More memories of the baths

I received a note from a Mrs Bevington who said that her husband used to work at the baths during the 60s and if I was interested he would be glad to talk to me.

This I did and what he told me confirmed a thought that I had had in my mind for over 50 years. When I first started going to the baths on Saturday nights I lived at 14 Oak Terrace, which was just off School Street at Eastwood, and one day I remember my mother saying that the bloke that put the groups on used to live on Ethel Street, which was a cul-de-sac off Oak Terrace.

It wasn’t until years later I found out it was Les Slater who did this and I mentioned it to a few friends over the years but I couldn’t confirm it.

What Mr Bevington told me was the confirmation I needed. He told me he worked at the baths and about some of the groups he could remember and that he knew Les Slater very well, as they went to school together (Spurley Hey) and also I assume Cranworth Road Infants and Coleridge Road Juniors as I did, but there being seven or eight years between us.

I told him that he had just made my day. He also said he thought he had lived on School Street, so I looked in my Kelly’s Directory of the 50s and couldn’t find him. So I went back to my first thought which was Ethel Street and there he was at number 7 in the 1954 edition.

If I stood at my front door I could have thrown one of my marbles and hit his, we were that close.

Talking about marbles, no, no, that’s another story altogether. The games we kids used to play on Oak Terrace, I will leave that for another day.

Mr Ray Hill, Greenfield Road, Rotherham