Crowle in the 1940

The Crowle of my Boyhood 2.

The Senior School was the larger building to the rear, 8 to 14 years of age. Those who came from a distance ate their packed lunches from trestle tables in the central corridor, which I did on occasion when my mother was staying with her family at Eastoft.

The school playground behind and then the school field and vegetable garden, where 13 and 14 year old boys were taught kitchen gardening while the girls did Domestic Science. The prefabricated buildings were not there, when I left but must have been built to accommodate more pupils when the school leaving age was raised to 15. I was at Grammar School by that time and although I would be at school till at least 16, I was just as incensed as my less academic friends who had been expecting to be learning a job and have money in their pockets to buy Woodbines.

Here we will return to the Harper family again. Grannie Harper always accompanied her grandchildren Shirley (it may have been Sheila) and Frankie to school and collected them for lunch and in the evening. Grannie Harper, a skinny scruffy lady, rather like “ Mother Riley” on the cinema, but without the hat and dirtier protected Shirley and Frankie with gusto, any pupil unwise enough to have an altercation with either would find Grannie Harper waiting outside with stick to chastise the culprit.

Frankie had a mouth and was often quite objectionable, about 1 or 2 years younger than us. Periodically, someone would give him a belting to find Grannie waiting outside at home time to achieve retribution. I tried to avoid Frankie, but eventually I found his mouth too much to tolerate and I gave him belting. Sure enough that afternoon Grannie Harper and stack peg were waiting outside for my appearance. For the next ten days or so I travelled to and from school by rail, until someone else belted Frankie and distracted her attention.

I wheeled my bike through the schoolyard, over the field and allotments heaved it over the fence and had a rather bumpy 800-yard ride until I was two fields behind our house, 46 Wharf Road. Heaved it over a fence again, over a ploughed field another fence, then across Crowle Park, over the back garden fence and home.

Shirley was a quiet, lonely somewhat withdrawn girl, with untidy face, dirty dress and the most fantastically vile aroma you could imagine. That stink was the reason the other girls avoided her. I got to know her well in the scholarship, 10-year-old, class. We lived in fearful despair and anticipation of going up into that class and the fearful woman that ran it. That is until we were actually in her class when we all began to like and appreciate her.

Her class was streamed, four rows of double desks. The potential scholarship candidates in the first row next to the window, then two rows of ordinary ability and finally the no hopers. It only contained about three permanent residents of which Shirley was one. Usually most of the seats were empty, but there were many temporary residents, who had been sent to the bottom of the class as punishment. I and most of my friends were frequent temporary residents. As one moved backup as reward for correct answers I rarely stayed there for more than a day or so.

But the day came when the teacher said,

“ Billy go to the bottom of the class” then added “Next to Shirley”

May God, did she stink. Then Shirley smiled and said,

“Oh Billy, it is so good of you to come and sit with me!”

I became a frequent companion with Shirley in the bottom until she said

“ It’ so good of you to come and sit with me AGAIN”

Something had to be done, my general behaviour did not improve but more attention was paid to not getting caught.

I left the school at 11 and have no idea what happened to the Harpers. Shirley was not as thick as people supposed; it was the matter of nurture rather than nature. Shirley suffered from a lack of expectation and support at home. I hope as Shirley grew left home and moved into another environment, she was able to find a hard working, loyal man and live a quiet and contented life. Frankie on the other hand was a tough little blighter; his problems stemming from his belief in protectionism instilled by his grandmother led him to tackle lads bigger than himself. He was certainly bright enough to have done well with a different background. He probably ended up apprenticing himself to the Kray twins and is now happily retired in Spain in the Costa del Crime with a massive villa with swimming pool and driving a Rolls Royce.

Continue on the left to the flat roofed single storey building, The British Legion, now the Legion Club, there I had for the want of a better name my stag party the night before I got married, accompanied by my best man Chippy Chapman and long time friend Don Tune, my university friends being scattered amongst the hospitals of the North of England doing their house jobs and unable to get away. A substantial amount of mostly free beer was consumed as I was accompanied by older men of forty or fifty, who knew my parents and my maternal family. I received much as advice from males with 15 to 30 years experience of marriage and wives which charming fiancés apparently changed into. There was also the problem of wives mothers which I never understood as mine seemed to be permanently grateful for taking her daughter of her hands. There was also the regular, monotonous, unexpected appearance of what were described as babies to consider. This was 8 years before THE Pill and ten years before the 1968 Abortion Act.

Next two substantial semi detached the farthest of which was occupied by the Burkills and their daughter Miss Burkill one of the schoolteachers. Then the large garden, row of trees with part of a building protruding to the east, Doc Strachan’s, who had bought the practice when his predecessor Bertie Alexander died somewhat tragically. A substantial building with a separate building to the west which at one time had been a stable with a room for a trap alongside and a room above which could have been for a groom or a feed store. A front and back door, the part seen being the working part of the building. A door on the street leading to a waiting room, consulting room and a room laid out for a dental surgeon who visited once a week.

