at night and finished at seven in the morning. They used this water as a turning point, it was a landmark. We heard that after, that it was a landmark. It had been nice for two or three nights but this night the moon! It was like daylight, but you couldn’t see 

nothing, they was right high up weren’t they. It was one ‘Zzzzzz’, you could hear them, yes. Somehow you could tell as you listened – ‘They’re not ours’. It was a drumming noise – a distant noise, and then they seemed to be gone and the alert would go.

***

Margery Milton

Coventry – I watched it from a railway bridge, you could see the glow in the distance and you could hear the bombs. Well, you could hear a rumble more that the explosions.

***

Marie Phipps (b.1918)

And I remember D-Day morning. My husband got out of bed to have a look at what were going on – he could hear the noise all in the sky and that. He said, ‘Oh come and look out here.’ There were hundreds of planes, some of them looped onto each other – glider planes. I’ll always remember my mum and how she cried ‘cos our Bill had got to go. He was out in the Middle East and he’d never seen my eldest daughter for four years ’til he came home. Only her photo.

5. THE AMERICANS ARE COMING

Anon

We had the Americans at Kirby Mallory, they went by my house. They had big cars and big cigars. We had the Marines here (Earl Shilton) and they were terrible. They broke nearly everybody’s wall down or the door in, but they did leave mine be – I escaped. Well, they just got drunk and went mad, they reckoned they’d been at sea for so long. I think there were two married the girls from here. I didn’t like the Americans ‘cos they’d got this, that and the other. I know one girl, she were a nice looking girl, she got in with this American, courted him, we all accepted her as going with him and then she got pregnant, you know, she’d got her engagement ring on her finger. He didn’t marry her did he, ‘cos he was already married with two children.

***

Margery Milton

I remember one or two girls who went with them and one or two who married them. If there were ones who didn’t they used to call the ones that did…all back-biting and that sort of thing, ‘Oh so and so’s got a Yank,’ you know, that type of thing.

***

Marie Phipps

We seen enough of them (Americans) coming up the yard – there were two women up the yard and their husbands were both aboard. They were keeping them company at night. There were more talk going on than a little but there was a lot of it being done. I said as long as they don’t knock on my door – they’ll have an answer if they do, I’ll have a bucket of water all over them.

***

Ron & Margery Milton

I stayed in at the factory for quite a while because there was only myself and my mother…and so I was allowed to stay at home – well I was working – but stay in the factory. Then towards the end they said I’d got to go into munitions so I just went up into John Street which was in the town. I did a very mediocre job cutting mica which is a silvery kind of thing. You cut it into slices and it was used in the make-up of aeroplane engines but we didn’t know what it was at first, we just knew we were doing it. One day we were allowed to see where it was put…part of the engine. It was very boring. There were all girls in that particular room where I worked and when they were all talking one against the other, which was natural, it was a terrific noise but as soon as the door opened and the boss walked in, or the manager, there was dead silence, just like that, cut off.

***

Ron & Margery Milton

In the Coventry Road behind the station…two land mines, that’s when I was on duty actually. They didn’t explode and they lay there until they came to diffuse them and take them away. That was the time when the bomb fell in Merivale Avenue as well…I know there were two sisters in one bed and one of them was killed and the other wasn’t touched.

Your main duties (the ARP), when there was an air-raid warning, you’d have to parade round the streets to see that every light was blacked out, that was very strict them days. Your windows would have sticky tape across them, criss-cross to protect against the blast.

6. TRAINING WITH THE HOME GUARD

Mrs. Perigo

I know the Home Guard, it was funny marching up and down ‘cos they only had these stick things over the shoulder – there wasn’t enough guns for the soldiers never mind the Home Guard. We weren’t prepared you know.

***

Harry Beazley

The drill halls were commandeered for…how to use a rifle, how to throw a bomb, how to take a rifle to pieces and put it back together. Old sweats were called back to train for rifle shooting. I know the first time I fired a rifle, gosh, it was like someone giving you a clout around the…you know, the re-coil, and also there was half of us didn’t even know what to look for regarding the sights. You had five ‘up the spout’, I do remember that, that’s bullets, you had five at a time. I don’t know what sort of rifles they were, I’ve not the faintest idea…but I didn’t do a lot of that because I was drafted into the intelligence department to learn Morse code and the radio.

