Delia Chadwick
Days out and school trips, 1940s Pitsmoor Working Men's Club outing, 1940s. Delia is the tall blonde child in a coat standing in the middle of the second row. © Delia Chadwick Delia Chadwick has lived in Burngreave ever since she got married to a local lad. As a child she had family connections to the area and used to join in the outings organised by Pitsmoor Working Men's Club. This piece was written by Delia in November 2006. When I was a child in the 1940s, we always went out blackberry picking in the summer. One time I went with friends to the woods near school but the blackberries weren't very good. Somebody said they had seen blackberries on the graves in Wardsend cemetery so off we went. They were the biggest and juiciest I had ever seen so we picked them and took them home. As my aunty and uncle were visiting from Derby, my mother made a blackberry pie. At teatime my aunty said, 'Where have you got the blackberries from? They are the best I've ever tasted!'. When I said, 'Off the graves,' nobody would eat any more and I got a good slap because we had wasted flour and margarine which were still on the ration! In my last year at school in 1953 we had a trip to London for the whole school. It cost 32 shillings and we paid it off weekly. We went by train from Victoria Station, we got on the train in The Wicker. We were very excited! It was the week after the coronation and the streets still had flags and bunting out. We went on the Thames, had lunch at the Lyon's café and saw the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace. We finished off by going on the underground and visiting the zoo, it was the best day out! When we got back to school, we had to write about our day out in London. I started my piece by saying Buckingham Castle had mucky windows! I used to go on outings organised by Pitsmoor Working Men's Club. They ran trips to Cleethorpes for children. We always got a bottle of pop and a bag of crisps. And when we arrived in Cleethorpes, we all went straight to the Victoria Café for fish and chips before we got our tickets to go into the amusements in Wonderland. Written by Delia Chadwick, November 2006. |