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Bole Hill Lane, SHEFFIELD, S10 1SB

There is a gap in the terraced housing. Where the next house in the row used to be was the first house my mother and father rented. I was three at the time. We spent one of the worst winters in living memory in that house at no.56 In total, six houses were demolished and one bungalow was built in their place.

The infield of this famous cricket ground was the yard. The outfield was anywhere out the yard, especially over the rooftops. The boundary was the tram tracks. The wickets, now faded away, were chalk marks once drawn on the brickwork to the right of this former garage. The match was declared over at teatime, dark or when a tram cut the ball in half. If the latter happened early on, the game reverted to hide & seek, marbles, or tig. For a wider view of the ground http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1234094#form

At the age of seven, way back in 1949, when I lived here above the former Sheffield Savings Bank http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1232062 this was a little known, but World Class cricket ground. From 1949 to the early ‘50s, many test matches were played here and many a sixer was belted out of the boundary only to fall foul of the dreaded tramcar wheels on the main road. The wickets were scrawled in chalk on the right–hand corner of the then garage. It can be seen here though that the garage doors have been removed and the garage turned into an outbuilding. Remarkably, only one window was ever broken and that was due to substituting the rubber ball for a golf ball. I dread to think what the result would have been if it had connected with the bowler’s head. Back then, the ground seemed so big and it was certainly in better condition. There were no Wheelie bins, only a bin for the waste bits of meat from Peat’s butchers shop. At times there was a bit of a hum from the bin, but on cold days it wasn’t too bad. The corrugated sheeting of the add–on was painted black back then and the building was a handy leg–up when the ball got lodged in the guttering. Similarly, an outside toilet that was to the right and at the back of the fence was useful for access to the upstairs kitchen window when I came home from school and no one was in.

The road faces westwards – From 2nd September 1967 to 4th January 1974, I lived in a house on the brow of the hill and after a late–shift on a cold windy winter’s night, walking around the corner from getting off a moderately warm bus around 00:30 – this road was like the road to the frozen north. The cold prevailing wind would freeze my face numb before I got anywhere near home. On early morning shifts, walking down the road at 03:40 to catch the staff bus, it was no better. In the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, when I was a young lad, I used to go to work on my bike. Home back then was through the entrance to the right. So after work I would belt off home as fast as I could and then turn left off the main road, then a quick sharp right and hurtle into the yard as fast as I could make it, day after day after day. One day there was a car parked at the entrance and I slammed into it, like an idiot. The bloke in the car just wound down the window and told me to be more careful!

The rear entrance to the properties 235-239 Crookes. Unusually, the houses on Toftwood Road, at left, start at number six. The two houses in the distance are on Bolehill Lane.

A block of shops that contains the former Sheffield Savings Bank and nine-roomed flat where I used to live with my parents many years ago. http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1226951 http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1232062 Previously to that we lived in a house up this road to the right - 56 Bolehill Lane, which has since been demolished. I saw the winter of '47 in that house, when the snow drifted above the height of the back door. As a family, we didn't live on a diet of fish & chips, but many's the time I've been in this chip shop.

The road leads from Crookes, at the top of the hill, on down to Crookesmoor. Nothing has changed much here in the last 60 years. It was my regular route down to the school on Western Road and it was a great sledging run many years ago, when there were very few cars about. For a long time, I lived at the top of here, but across the other side of the main road.

The red brick building at the corner is The Punch Bowl, public house. Across the main road is F.A.B.L.E., a charity shop, which used to be The Sheffield Savings Bank, 239 Crookes. Above the bank was a nine-roomed flat. The central skylight is where my bedroom was and beneath it the master bedroom. To the left was the front room, which had views of the Park Hill flats, some distance away. We actually watched them being built, bit by bit, but it took some time to figure out where they were.

Now a charity shop, but years ago, my parents and my brother and I lived above this former bank. Part of the agreement for living in the flat meant the occupants become caretakers of the bank and as result of that, someone had to clean it; wash the floor behind the counter, dust all the furniture, polish the brasses and the pewter inkwells and do whatever was necessary to clean the lino floor on the staff side of the counter, and also clean the windows. The weather made a big difference to the work involved. There was also the staff toilet to clean and the pots to wash, but not in that order. Basically, the bank was one large room with an internal entrance porch and chunk taken out of the far left corner for the staff room. The entrance doorway was central, with two large windows either side. The double–doors led into an internal porch with a door at 90º to the left and right. The lower half was wood–panelled and the upper half was glazed with obscure glass. Facing the porch was a full–width counter with flip–tops at either end for the staff and a small screened off privacy section. The customer side was lino tiled and it took plenty of Vim and elbow grease to clean them. To the far right of the bank stood two large safes. Ahead was a door to the exit and staff toilet. Between the door and the staffroom was a barred window with obscure glass. The staffroom wall that faced the counter had a large desk up against it. The returning wall had a built–in cupboard to the left, which contained the ledgers. The staffroom door was to the right of this. Between the far wall and the counter was a huge desk and a supporting pillar. The small staffroom had table, chairs, odds and ends and an entrance door to the cellar and a matching barred window. There was also a low metal box, but I don’t know what it was used for. It may have been another safe. Through the door to the cellar, the steps led to the left. To the right was storage space for mop, bucket and other cleaning items and was underneath the stairway to the flat above. The rear entrance/exit and toilet was in a part of the building that extended from the main building. The left-hand window of the flat belongs to the lounge, the other, the front bedroom. To the left is a Pizza Shop, to the right is a Beauty Salon. To the left of the block - http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1226951 to the right - http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1232146 The pub opposite - http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1232455 and the road opposite - http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1232278