World War I victory celebration, the Dedication of the Cenotaph in Earl Shilton

I can remember three old sweats, one was 72 – I was 32 – and he’d fought in the First World War because he’d had his toes froze off in the Dardenelles. From what he told us that was a real disaster – it was so cold. Mind you, there you were, you had a rifle and you were squinting along it and you knew you weren’t going to hit…and I’m thinking of old Jack, he got glasses on and he ambled up and put a rifle to his shoulder and the target was there – you used to hit a bell so when you hit it you’d know – and he’d had a cough and he’d got a cigarette on and he’d bring it to his shoulder and wham! you’d hear the bell go straight away. He could do it left or right, it was marvellous.

St Peter’s School Treat, Hinckley, July 17th 1920

Anon

Whether you went to church or chapel the ‘treats’ were one of the highlights of the year. We went to the Baptist Chapel. My husband went all his life until being 16 and he went round with these banners at the Sunday School treats and some of the men at work seen him, of course he were loving it with the banner at 16, they pulled his leg – he never went to chapel no more.

Salvation Army collecting

Marie Phipps (b.1918)

Me and my sister went to the Wesleyans because we were near to it and didn’t have to cross no roads. We used to go twice on a Sunday and then we got old enough we had to go to chapel. We had to in our day, there was no getting away – your mother wouldn’t let you put your best things on if you didn’t go to chapel or church.

Treats drummer walking before procession along Regent Street

Kath Paul

It was the Congregational – it’s called the Reform Church in the Borough. I think at that time it was the biggest chapel there was in Hinckley. Then there were different groups as they had in the chapels such as the Good Templars juniors, you’d go one night there for a couple of hours, you know, and the Christian Endeavour…your parents were glad of you going.

Leading the procession

Marie Phipps (b.1918)

I were about 18 then but I never took him (her husband) home ’til I were 21. They wouldn’t let you in those days, you’d got to be growed up. They wouldn’t agree with you. My dad wouldn’t. Anyhow I told him, ‘Dad,’ I says, ‘I’m going to bring a young man home today,’ and he says, ‘Oh no you’re not.’ I says, ‘I am Dad ‘cos I’ve told him.’ He says, ‘Bring him and we will see what we think about him.’

There was a lady at the top of the avenue…I always went to their house…she got them all outside. There weren’t a soul when I went up the road to meet him, when I came down they’d all got their chairs out on the front! He’d got his silk hankie in his pocket like he were ever so smart. My mother took to him straight away and me dad liked him.

When I went to look at it (her first house) to see if I’d like it, his mother went with me and she says to me, well, if I had got a little house like this I’d think I was safe in the arms of Jesus. I looked up the chimney and I looked around and I thought, ‘Safe in the arms of Jesus In this ruddy hole?’ But anyhow, we made a little house of it…and the chimney – there used to be a tin tray so far up the chimney – and they used to have to take that down, and one Sunday it was our eldest’s birthday and I had a party for her…I’d got all the stuff laid out on a table and bang comes this tray, oh you’ve never seen anything like it.

***
Mrs. Payne

I met my husband at the Hinckley Technical College. He used to go…he joined the Gas Board at 14 and he used to go lessons and I was on a commercial course for office work. Very strict, he (Dad) wouldn’t allow us to have young men at all but eventually he had to give in of course. There were five girls of course. After he sort of got to know our boyfriends he was all right.

The Regent Cinema, Regent Street/ Rugby Road

Anon

There were dance halls but a lot of them were just little hops. The Palladium was there when I was about 18, that was at the top of Castle Street. You never asked a boy for a dance, never, they always asked you. Well, you didn’t if you were brought up properly, you didn’t ask a boy to take you out, so you were more or less held back weren’t you, you didn’t get him if he weren’t interested in you did you? Unless one of your girlfriends were cheeky enough to go and tell him. We done the quick step, the waltz, we did the tango in those days and the really old fashioned ones like the barn dance and the military two-step.

Arthur Moore

There was the Palladium, Regent, Odeon and Danilo, there were four. The Odeon was the favourite, the one where we used to go mostly. When the Regent and the Danilo opened the Palladium closed down because people didn’t seem to go. That was right at the top of Castle Street in New Buildings. If we couldn’t get in one we’d rush down to the other to get in there. You used to get the Pathe pictorial then a big film then a comic film like Laurel and Hardy – you were there two and a half hours. No theatres, only amateurs.

