At the Walwyn Road entrance to the Park.
Stop 8 – Of a watchman and kids hitching a lift on the back of the dustcarts.
Narrator: The slope at this end of the dip is the best sledging slope for a long way, and safe enough for small children to enjoy. On snow days, the park is busy, with long queues to take a turn on sledging down!
Narrator: Here are some more recollections about the rubbish being dumped in the pit here. Locals say it was 60 feet deep (that’s about twice the height of house) so it took a few years to fill up:
Peter’s memories: “There were large Horses and their tip Up two wheeled carts that used to tip in to the brickfield. They were stabled in Old Homesdale Road at Mackintosh’s Yard, where there was a Night Watchman during the war, he was Mr Jerry Hodder from Waldo Road. He would sometimes roast a potato for us in his fire.”
Narrated by Phil: At that time, most pupils attended Raglan Road until they were 14, and some of their lessons, were in one of the school extensions, down a track behind the Hayes Lane Baptist chapel (now a pupil referral centre). Children were not given much time to loiter before having to be back to the main buildings for their next lesson (or registration at 4pm), and one local resident, Reg, told us that if one of the horse-drawn rubbish carts was coming up the hill, he and his friend would run out – without the driver spotting them – and hang on the back of the cart. Reg continued:
Reg’s memory read by David: “Sometimes, when they got to the main road, a public-spirited soul would tell the driver that the poor horse had two hangers-on at the back and they would have to jump off. Other times they would get a lift all the way to the Havelock Road entrance to the dump and then they only had one road to walk back down.” Reg in 2018.
Narrator: Continue round the park perimeter, parallel along the line of the chain link fence to the green lane.