Betty Clark

I thought your readers might like to see a few photographs of Totley in the late 1940s. They were taken by my brother-in-law Benny who was a photographer with the Telegraph and Star. Totley and Totley Bents then was a pretty village, clean and tidy not the shambles it is today. The roadsides and the hedges were kept clean and the gutters swept, the gutter drains were cleaned out twice a year. Who did all this work, 3 men Art Kirley, Albert Ward, Joe Ramsall. All they had were brushes, shovels and a horse and cart, the horse was a grey shire horse called Prince.

One of the photographs (right) shows Chapel Fields, it was a picture where all the children played in the fields and in winter sledging was the main attraction. Mariot Fox with the help of Ernest Pearson painstakingly put all the cobbles down in Chapel Fields, if they saw it today they would turn in their graves. It is all overgrown with self set trees and someone has put a hedge round, you can hardly walk up or down there, it is a disgrace. I remember how Eric used to watch for me coming down the fields when we were courting, nowadays you cannot see a thing. Mr Biggin used to also watch for Mrs Biggin to come through the stile when he would go to meet her to help to carry the shopping, all this was from the top of the reck which had railings around it. Now it has an overgrown hedge, Willis Pearson was the gamekeeper and used to look after the reck with the cricket ground and football ground also all the moors, all of which were kept immaculate. Those were the days