Albert Attenborough

There were the Borough Cinema, that were called the Odeon in the end, and you used to go up – at the bottom of Mansion Street was Frisbee’s butchers shop – and you used to go up the back of there to the back entrance of the theatre. That were a regular treat that was if you went there. The talkies come on late you see but in them days you used to go and there were silent films and you used to have Mr. Denton, who was an old Hinckleyan and Mr. Oldham who was playing the piano, and one stage when there were a cowboy film on, Denton and Mr. Oldham fell out you see. So Denton got up…he’d got the violin and hit him over the head with it and busted his violin, so they’d got no music then.

***
Margery Dorman (b.1915)

The dancing school…was in the Borough, a dance floor, it were over a shop. Oh yes, we went to The George – The George Hotel were at the front and the dance hall was at the back. They still use it, it’s a big place, I think it’s a night-club now. They used to have different orchestras.

***
Ron Milton

On a Saturday night and a Sunday night in those days there’d be a parade up and down Castle Street and along Regent Street of people. Sunday you could see plenty of people walking round Burbage or wherever – a real parade. That was where a lot of the courting was done, up and down Castle Street, along Regent Street. You dressed in suits, you’d wear a Trilby probably, earlier still everybody wore a cap to go to work.

Hinckley Liberal Club

Ron & Margery Milton

Down in the Borough and at the bottom of Stockwell Head, all round that area, there were little shops, well they’ve all gone long since. Little shops that we enjoyed going to. Along Regent Street there were individual shops. There’s a jitty up to Trinity Church and there was a little shop at the bottom there, Well’s shop, little sweet and general shop. That’s where ‘Bindy’ Wilber used to sit selling his newspapers. He lived up Hill Street and if you went in his house it was stacked out with newspapers…and all his money was under his mattresses – he reckoned he’d got no money but if anyone of any importance went in the house he’d make sure he was there.

Clarendon Road, Hinckley

The Co-op in Hill Street and then later the Co-op in Clarendon Road, which was built in 1923, there was a butchers there and the lad from the butchers used to come and get your order. At that time bread was delivered by horse and cart, milk was horse and cart, not in bottles, you’d have a basin for them to put the milk in. Used to come twice a day morning and evening ‘cos there were no fridges in those days. You’d got greengrocery rounds so I mean you didn’t always have to go up the street to get your food. Fish-men came round once a week, and the

tripe-man…that was quite an event, you’d go out with your jug and get your tripe with all the gravy, that was lovely. I can remember the scissors sharpening man with his pedal thing to make the wheel go round.
I remember having to follow the horse carts round, having to scoop up what they left behind – the manure for the gardens…I used to enjoy doing that, honestly!

Arthur Moore

In Regent Street, as you turn for Coventry, there used to be droves of horses all round there and a little way up Coventry Road to the Boot Inn. I can remember when I used to get up at six o’clock, sit on the railings where The Ritz is now in Regent Street, I’d sit there and watch all these horses all coming down. There used to be droves of them in rings, 20 or 30 to a ring and these here drovers used to go in amongst them if a buyer wanted one, he’d point it out to him, which one he wanted to see run up the street, and they used to run them up Regent Street and another fellow would be at the back with a flag, you know, flapping the flag, making it go. Not hitting it…he’d got it on a lasso sort of thing round its neck. It used to amaze me how they used to go amongst these droves and right in the middle to fetch out the horse what they wanted. That’s where the Horsefair started.

The streets were more or less slabbed, not so much tarmacked…a lot of them were cobbled. Along Regent Street there used to be so many slabs and then cobbles to the curb. There used to be trees along Regent Street. (see photo in ‘And Finally) Since then it’s altered a lot, Hinckley has. There weren’t so many buildings thatched. All I can remember is those thatched cottages up Church Walk. There were some others but I can’t remember where.

***
Anon

Before the war we didn’t go in pubs much. Pubs in our time weren’t like these. All the old men used to go in the tap room – with spittoons you know – and men didn’t want women in the bar because they wanted to do as they like, use bad language, and play games and we were a nuisance you see. Women used to go in the best room, called the lounge now.

