I remember . . .
Going to school on a trolley bus, with one of dad’s white hankies tied round my face. It was the smog you see, turned the hankie black from the mills. Bradford, originally called Broad Ford in Saxon times, was where I grew up.
Dad used to take us out in the car, to see the countryside with all them fields and sheep. I said to dad, ‘How can the sheep stand on the side of those hills without falling over? He said, ‘The farmer shortened their front legs when they were born.’ — That made sense.
I was seven when I got my first walloping. I’d gone to the corner shop and taken my younger brother. On the way home he went to explore a building site at the bottom of our road and fell in a lime pit. A man got him out and took all my brother’s clothes off and wrapped him in his own jacket and carried him home. I suppose my parents took their guilt out on me. I’m glad he didn’t die though, he’s a nice lad is our Stephen.
It was around this time when I got scarlet fever and a big white van painted with a red cross came for me. The two ambulance men wrapped me in a bright red blanket and took me to the fever hospital in Leeds Road. All the neighbours were out watching. I liked it there. I got a bath every day and the nurses washed me with a lovely smelling soap. I later found out it was carbolic. Mam used to come every day and climb up a coal stack outside the window near my bed so she could see me through the glass.
Every Christmas we went to the see the pantomime at the Alhambra. An iconic domed Georgian landmark. It was like a palace. Standing in the queue, shivering with excitement we waited until it was our turn and then we walked under an iron canopy filled in with stained glass panels. A thick carpet led us into the theatre. Gold was everywhere. The walls and pillars, the ceiling as high as the sky. Hundreds of seats in rows on top of each other. Sitting on soft blue seats like the Queen. I remember the last pantomime I saw there. It was Robin Hood. And Nurse Glucose sang, ‘Nobody Loves a Fairy When She’s Forty.’
My next experience of a Bradford hospital, was when I developed rheumatic fever in 1962. This time I was in Bradford’s Children’s Hospital where, despite being ill I enjoyed every minute of my stay, idolising the caring nurses in their crisp uniforms and thinking I was on the set of my favourite TV programme ‘Emergency Ward Ten.’
When recovering, I could play out my ‘pretend’ role, by helping the staff with ‘light duties.’ My last duty before being discharged, was to read a picture book to a sick five year old girl who had just arrived in the country from Pakistan. I felt very protective of her, as she had been allocated my bed.
It was over Christmas when I went home, and within days we were all told to isolate within the house. The ‘little girl from overseas’ had smallpox. After that, every hospital in the city was infected. I don’t really like to talk about what happened after that; enough to say I was one of the survivors.
I went to all sorts of places growing up, like Ilkley Moor where there were some rocks called the Cow and Calf. I could never see it myself, they didn’t look anything like a cow and calf. Years later I did some courting there, when I had impetigo. Well I couldn’t be seen in public, not looking like that, could I? Some Sundays we went bilberry picking, up Sutton Bank. I loved that. Never ended up with much in my paper bag – they were too delicious!
We had to go to church every Sunday, and then take Grandma home. Grandma lived up Otley road. She gave us a threepenny bit every week, and while the grown-ups were chatting me and my brother and sister walked up to the corner shop and bought our sweets. You could get as many as twelve sweets if you chose the farthing ones! Then we would go across the road to Undercliffe Cemetery which towers over Bradford, and we would sit on a grave to eat our sweets.
All those monuments and tombs of rich mill owners and wool barons, made it a perfect playground for making up gory stories to tell my friends. But the best ones, the ones that gave me a real thrill of fear, were the mausoleums. I mean, where better to dispose of an unfavourable relative? I use to listen to stories from Grandma about the time that the cemetery was so full, that bodies began to spill out from shallow graves and were on view to mourners. I was disappointed to learn, that work had been carried out to correct this.
Poor Julia Varley, she was a suffragette and only had an ordinary grave, I always thought she should have had one of them tall ones like the rich people. It’s a famous place to visit now, a Victorian conservation area of National Heritage.
Another cemetery I loved to visit, was when on day trips to Howarth. Overlooked by the Bronte family, the graves of past inhabitants tell the story of Howarth. I still visit to this day; with my notebook and pen.
Every Saturday morning I had charge of my younger brother and sister. Dad dropped us off at the Roxy in Leeds road to watch films about cowboy’s and Indian’s. I found out later in life, it was so that once a week they could have sex in peace.
Lister Park was a family favourite. But we knew it as Manningham Park. In those days the area nearby, was where the bad ladies lived. We called them ‘the Prossies.’
The fancy Prince of Wales gates opened to a grand view of lawns and flowering bushes. There was a bandstand and a lake. I wasn’t allowed to run around in the park. It was a place where you had to behave. We took a picnic and swam in the lido, sometimes having a boat ride on the lake. Then we visited the big house, Cartwright Hall, to see stuffed animals in glass cages.
But when I was older, I didn’t behave in the park. I went to a school just opposite, and the park was the best place to go, when knocking off. I didn’t like school and knocked off quite a lot.
We went to Shipley Glen during the summer. It was Mam’s favourite place. A tram ride through the woods, ice cream, penny slot machines, it was the next best thing to the seaside.
In the school holidays me and my best friend Shirley would go off to Fagley Woods with a bottle of water and jam sandwiches, with instructions from Mam to be back by teatime. I loved going to Shirley’s house, she had a big sister who looked like a film star. She wore tight skirts and high heels and I wanted to be like her. My admiration for her grew when she became an unmarried mother. I’d never met one before.
It was good growing up in Bradford. We had it all. The different cultures. The integration of wealth and poverty. The architecture. The entertainment. And the Mecca Ballroom!
(c) 2024 Lillian Bradbury.