Dr. Strachan anaesthetised for the dentist when an extraction list was being carried out. He also had Clinical Assistant sessions at Scunthorpe War Memorial hospital where he had acted as an anaesthetist long before the Health Service started. He may amongst the Methodists I knew have a reputation of doing evening visits smelling of Scottish Eau de Vie, but as his son Roy was one of my friends, I have been there in the evening when after a full day starting at 9 am, Doc Strachan’s evening surgery had started at 6pm finishing at 8: 30 pm when his wife brought him a whisky and soda before starting his evening meal. He had a great reputation and was often known to help patients who were not on his list. Fate did not play fair with Doc Strachan, Ian his youngest son was killed in a motorbike accident, his wife died not quite 60 and then he developed bowel cancer, when Roy his oldest son had been posted away in the RAF. He was no longer there when I was on my six weeks demob leave after finishing my National Service and I was wondering whether to continue specialising or give General Practice a try, if he had been my life may have taken a different course and I would not have had to leave Lincolnshire.

On the opposite corner the Baptist Chapel stands out prominently, it like the Methodists it is in danger from falling a congregation. Mill Trod now Mill Road going up Crowle Hill can be easily seen, almost undeveloped whereas now both sides are built up right the summit of Crowle Hill. The cemetery stretching to the summit of the hill, the windmill in the field before the cemetery has been demolished but the large bungalow replacing it not yet built.

The Isle of Axholme Light railway crosses the road, the gates being closed. The crossing keeper’s house adjacent to the line and gates. The keeper or his wife’s duty was to manually open the gates when a train was due and close them afterwards. The line passes through the cutting in Crowle Hill, crossing Eastoft Road through manually operated gates and into Crowle Station. The building is the Station Master’s house and general office is on the right of the line on the left were two sidings the signal was manually operated by either the guard on the train or if very small the fireman. The general office had once been the ticket office, when the line opened and passenger trains went from Haxey Junction to Goole and back again. Goole became a town easily reached from Crowle. Chippy Chapman’s dad, Alf, Clerk to the Drainage Board and the fifth generation of his family to be Registrar of Births and Deaths, went by train to Goole Grammar School. A diesel electric railway coach eventually replaced the train, until the passenger service stopped shortly after 1930.

The road and railway bridge over the Trent was not built until almost a decade after the 1st World War and Scunthorpe Grammar School was not inaugurated until after 1930. We have in the Old Scunthonians a vigorous gentleman in his nineties who was in the inaugural intake of that Grammar School; he became Head Boy and was Captain of both the cricket and football teams. The line can be seen crossing Brewery Lane and disappearing into the moors on its way to Goole. There was a branch line from the main line leading to Luddington and Garthorpe, the line crossed my grandfather’s farm Boltgate, Eastoft and we even had a siding that would take three trucks. In Ealand there was another Station, so we could boast of having three railway stations. The line belonged to LMS, London, Midland and Scottish.

Let us return to the Baptist Chapel and go north along Eastoft Road. The next building on the right is Long’s Garage, where Mr. Long moved to from Woodlands Avenue. Reg his son took over and ran it until he retired some years ago Reg originally married a Crowle girl, Dorothy Johnson, who went to the Scunthorpe Grammar School with the rest of us. It was said that Reg had the same hobby as his father so that Dorothy eventually kicked him into touch and got rid of him.

There is another garage farther along on the left, which is still there. The single storey building with arched windows standing back from the road. Many of the small cottages on the right including those built in what had been an old sand quarry, have been demolished and replaced by new houses. The substantial mansion behind the green where the road divides is still there but instead of trees it is surrounded by houses.

The right hand division is Eastoft Road passing the railway station and at first heading east to right angle bend to the north. It is a very windy road, which is said to be due to the original track following the high ground through the marshes. That road the A161 follows the same path as from Eastoft through Crowle, Belton, and Epworth and on to Grasilhound as a road on a pre-drainage map of 1625.

The left hand division is Brewery Lane and the old brewery can still be seen. That whole open area including the brewery site is now covered in small bungalows and houses. It was the first building development in Crowle. The Lane continues north to a farmstead and beyond to the moors proper. We would ride there on our bikes and then venture onto the moor following the old peat cutting for about a mile into the moor. But the view was monotonous and it was easy to lose direction, without a compass we were not prepared to risk going farther. There were also said to be areas of bog in the centre into which a person could disappear without trace. We were also told that a Lancaster bomber returning badly shot up from a raid had crash landed in the centre of the moor and disappeared without trace. Whether that was true or if true the bomber has ever been found I do not know. [Remains of a bomber that crashed coming into land at Lindholme airfield can still be seen at teh Hatfield Moors nature reserve – AJT]

That is my Crowle, where my heart is, but is not present day Crowle. I thought about retiring there but my wife vetoed the idea, she was correct it no longer exists. That vibrant but inward looking society no longer exists. Until the war very few people worked outside Crowle, only then did we have workmen’s buses taking men to the Scunthorpe steel works. The new houses, cheaper than elsewhere, with modern motorways are occupied by commuters working elsewhere and using the houses for sleeping and eating. They seem to take no part in Crowle activities and the old families are dying off and their educated young people move away. But all is not lost, the commuters’ children go to local schools, become friendly with children of the old families, they will grow and intermarry. Hybrids are more vigorous than true breds, in two or three decades we will have a vibrant society again.

Bill Goldthorp.