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