KBGS Old Boys' Forum

A place to discuss Keighley Boys' Grammar School. 


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Not quite Highway 61 revisited.

Stayed overnight in the "home town". Driving from Bradford saw me on some recently built highway which left me a bit disorientated - not difficult - and ended up arriving at Marley, but couldn't work out where the playing fields are or were.I did see some sign saying words along the lines of "Marley Sports Development" (?). But my usual road in used to be via Shpley,Bingley,Stockbridge. The journey from Wakefield is utterly depressing, and I longed for the moors and hills overlooking Keighley town. The three cinemas near the old school looked uninviting, as did most of what I saw. I went up to Haworth and the moors for a breath of Cathy's air. It's strange going back to the old place. I know no one there now, but go back from time to time because Keighley is, despite its grimness, my roots. I knew nothing else growing up, other than "boarding house" holidays or caravan stays in the likes of Morecombe,Scarborough,Bridlington. I passed by Keighley cricket ground, which evoked on the spot memories and has often been mentioned on here. I didn't have the time to visit many other spots from the old days, or was it that I didn't have the courage?

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 58-66

Re: Not quite Highway 61 revisited.

As you say Alan, ‘Not quite Highway 61 revisited’ (possibly Highway 650 revisited). As ‘they’ say; ‘It’s grim up north’ and it certainly is now in Keighley!

You must surely have recognised the ‘tip-top’ on your right, opposite the gasometers. Then you would have driven over the site of the nissen hut that was the original Keighlian’s Clubhouse.

OK, so the ‘Ritz’ and ‘Regent’ aren’t much cop, but the ‘Essoldo’ isn’t too bad – the exterior hasn’t changed at all.

The school has been sold to Bradford Met after Keighley College got into financial difficulties – talk about the proverbial ‘P*** up in a brewery’! Now they’re wanting to develop a new site adjacent to the railway station at a cost of £25 million! (Christ, you could buy Keighley for that!) – to ‘regenerate Keighley’ (again), diverting bus routes ‘et al’. ‘Brilliant!’ Trouble is, it’s our money that they’re spending, not theirs!

Even living in Embsay, I know what you mean. I get the same feeling every time I go down to see my mother (96 in October). Keighley has been ruined and certainly is not the place that even I knew in the 50’s and 60’s.

You should have taken time out though for the Cricket Ground and even ‘Cougar Park’ as Lawkholme Lane is now known. Remember the welcoming communal baths under the stand after the inter-house cross country run?

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 59-66

Current location (optional) Embsay

Re: Not quite Highway 61 revisited.

Dave.Yes the Essoldo wasn't too bad.A girl was changing a poster as I drove past. As for Marley,yes,I obviously saw the gasometers, but didn't notice the shed - perhaps next time. Driving around town the thought struck me that perhaps there's an old shool mate walking round.Yikes! But it is strange going back.The memories evoked as I see some sights I hadn't thought too much about; for example,the library : I used to hide away in there on many an evening.I'm sure more memories of my visit will come to me.But it is a drab old place.I could never live there again.The thought of having those communal baths at Lawkholme are particularly enticing,however. Driving past the cricket ground I remember thinking there's many a fine ( and not so fine) player trod that turf. It looked wonderful. So perhaps all not bad. A break from the drabness.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 58-66

Re: Not quite Highway 61 revisited.

I too have just paid a visit to the old town for a few days,which was a bonus for me after a few weeks in Italy where our daughter has produced a grandchild.There is always a certain amount of nostalgia,but I was on the run the whole time. Thankfully I still have some good friends there who are very kind and entertain me well.The changes around Marley and Worth Village were confusing to me too,and I didn't have the time to really wander and sort them out in my head! I too feel sad at some of the changes in the place and I have never felt the urge to want to return there to live. None the less,it is the place I was born and although it wasn't easy in the war years,I feel that I had a good childhood in the village,Cross Roads,and a good grounding at school which has set me up for a happy and successful life downunder.Cheers.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 47-51

Current location (optional) Auckland-- NZ

Re: Not quite Highway 61 revisited.

