The thing I remember about Mrs Beattie was that during the war, when Ice-cream was not made, she used to sell frozen custard as the next best thing!
Somebody mentioned Gerald Brookes and his shops on London Road. I recall that he was universally known as “Dobbin” Brookes because his initials were G.G.
It is nice to see that Kevin Hinchcliffe is still soldiering on, although I was sure his dog was a bulldog. Kevin seems to have overtaken me age-wise…I’m sure he was in the same class as myself at A.E. primary school, and I’m only 76.
When I started school there aged 5 the first class was taken by Miss James - a very small lady who I remember was very kind We little ones used to have a lie down after having our milk in those little bottles. There was also Miss Duce - I think that’s how it was spelled. In the BIg School there was Mrs. Boyle, Miss Turner, and Miss Gray, who had taken over the 11-plus class from Mr. Ellis. The headmaster during the war was Mr Twigg - and I never saw anybody who looked less like a twig! Johnny Houghton took over as Head immediately after the war.
I mnlived at Duncan Cott on Trafford Road until about 1947 when we moved to the new council houses on Elmfield Road - we lived at No.10, next the Chynoweth’s grocery shop. My two brothers were Alec, who has lived for many years in Chester, and Steve, who now lives in March, Cambridgeshire.
The house in Trafford Road was my granddad’‘s. He was called John Hooper, and he worked at Isaac Massey’s, the builders, at the end of George Street, for over 65 years until he retired aged 78 in 1945.
His father, also John Hooper, was a Cornish lead miner who worked in the mines on the Edge, and also at a place called Snailbeach in Shropshire. He left his wife and four children to fend for themselves in Alderley when he emigrated to Australia in the 1860s. Those definitely weren’t the good old days!
Bernard Spilsbury