"Reliving our Youth"

The following was sent to us by Joyce and Graham Sharp and it is precisely for the reasons they outline below just why we do the blog.

Hyde Cheshire Blog.

One of the first things that Joyce and I do each day is to look at this Blog and also the Hyde Daily Photo by Gerald England. Why do we this and look forward to it so much?

Joyce and I were brought up in Hyde, we were married at Hyde Chapel in 1956, we had two sons and left Hyde for Canada in 1966. Our parents and siblings are all dead now leaving a few cousins, nieces and nephews and friends in England. We now have three children, seven grandchildren and one great grandson, we have had no time to be "homesick".

However, as we get older there is a strong, but futile desire to relive our youth, a feeling shared by many. But, "You can't go home again". 

We cannot walk up Joel Lane and over Werneth Low. We cannot go down Hyde on a Saturday evening for a Football Pink and the Empire News. I cannot go to the Moulders for a pint with my Dad and on to Ewen Fields with a Handforths pie at half time.

We cannot go to the August Wakes Week Fair on the Market Ground or to the Ritz for a Saturday matinee. A tripe tea upstairs at the UCP is a distant memory.

Are there still Saturday night dances at Enfield Street School ? Does Jock still have his stall on Hyde Market?

A quick game of snooker in the Billiard Hall upstairs behind the Hippodrome on the way home from school.

To be able to walk down Hyde Lane looking in the many and wonderful shop windows.

These are some of the many things that we would like to do but, either they do not exist any more or, we don't have the legs for it!

So, this is where the Blogs come in, by refreshing some of those memories with the wonderful posts from so many people.

Thanks to Team Hydonian and particularly to you. Nancy, for helping us "relive our youth"

  

Joyce Baddeley and Graham Sharp on Werneth Low, 1954.

Many Thanks to you both for sharing the memories with us :) 

It's lovely to be able to help you relive your youth ! 

Clarendon Place

Clarendon Place in the late 1950's with coaches taking people on their *Wakes holidays.

The buildings on the left were replaced  quite some years ago now and the road was pedestrianised . The corner shop was called Stowells Off Licence - this is now the Bradford and Bingley building society . If I remember correctly the large shop in the foreground was a shop that sold prams and cots etc. It is now a furniture shop.

*Wakes were originally religious festivals that commemorated church dedications. During the Industrial Revolution the tradition of the wakes was adapted into a regular summer holiday particularly, but not exclusively, in the north of England and industrialised areas of the Midlands where each locality would nominate a wakes week during which the industries would close down for a week. The wakes holiday was an unpaid holiday when the mills and factories were closed for maintenance. In 1906 an agreement on unpaid holidays was reached which became the pattern for the wakes holidays in the Lancashire mill towns. It was implemented in 1907. The expansion of the railway network led Blackpool to become a seaside resort catering mainly for the Lancashire working classes. Southport catered for the slightly better off and Morecambe attracted visitors from the West Riding textile towns.

Present day

The tradition still exists in some parts of England, although its significance has declined in recent decades. It was commonplace for schools to allocate a one week holiday coinciding with wakes week in lieu of holiday time elsewhere in the year;— typically the May half term holiday or the end of the summer holiday in August. Schools began to discontinue the wakes week holiday after the introduction of the National Curriculum and the standardisation of school holidays across England, and it rarely exists today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wakes_week