I was there too over the bank holiday weekend, when I usually make a plilgimage after the Colne Blues Festival. Alan - were you the guy driving on the wrong side of the road looking through a digital camera? Like you say - roots. It's the surrounding countryside more than the town itself that stirs a sense of belonging somewhere (in a different way than belonging to the place where I've spent most of my life, which is here in Edinburgh). Looking down from the top of Black Hill is still a great view of a superb setting - all those valleys converging on the town itself. The day they demolished the old town centre to build that covered shopping mall was the day things changed forever for me. Low Street had been a vibrant shopping thoroughfare/meeting place and overnight became a backwater. The town centre lost its compactness and sense of existing within comfortable boundaries. The old shops and traders were gone. The traditional marketplace became another anonymous covered concrete hall. And yet more old streets with houses, workshops and pubs became first a wasteland, then a Morrison's (same thing, differently said)? Alan - did you venture up Highfield lane after your trip to the library? Most of the Highfield/Calver Avenue/Guardhouse area has stayed much the same - though it seems to have shrunk in size. What used to be a long sledge run down Calver Road into the path of the quarter-hourly Calver bus is now, in length, more Vauxhall Cresta than Cresta Run. Some of the houses on your old estate still have the original trowelled plasterwork effect they had when built. I remember once when lightning struck one of those houses and we went round to look at the damage to the outside finish of one of the walls- the rendering had been pierced and scorched where the lightning had struck, and it stayed like that for years. Getting back to the question of the old town centre - does anyone have any pictures they could post of things as they were before the bulldozers arrived?

Re: Not quite Highway 61 revisited.

I must admit to sharing the conservationist views expressed above. For a picture of the old town - try under "Photos contributed...."; "Miscellaneous" "Queens Theatre 1956". I too would be pleased to see pictures of the "old" Keighley posted. Two thoughts : - Ian Dewhirst's (Old Keighlian) "Down Memory Lane" in the Kly News often has photies which have aspects of an earlier Keighley; private family photo collections may contain many interesting "old town" back drops - so start looking through them. Anyone interested in web-searching contemporary Keighley is fortunate in that Google Earth has some high quality satellite pics of Kly - I can find the house in which I was born - and even pick out the bedroom window.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 52-60

Re: Not quite Highway 61 revisited.

Allan, that's an evocative piece of writing, and I feel choked up, having just read it. No, I didn't venture up to Calver, but have been there a few times up until about five years ago.I found it then, as you say, all appearing on a smaller scale. But going there gives me mixed feelings, and couldn't quite face it this time, though I did want to go to the rec to see if that path still runs down the left handside from the snicket to the bowling green. I imagine gazing on the rec would be akin to taking in Lords and Twickenham all in one view, bearing in mind the sporting moments of the great place. I did stop for fish 'n chips ( a scone actually ) at a place on Bradford Road on the left just before East Riddlesden Hall. I drove up past the Granby and the Willow Tree and up to find a parking spot, and ate them there,with a great view down over the valley towards town and surrounding hills. Driving down from Haworth to town, just before hitting the small roundabout leading to West Lane and town centre,I passed a pub I recall going in an a Saturday night. King's Head? Not sure.I must take notes the next time I go! I agree with you about the town centre : it's the romance of the surrounding hills which draws me back. The town just happens to be there. But there was little grumbling back then.I didn't know any different.( As an aside, my mother found an old Keighley News with a photo of the home guard. There was my dad. It might have been a sub home guard.I think it may have been divided into sections, this one being the " workers on the buses" section, but I may be wrong).

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 58-66

Re: Not quite Highway 61 revisited.

Sorry.It's the roots which take me back, as originally stated. The hills and views lend romance, in my eyes, to it all.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 58-66

Re: Not quite Highway 61 revisited.

Aah - a scone! My kingdom for a scone. And chips. And scraps.
BTW: the kingdom comes with mortgage....

Re: Not quite Highway 61 revisited.

I told the lady in the chippy that down my way a scone is a scallop.It was explained to me that a scone has two slices of potato, a scallop,one. Work that one out.Also, I was told scallop is not used up Keighley way, so I'm more confused.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 58-66

Re: Not quite Highway 61 revisited.

A scone is two slices of potato with fish in the middle then battered.
It's only round the Keighley Area that they are called scones. They are called fish cakes or cakes anywhere else.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 1959-64

Current location (optional) KEIGHLEY

Re: Not quite Highway 61 revisited.

A fish cake is a mix of fish and potato,with bread crum cover, whereas a scallop round my parts is the same as a scallop.Any advances?

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 58-66

Re: Not quite Highway 61 revisited.

Sorry, I meant scallop same as a scone. This is geting a little philosophical.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 58-66

Re: Not quite Highway 61 revisited.

Surely a scallop round your parts would be rather uncomfortable Alan.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 58-65

Current location (optional) Leeds

Re: Not quite Highway 61 revisited.

This is getting silly.
A scallop when purchased in a Fish & Chip shop is a slice of potato battered, and very nice they are too.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 1959-64

Current location (optional) KEIGHLEY

Re: Not quite Highway 61 revisited.

Yes Alan (B) , The Kings Head indeed at the junction of South Street and Goulbourne Street. A popular pub for we 'Lund Parkers' It sold Hammonds Ale.
Its still there.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 58-64

Current location (optional) Wirral

Re: Not quite Highway 61 revisited.

I know it's still there,Brian.I drove past it the other day.(As for scallops and scones,I have to say you are wrong,David).

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 58-66

Re: Not quite Highway 61 revisited.

