MY MANSFIELD; Through the 50’s and beyond

   Earlier I’d mentioned that coal mining, the spinning, and knit-ware factories had brought wealth to my small hometown of Mansfield. By the time I was born in 1950 they had brought other less favorable elements too. Soot and grime was everywhere, the sulphurous black crystals clung to walls and crevices like leaches and limpets eating its way into the sandstone buildings beneath. Gone were its golden days of magnificent splendor, to be replaced by the dirty old town image that so many other mining towns and villages became tagged with. Smog ruled the days and often the nights too, as the great banks of soot filled fog drifted slowly across the landscape. Thick dense choking smog depositing its particles on the smallest surface, visibility for those brave enough to venture out, was but a yard or two at best. Streetlamps only visible as you passed beneath, swallowed up again in the murky mist. Shadows leering, looming into frightening images as down the street we went to our local corner shop, which to a small boy on an errand took on a magical journey all of its own, just to buy a few items needed for our family diner.

   Mansfield was metamorphing; electric streetlights slowly replaced the Victorian gas lamps, so favored in the movies. Old cobbled streets dug up and transformed with smoother materials, yet many of the back streets and alleyways remained, remote reminders of our past with gas lamps right up to the early 70’s. Our small mining town was growing, family’s no longer had just the one child, as incomes increased so too did our birth rate. Whole new estates of Council built housing were being planned and built to accommodate our ever-increasing population. Buildings quickly converted into schools to educate our offspring. More factories sprung up to feast on the mountain of coal being dug out of the ground by the ton, and yet more sulphur laden smoke to pollute the skies belched out by the chimney pinnacles. Whole communities grew and expanded into the surrounding countryside engulfing the smaller hamlets, no longer was Mansfield a rural town perched north west of Nottingham its big metropolis. It was becoming a major contributor to the shires economy.

   Producing coal also produces mountains of slag, a useless by-product of impurities. The eons of time not yet complete enough to turn it into coal, so was discarded, changing the landscape of Mansfield with its steaming hills of grey-black rocklets visible for miles. They slowly replaced the rolling meadows and farmland. Hedgerows disappeared by the mile as the slagheaps grew. The pumps from the mines spurted out its bubbling waters creating great lakes between the false hillsides. I remember many a friend going pole fishing there on the long hot summers we seemed to have when I was a boy.

   It was just after the war and many things were still at a premium in our bustling little town during the 1950’s. Although we were never poor as such, having a large family of six meant that money was always short in supply. More cars were appearing on the roads, and Logi Baird invented television. I remember the excitement on our street as the delivery van brought our first one. Then the disappointment as all we got for hours on end was the black and white test card. Eagerly waiting each day for what few programs were broadcast by the now famous BBC. Radios, windup gramophones and the honky-tonk piano were still the highlight of family entertainment, and then of course there was always grandma screeching out her rendition of “They’ll be blue birds over.” The poor dog hiding under the table, with its paws covering its ears, and looking up with its big brown soulful eyes as if saying “Please, will someone gag that woman.” Grandpa sitting in the raggedy armchair stuffing the cherry wood pipe he’d had for years with his favorite rum incised tobacco.

   Mansfield through the 50’s and sixties was a thriving industrial town boasting five movie cinemas the ABC, Granada, The Empire, The Hippodrome and the Rocksy or its common name the fleapit. But alas sadly today they’ve all disappeared to be replaced by the latest multi-screened Multiplex Complex. I remember well as a small boy, queuing on a Saturday morning outside at least one of our cinema’s for the sixpenny rush, hoping to see the latest episode of “Flash Gordon” as he once again saved our universe from the dreaded “Ming”. The children’s Saturday matinees accompanied by the Granada’s famous Wurlitzer Organ was our highlight of the week. Being a Children’s Club member meant a visit onstage, every birthday as the whole assembly sang the “Happy Birthday To You” song, which echoed around the vastness of the giant theatre hall. 

   Remember, this is my Mansfield and I can only tell it, as I saw it through the eyes of a small be-speckled boy growing up through the 1950’s and is not meant to be an exact history lesson, and some of the finer details have faded long ago as newer experiences have pushed them further into the recesses of my 55 year old mind.

   Apart from the cinema there was the “Cubs” and “The Boy Scouts” founded as a boys group by Baden Powel. This was a great time of adventure, a time of discovery, just like Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Together my friends and I embraced the outdoor activities, camping, orienteering, rock climbing and all the new skills we were learning, and on long hot summer days would gather our backpacks stuffed with food, and like Tom and Huck just wander off on long treks through the open countryside beyond the boundaries of Mansfield and venture into the many woodlands exploring, and just being boys. But this is “another story”.

   Over the years Mansfield has changed so much, the coalmines closed and with their demise so too did the great spinning and knit-ware factories. For a few short years Mansfield felt like a ghost town as though its whole life had ebbed away. The towns once great and famous Brewery slowly dwindled died and closed. The smog’s disappeared as though like magic from some distant fairy tale, and the community spirit waned. Our town was dying, its commerce shattered unemployment prevailed; and its once thriving community was no longer affluent.

   The Mansfield of today is once again a thriving bustling market town. Buildings renovated and cleaned and now shine with their golden hues. Newer industries are adding to its economy and tourism is increasing. As I write our whole town center is being transformed back to its former glory through our councils innovative policies.

For more information http://www.old-mansfield.org.uk/home.htm
By
Oaky Woodã2005
Agony Uncle on "The Corner 4 Women"
http://thecorner4women.com
Poet, writer, artist, webmaster and designer.
Also owner of the Oakwood Grafix Group of websites
http://www.oakwoodgrafix.co.uk/

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