Betty Marr (née Marcroft)
I was born at 258 Firth Park Road on 24th of May 1920, and the family moved to Totley when I was a baby in the early 1920s. By that time my father had built a bungalow at 14 The Quadrant, where we lived. He also built most of Heatherfield during the next few years. My mother’s parents lived at 18 The Quadrant. My father, who traded as C. L. Marcroft Ltd, developed three roads off The Quadrant and Terry Road. Father also bought land from Colin Thomson, a butcher on Totley Rise. At the time he had financial help from the solicitors Hyman Stone (he dealt with a Mr Greenway) and presumably that is how they arrived at the names Marstone Crescent and Stonecroft Road.
Len Marcroft with "Peggy" and trap at 14 The Quadrant, 1925
Between 1920 and 1939 he bought the Grange in Baslow Road, and we thought we were going to live there, but father had other ideas! There was a paddock next to the Grange, which was behind 14 The Quadrant. He made the house into shops and built one or two more shops. As far as I remember the shops included a greengrocer and a hairdresser. He kept the paddock/orchard which went with 14 The Quadrant. I remember that as children we used to climb over the dry stone wall and walk through the orchard to Baslow Road. My father also built most of the houses in Vernon Road and some in Chatsworth Road.
In the 1940s he built houses on the meadow near The Quadrant, which included 144 Baslow Road, which was for my sister Mary whose husband was a butcher in Sheffield. In 1945 my sister and her husband moved to Millhouses to be nearer his business in Sheffield, and father bought 144 Baslow Road for us to live in. Dr David Linfoot lived next door to us. The Marstone estate was built, and C.L. Marcroft Ltd put up the prefabs on the other side of Baslow road towards Totley school near Main Avenue which were still there in 1956. He also built houses in Brinkburn Vale Road.
The Marstone Grange Estate from Bradway Bank , early 1940s
I remember a chemical yard where they stored building materials behind Totley Rise, and we used to follow a footpath behind this yard to walk to Bradway Bank. Does anyone remember this? It’s probably been developed by now. In those days the windows in houses were made to measure, and he had a joiner who worked in the chemical yard making these window frames and other wooden items for housebuilding, such as doorframes, doors and skirting boards.
When my father died in 1951, my younger brother Phillip took over the business and he also had a garage mechanic in the chemical yard ‘hotting up’ cars! That is the story of my father’s connections with Totley.
A dvertisement in All Saints' Parish Church magazine, 1953
I attended Totley village school until I was 11, when I took the 11+, then known as the scholarship exam. I then attended Chesterfield Girls High School because at that time Totley was in Derbyshire. During this period Sheffield moved the boundary to the next river which meant we were then in Sheffield, but I did not have to move to a Yorkshire school. I passed my examinations (the equivalent to O levels) at 16 and stayed on in the Secretarial Sixth at Chesterfield Girls High School. From there, my first job was as a receptionist at a dentist’s in Chesterfield, but my mother thought it was too long a day for me with the travelling, and arranged for me to have a secretarial job in the Almoners Department at the hospital in Sheffield, where I worked until after the war. I was not allowed to go to the war (1939-45) much to my disappointment, as I was in a reserved occupation. I was Almoner at the Children’s Hospital for 18 months, then returned to the Jessop’s Hospital as Assistant Almoner.
In my spare time I helped with the Sunday School and many groups at Dore and Totley Union Church. I was a leader of one of the Sunday School groups. There was a group of four or five of us who used to walk over to Longshaw every Sunday morning and have coffee and scones, and then we walked back in time for Sunday School! Maybe there is someone reading this who has similar memories?
When the war was over in 1946, I went to India and worked as a hospital secretary at Medical College and Hospital, and spent the last two years as secretary to a Leprosy Research Unit near Madras. I came home in 1951 on leave, and then went to Bombay to work in a hospital there where I met my husband. We returned to this country in 1956 and I was married in Dore and Totley Union Church in Totley Brook road 1956. Since then I have lived in the south of England.
I thought somebody might be interested in knowing who built so of the houses in the area, but of course your History Group will have most of this information. I was last in Totley in 1960. I wonder if there is anyone who has memories triggered by mine? Perhaps they would like to add to the discussion by writing to the editor?
Betty Marr (née Marcroft)
December 2017