Well, at least he's right about what constitutes a "fishcake" or "cake" in areas outside Keighley.
I would always receive the item David describes, when requesting a "cake".
Incidentally, a request for "fish cake & chips" always carried an implied comma between "fish" and "cake" and resulted in all 3 items.

God, I need to get a life! (or my employers to provide some meaningful activity).

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 58 - 65

Re: Not quite Highway 61 revisited.

No Mean City.
But Paul said, "I am a Jew, from Tarsus, a citizen of no mean city. I beg you, allow me to speak to the people.” Acts 21:39


1.

A river of soft water
out of the high moors,
a market for woollen goods
in a wider world,
all that was needed to build a town-
so they did.

Cluttering the valley,
sprawling up steep hills,
a collage of styles,
materials and aspirations,
it decays now.

The solid stone Victorian mills,
once all hum and clatter and pomp,
are still now
their chimneys cold,
the slow brown river,
dammed and wiered,
is a Lethe where wraiths,
roam the banks,
murder their memories,
choke on their childhoods.


2

It doesn’t matter what the weather is like outside, there is a draught that sidles along these lightless passages and up flights of stairs that are pitched in gloom and wedged with shadows.
Dust descends where a muddle of feathers rots and the purple lump of the decaying squab, beak still gawping, serves a pulsing knot of maggots that unravel its web of brief life.
All who live here are guttural and stiff-tongued. The rank air threatens and stultifies speech, stilts words till they shift meaning; barked curses and screams are the only remnants of any coherence.
The flats loom over streets, where the wail of sirens bodes, where night coils and envelops. Light spews over wet ways, a bovine piss clatters against the privy of a wall, a bawled obscenity pursues as the pack bays. Someone coughs and bleeds. Distant shouts, derisive as a donkey’s bray, echo down dark canyons where life grows cold and fetid as old bibles in dank cellars.
The valleys of the night are littered with this debris, ragged wads of shade that merge, coagulate to a thicker dark, to tear comfort from each other’s arms, tangle and forget, as the night bird sings to their flutes of subdued laughter and tunes of lust.


3

Between the market stalls he loped
with the soft pad of unshod feet.
He stooped low, drifted past me, silent and swift.
The rank animal reek of him
wafted over me as I stepped to one side.
to let him pass.

Shoppers shrank away, stilled in disbelief;
he was lean as a stick, pale as winter sunlight,
his shag of fair hair, a matted shock,
fell forward over his eyes.
He gave one feral snarl of terror and warning
that parted the people ahead.

A hand of uncut nails
clutched white chicken bones
against his grubby jeans,
ragged to the calves.

Lycanthrope. Discard.
He melted into the shadows
faded into memory
gossip
myth.

4

Once I was green as new grass springing.
I really believed that it only needed effort,
time spent, a set of new ideas,
ends pursued with vigour and endeavour
and things might just change, get better.

I stand upon the evening hills to watch
the world rehearse its madness
as it spins into another night.
I hear their clamour, baffled by intervening trees;
watch lights flicker, faint as galaxies,
dimmed by the space between us.

I dead-head my petunias,
will cut the lawn tomorrow
and trim the hedge next week- perhaps.
It is enough for me now.

Re: Not quite Highway 61 revisited.

Enjoyed your poem, Arthur. Says it all.

Re: Not quite Highway 61 revisited.

'He stooped low, drifted past me, silent and swift.
The rank animal reek of him'

Sounds like Gilbert Wilson to me!

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 59-66

Current location (optional) Embsay

Re: Not quite Highway 61 revisited.

"a Lethe where wraiths,
roam the banks,
murder their memories,
choke on their childhoods."

Arthur, is this a comment on the kbgs.com Forum?

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 52-60

Re: Not quite Highway 61 revisited.

No, intelligent and sensitive people just trying to tell the truth. Have you some objection to that?

Re: Not quite Highway 61 revisited.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 52-60

Re: Not quite Highway 61 revisited.

Hi Terry. I suppose it might well be construed as such although in truth I enjoyed my childhood very much and remember it fondly. I was even a little reluctant to lay it to one side but the RAF sorted that out. BTW I know you well Terry and your comment was undoubtedly made with your tongue firmly in your cheek.
Cedric! Nice to see you about. I sometimes wonder what happened to you. We were fellow warriors in the battle mentioned in the last part of the piece, weren't we? I imagine you are still out there with girded loins. Thank you for flying to my defence, albeit unnecessarily.
However, your reply seems to have left Terry speechless which has to count as some sort of accomplishment. LOL.
I am glad you all find the piece valid and pertinent. It is my view of what Keighley has unfortunately degenerated into. I am the chair of governors for a local school which draws most of its children from the flats referred to in the second part of the piece and I visit the flats regularly. It is, of course, my perception of the place but honest enough for that.
Thanks for reading Arthur Seeley.