Tony Cunnane's Early Years 1935-53

Our house in Wakefield was 29 Cotton Street, the left hand house of the final semi, right up against the railway embankment from which it was separated by a five-barred wooden fence. My 2006 image on the left shows 29 and 31 Cotton St.

My bedroom was behind the window at top left and commanded an excellent view of the railway - off to the right behind the trees, which were not there in the 1940s. I don't think the street lamp was there either when we lived here. (Click on the image to pop up a larger version.)

It was always accepted by grown ups that the fence could be sat upon for train watching but it was forbidden to jump down onto the railway side. In those days little boys did as they were told! Mind you, it didn’t stop grown ups clambering over the fence after dark with coat scuttles collecting pieces of coal that had 'fallen' from locomotive tenders. We also knew that from time to time some of the firemen on slow-moving goods trains, or it may have been the same one on different nights, deliberately threw shovelfuls of coal down onto the embankment. I know it was happening because on dark nights I could see it happening from my bedroom window! I have no idea whether this was pre-planned for a particular family but by next morning all the coal had been 'collected'. My Dad warned me off collecting any coal that way. 'It's stealing,' he would say, 'and I could lose my job if anyone found out.'

We were the last family to move into the new houses. No 29, like all the others, had pebble-dashed outside walls and a very modern and attractive appearance – a vast improvement on the houses we had occupied in Salford and Manchester. Downstairs there was a kitchen, a sitting room, and the great luxury of a bathroom complete with toilet. Upstairs there were two decent sized bedrooms and a much smaller third one that was really nothing more than a box room. The bedroom I shared with my sister had a splendid view of the LMS railway while my parents’ bedroom at the other side of the house had a rather more restricted view of the famous viaduct, known locally as the ‘Ninety-nine Arches’, which carried the tracks of the London & North Eastern Railway (LNER).

We always called the living room the ‘front room’ in spite of the fact that it was at the rear of the house. The living room had a door leading to what was intended to be the back garden. It was, in fact, an uncultivated area which we always called ‘out back’. We hardly ever used this door and indeed it was kept locked most of the time. Because the door was far from draught-proof, we used to draw the thick full-length curtains across on cold days and nights to conserve heat. The curtains were also thick enough to serve as blackouts during the winter evenings and nights when it was a serious offence to let light escape from any of the house windows.

We soon found that there were very few men in Cotton Street - and even fewer children. Most of the men, of course, had been called up and were away at the war. My Dad and our neighbour from No 25, a coal miner, were in what were called 'reserved occupations' which I learned meant the work they were doing was as important as war work. When I started school it bothered me that I had a Dad who lived at home. However, none of the other school children ever asked about my father; in fact there seemed to be an unwritten rule not to ask about each other's parents. Three small girls lived in the two houses either side of ours but the nearest boy of anywhere near my age lived in Tew Street. He was Peter Moore and I soon made friends with him. He went to an infant's school on the far side of Denby Dale Road so I could only play with him out of school hours.

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