We called it the Long Pads; my recollections are from the 1950’s and ’60’s.
Edenbreck farm; Loxam’s had that, Alice Loxam. I don’t know whether she lived there, or whether she lived at the other farm [Carr House farm] because I think Loxam’s farmed the other farm didn’t they?
My parents ran a market garden behind and to the side of Rose Cottage, Westbourne Road where we lived. Dad used to get a load of manure every year for the garden from Edenbreck farm; I think it was Robin that used to bring it.
I can remember when I was a kid there was a fire in the barn at Edenbreck farm, the hay barn; past the cottage there were some buildings, near where the piggeries were just further down there was a barn. We all stood round on the lane and watched.
We used to go cycling down the Long Pads to the canal; that’s how I learnt to ride my, it was always muddy and the nettles used to sting your legs. We also used to cycle up to Aldcliffe. I can remember the big house at Aldcliffe, that was the old Hall, we used to play in the nice garden, it still had flowers in it but the house was derelict in the late ‘50’s. Often on a Sunday all my family would walk the Long Pads up to Aldcliffe; my mum and dad and my three sisters, the youngest one in a pram.
We used to go fishing with little nets in Lucy Brook and there was watercress in it then, I can remember picking watercress down there.
We used to pick bluebells in the wood on the hill, we didn’t call it Pony Wood; we didn’t have a name for it. And we used to walk down Piggy Lane as well, from the top of Cannon Hill, past Gifford’s farm, there was a big rosebush at the end I remember, and then you’d go down and come out near Edenbreck Farm. We walked round there lots of times. Adrian used to deliver our milk. His mum was friendly with my mum; when she’d been shopping she used to call in for a cup of tea before she went up the hill.
I also remember we used to go from Dallas Road Junior School to play shinty on the field at the bottom of Cromwell Road. Every week we used to walk down Dallas Road, down Brook Street and through the gates at the bottom of Cromwell Road into that field. The field was on the left, always wet; it was so wet we used to get muddied up. The Loxam’s grazed their cattle there; there was cow muck all over the place. And we used to have all our sports days on that field as well; egg and spoon, three legged and running races. It wasn’t fenced off or marked off in any way. They used to mark it when it was sports day but that was it. They mowed it when it was sports day.
Marjorie Vaughan Jones (née Dawson)