Francis Laker

I think it was better than what it is now. You’d got more shops to go in, as I say…you’d got more grocery shops, you got…Winnie Ballards at the bottom of Castle Street. She’d got two shops there. You’d got the 50 bob (£2.50) tailors, you’d got Burtons, you’d go in and get measured for a suit and if you hadn’t got the money they used to pay so much a week until it was paid for. Same as the old pawn shop that used to be there – take your things in on a Monday, fetch them back on a Friday.

Castle Street, from the bottom

There was Hall’s where we used to get the clothes from – that was a gent’s outfit and they made ladies as well – there was Gilders, that was a tailor’s. Pridmores at the bottom of Castle with all the old-fashioned bottles in the window – a chemist…The Maypole, you’d got Currys, you’d got Caves – that was a fruit and veg and they sold seeds there. Yoxalls cake shop – that was two windows. Used to have a policeman on duty at the bottom of Castle Street. It used to be packed years ago if you wanted to go into Woolworth’s, you couldn’t get in the door. You could buy anything you wanted – screws, nails, hair clips.

You used to watch what was in Winnie Ballard’s window, you know, this was the fashion shop. I remember an orange dress I had, it was beautiful. It was square neck and it’d got a brown sash with it. Oh and it was nice. I used to go to the dance in that.

Whistling Willie – I don’t know what his proper name was. He was a little man and he always used to whistle, and he lived in the Outwoods. There was Squeaker – he’d got a squeaky voice. It was him that came into the air-raid shelter with us and there was a lady in there, a Mrs. Payne, kept the paper shop, and he sat down – he was scruffy oh yes, – ‘Oh dear, I don’t want you against me’ – that sort of thing, and he turned round and he took his shoes and socks off and he said, ‘Missus, I’m as clean underneath as what you are. My clothes might be dirty but I’m as clean as what you are!’ Oh, she didn’t know where to put her face.

Then there was a man, I can’t remember what they call him, he used to sell the papers at the bottom of Castle Street, sit on a chair, and he, when he died, he’d got no end of money in the house, and Squeaker had. He used to live in one of the dug-outs that they had on the golf-course. They used to have the guards there, you know, with a little slot for the gun, not that I could see them going down there, but they did. He furnished it inside, had a bed in there.

Francis Laker

You used to have the man outside Simpkins and James that was selling carpets and lino and stuff like this, oh you know, ‘What am I bid for this?’
Somewhere where Wilkinson’s is now, The Victoria Hotel, the Vic as we used to call it. On the bar there used to be an iron rail all the way round and when I see these pictures of cowboys and they’ve got their foot up…I always think of the Vic. They used to chew twist. Although everybody smoked I can’t remember a lot of smoke puffing about – probably because I smoked those days. So you didn’t notice ‘cos you did it. The George used to be the place to go. That’s The Bounty now. In the entrance there they used to have half slices of pigs hanging up and hams, oh yes, all salted hanging up there, I mean, they dare n’t today. It was a big entrance. Everything was salt-petred down to keep, there were no fridges or anything like that. You wash it well, leave it to soak for twenty four hours or something like that to get it all out.

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Albert Attenborough

In Mansion Street, there were a chip shop and they used to sell chips and faggots – that were one of the delicacies – you’d pay about 1d in them days – for a plate of those. You’d have to be rich to live like that! As lads we couldn’t have any money because mother were that poor, so we used to go down…where the bank stands on the corner of Castle Street, right at the bottom…now on that corner used to be Wheatley’s fish’n’ chip shop and they used to have batter bits – the bits of batter that’d come off – they used to chuck them in the side there and us chaps we had to go and ask, ‘Could we have some batter bits, please?’ You’d get your ears cuffed and turned out of the shop but sometimes he’d take pity on you and give you some.

Just round the corner was Finches, that were an ironmongers shop, that were one of the best ironmongers in Hinckley. Behind the ironmongers shop was a yard or a walkway that went through by the public house and come out where Barclays bank is now and there was an iron urinal, just an iron sheet like that, and just a little trough for you to go wee in and that was there ’til more or less going up to the Second World War that was. There used to be one of those up in the Lawns by the Castle Tavern.

Ron & Margery Milton

The population of Hinckley when I remember it was about 11,000, it was just a small – well it isn’t a big town now – but it was a really small market town then. Where the police station is now there was a big manor house and it stood quite a way back…it was really a sanatorium, TB, things like that. People used to be afraid to walk by…there were all sorts of stories about the place…well the people there, as though it was their fault they were there – well it wasn’t obviously.

