Tony Cunnane's Early Years 1935-53

One of my great pleasures in the mid 1940s was to take the three-minute walk on Sunday afternoons from our house, to the end of Cotton Street and across Denby Dale Road to the bandstand in Thornes Park to listen to the brass band concerts. The bandstand was superbly located facing a large grassy hill where, on sunny summer Sundays, large crowds would congregate for a picnic with the accompaniment of good music. Directly in front of the stage was a cleared area set out with a couple of hundred or so deck chairs. On a fine day most of the seats filled up early on. The entrance to the seating area was through two small gaps in the fence either side of the stage area. There was someone on duty at the gates to sell you the programme - which was usually nothing more than a typed and duplicated sheet of paper with the name of the band, its conductor and a list of the music they were planning to play. It cost a mere couple of pence or so.

Most of the bands had their own, almost certainly pre-war, immaculate braided uniforms and decorated music stands. The musical standards were extremely high - especially the instrumental soloists. Many of the audience were devotees of brass band music and they listened critically to the performances; others, possibly the majority, were there just to enjoy good music in congenial surroundings.

As a family we went there almost every Sunday but I don't remember ever going into the seating area. There were a couple of reasons for that. Firstly, my parents did not wish, or could not afford, to fork out a shilling or so for the four of us to have the privilege of sitting down in a deck chair to listen. Secondly, and possibly a more important reason, having paid to go into the enclosure my parents would have felt duty bound to remain there until the end of the concert. That would have delighted me but I was the only member of the family who thought so. Having said that, the sound and view was just as good standing by the outside of the fence. After listening to the band we often walked through the park, past the bowling greens and tennis courts, past the duck pond and into the magnificent rose garden. I used to love wandering under the trellises that that held masses of beautiful roses in the season. In those days I couldn't reach the roof. The seats were always occupied all day at weekends with other folk wandering around waiting to grab a seat as soon as someone moved off.

I can't now remember the names of the bands I definitely listened to but I do know that over the course of the late 1940s all the best-known Yorkshire brass and silver bands performed there, including the Black Dyke Mills (National Brass Band Champions 1947-49 and 1951), Brighouse and Rastrick (National Brass Band Champions 1946), the Wakefield CWS, and bands from many of the large collieries in the area, such as Carlton Main Frickley (from South Elmsall).

Soon after the war the ice cream vendors came back onto the scene and they tended to wander amongst the crowds selling their sixpenny ice cream sandwiches and tupenny and threepenny cornets. There were two local manufacturers, Massarella's and Lumb's. Our family thought that Lumb's ice cream was better than Massarella's but it was a personal preference. Late onto the scene was Walls which strangely we didn't like because we deemed it too creamy and too sickly. In the first years after the war our palates were still attuned to the wartime diet - which certainly didn't include cream! Something I am sure we didn't think about at the time: the complete ice cream with cornets, wafers and sandwich biscuits was edible and so there was no litter left behind - not that anyone left any kind of litter in those post-war years.

There were two quick and easy ways into the park from our house in Cotton Street, each was only about 100 metres from the end of our street. One was via the main gates opposite St James' Church, just by the public telephone box, the horse trough and the water fountain. We kids regularly refreshed ourselves from the water fountain. Working horses transiting along Denby Dale Road often stopped at the horse trough for rest and refreshment. The second way in was from Park Avenue, a narrow avenue off Denby Dale Road between Cotton Street and Avondale Street. In the 1940s Park Avenue was unfinished and without a proper surface. It was only about 200 yards long and on a slight up gradient. At the top a narrow entrance led to the splendid arena, the location for fairgrounds every summer after the war. The top of Park Avenue also provided splendid views of the City skyline. Park Avenue continued down the other side of the hill and eventually joined up with Lakefield Lane and then Westgate, the main road out of Wakefield towards the Horbury and Dewsbury. I rarely ventured down that side of Park Avenue - it was Lawefield Lane School territory.

Denby Dale Road, seen above on 11 August 2009, was a narrow single carriageway in the 1940s. Where the bus stop now is was the telephone box we used to call Dad when he was serving on temporary duty at Leyhill Open Prison in Gloucestershire. The Bandstand is just inside the park entrance on the right and about 100 metres along a pathway parallel to the road.

Above:

Wakefield park's bandstand as it was in April 2008


Click on either image to p[op up a larger version

Below:

The bandstand as I found it on 11 August 2009

Above:

This is Park Avenue as it looks in 2008 - and there is a way through to Westgate End whereas during the 1940s this was a dirt track with only a footpath from the top of this rise through to Lawefield Lane and Westgate End.