Dear Messenger,
It gave me great pleasure to read the article in the April 2006 Messenger regarding the Wembley Playground at the bottom of Sutherland Road. I spent many a Saturday afternoon playing there in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Trying to get the swings as high as possible to a point where the chain would bend and leave you in free fall for a couple of seconds, having six kids on the rocking horse and seeing who could stay on the longest, the back seat being the most perilous. Of course with today’s safety rules these types of activities would not be tolerated, oh what the kids of today are missing out on.
We also used to play at the playground in Abbeyfield Park which had much the same equipment plus a slide. I took my children there in 1972 on their first trip to Sheffield. We live in Australia, and they had never seen rocking horses like the ones there. I trust that playground still exists and is kept up along with the Abbeyfield Park resurrection.
During that same visit I also took them to the Public Swimming Pool across the road from the Wembley Playground. For some 12 years I hardly ever missed having a swim at least once a week at the baths. It was sad to see that it had been pulled down, but even in 1972 it was showing its age. More important for the community in those days would have been two services:
1) The slipper baths, where for 6 pennies you could have a hot bath. Bear in mind none of the houses in the area had a bathroom or in fact hot water at the kitchen sink.
2) The wash house, where for about 2 shillings the week’s washing could be done in large washing machines and then, mainly the bed sheets, could be dried in huge steam dryers.
Old prams and four-wheeled barrows could be found in most back yards which were used to carry the washing down to the wash house and back. My mum, who owned the Petre Street Post Office, used to dash down about 9.30 on a Thursday morning with the washing and load a machine, she would then return to the shop. Fred Shaw the attendant would empty the washing machine and put her sheets into a dryer so by 1.00pm, which was early closing in those days she could return and take the sheets out of the dryer and bring them home. I know Fred was a friendly guy but I often wondered whether he received a small remuneration from her for his trouble.
Gordon Lawton, Renmark, South Australia