Watercolour of St. George Ballroom. George Hotel

Albert Attenborough

You’d play in the streets. You see the streets weren’t very wide. You’d get an old shoe polish tin and you’d get a bit of lead and put it in and hammer the corners down and you used to throw it – called tin-high hockey. Queen’s Park – that was about the nearest and then the one opposite the old gas works…Rugby Road. There were a huge tank there from the First World War that kids used to play in. Course at the top of Mansion Street, in Mill Hill, there was the skating rink. Now that was the finest skating rink in Leicestershire because under that floor was a rubber base. That, unfortunately, got burnt down. As I say, you couldn’t afford to go and do these things, you could only go and sort of gaze and look at them.

First World War Tank in Queens Park

Ron & Margery Milton

St Mary’s is obviously the main church. Holy Trinity was built in 1909 – where the leisure centre is – that’s where it was originally. That was like a big hall with a gallery round and it was always said that the architect had plans at the same time for a theatre somewhere and he got the plans mixed up and that’s why it was such a big hall with the gallery round – now what truth’s in it I don’t know but that’s what we’ve always been told.

I can remember Hurrell, when we were youngsters. Hurrell was here during the First World War, and Griffiths was at Holy Trinity. They were both in the parishes during the war. I always remember Griffiths, when I was in the choir, listening to him reading out the list of casualties that had happened. Griffiths was quite a gentle, kind man. In fact, he was his own worst enemy in many ways because he was always helping people, in those days there was no keeping of accounts in the church, the vicar had the money. Whatever money came in and he used the money – I don’t mean he used it fraudulently – he used a lot of it particularly during that war to help families, and it wasn’t until after that that they called a parish council to attend to those sort of affairs.

St Mary’s Sunday School used to go up to where the John Cleveland is now, up Butts Lane, and in some fields…they would do more or less the same sort of thing. Once a year and then you’d have what they called a Christmas Sunday School treat. In which you’d go to the hall, you took your own mug for your tea and then again you’d have bread and jam and a piece of cake. Then after you’d finished your tea you’d take your mug back home and then you went back for games. You imagine doing that now.

In those days the treats, as they were called, were the main attraction annually. The free church treats were a big day. They were always the first Saturday in July and each chapel would have a tableau, a huge lorry or something with a biblical tableau on it and there was quite a bit of competition, and ill-feeling unfortunately, between the chapels over these because they were judged. All the little girls used to have a new dress for that day and they’d have garlands of flowers, they used to go round the houses collecting flowers to make them – and perhaps young mothers would have a baby in a pram and that would all be decorated…anything was decorated. It was very competitive.

Ron & Margery Milton

We used to meet at what was the parish hall then, at the bottom of Trinity Lane and we’d march to the top of what is now Hollycroft, singing ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ more often than not, and then Pickerings vans would come and we’d all get in the back and be taken to Wykin, into some farmer’s fields and that was it. There’d be a sweet stall and then you’d have your tea which consisted mainly of a bit of bread and butter or bread and jam and a piece of cake and we played some games.

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Ron & Margery Milton

There was the Co-op gala. That was on a Saturday once in the summer and you’d meet in Castle Street and be given a bag with your tea in it – quite a substantial one from them – and we used to go out of the town walking, of course. I don’t know where we finished up, some field somewhere, have organised games, races, that sort of thing. That was quite a thing.

August 26 was the big day – the Horsefair. All the shops were boarded up and they used to run the horses up and down in what is Lancaster Road and up towards Station Road. One horse was run up and down and it was bought and when it got to the top of Clarendon Road it collapsed and that was it…it had been too much.

Tinkers used to bring them you see, brush tinkers and people like that. I know some of the lads up Priesthills Road used to have a whip, they were some of the better off ones, they just played with it, it was really quite a day…it was quite an event. That’s why that bit from Station Road down to Lancaster Road is called The Horsefair.

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Albert Attenborough

The first holiday…the first time I saw the sea was when I was 14 and that was because someone took us out, some organisation, and I think it were the Co-op, organised a trip. They took us all in buses…that was Skegness. You wondered what the devil it were – just amazed at all that water. We’d never been, you couldn’t go any further than Hinckley, because you couldn’t afford it.