Issue 37 - September
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Scarborough Life
45
Haunts round the old borough Patrick Henry recalls childhood memories In 1946, soon after the Second World War ended, my family moved to run a boarding house in Falconers Road, in the town centre. Born in the Prospect Road area in 1938, I remember the warning sirens and the bomb shelters down back lanes. Most of all, the victory party, spread out down the street. Catching up on eating; much we missed through shortage and rationing. Though mostly that continued for a further decade. Our next house stood where the Premier Inn and Carousel are now: a key point in the town, and in history, where old lifestyles were fading into the past. War bombing had spared our house but derelict buildings loomed nearby. A landmine dropped in Vernon Road wiped out the old art school and medical baths on one corner and reduced to a gaunt shell the birthplace of the artist Lord Leighton, Leighton House, now the rear part of the Brunswick Pavilion. Around the corner, in the Crescent, lay the art gallery, the new medical baths at Londesborough Lodge and Woodend, birthplace and home of Edith Sitwell’s family. Owning another mansion in Derbyshire, they had not resided here for many years. This place was as intriguing as Leighton House, in the eyes of our schoolboy gang. We played war games or Red Indians in the grounds of these residences, making up ghostly figures to scare each other: “Lord Leighton’s Ghost will get you”. Sometimes we ventured inside the rickety house and claimed to hear his footfalls on the bare stairs, or even glimpse his shadowy approach. In fact, he had died in London 50 years earlier. In the nearby art gallery hangs his painting of Jezebel and Ahab: sternly haunting, compounding the influence of his aura, then,
Gala Land and still today. Edith Sitwell’s sharp, medieval face I had seen pictured in a book, and so imagined that visage scowling down from the cracked dusty windows at Woodend. One boy threw a stone in fear to dispel the spectre I had described. This sound and incident reached the figure of Long Tom, park keeper in the nearby Londesborough gardens, and a realistic fear, amid our range of made-up ghosts. Tall and straight, with black stick, military cap and Kitchener-type moustache: perfect as the accusing figure against wayward youth. He nearly caught us that time, as he strode in pursuit. Lord Londesborough had owned this adjacent property. A relative of the Sitwells, and a friend of Edward VII, when he had been Prince of Wales. He was said to visit this town and its quarter of ill-repute,
reflected maybe in the name of the Prince of Wales pub in Castle Road. Near our house, in Vernon Road, tram lines would rise up through the worn tarmac. Another ghostly appearance. Trams ended in this town around 1930, the omnibus taking over. The old tram depot, where now stands the Palm Court Hotel parking, a listed Art Deco building. In the post-war time, it was the United Bus Company garage. Once, a tram had missed its turning into the depot and shot down steep Vernon Road, crashing into Gala Land, an underground amusements complex. Driver and passengers escaped unharmed. Gala Land, a dim and misty grotto, held many shadowy features. A ghost train. A lugubrious all-ladies orchestra and a waxwork exhibition of life-like figures of war chiefs, criminals and murderers. Once,
at dusk, near closing time, alone, I watched those faces peering back. Wax on faces, shining bright as the fear perspiring on my face. I fled out and up dark Vernon Road, past the Rotunda Museum, remembering the historic skeletons and shrunken heads I had seen there, and not calming down my queasy tension. Up the hill, I drew level with the bus garage, once the tram shed, and recalled the story of Uncle George, a neighbour and buscleaner. Scrubbing out vehicles, alone, by night, among fag ends and debris, he found a corpse. It turned out to be a drunk who had missed his stop after a pub-crawl. George swore he often heard the sound of that doomed tram which had perished long before. Now, fleeing from Gala Land and the Rotunda’s sinister clutches, I sensed hearing the swish and drone of that phantom tram, sweeping down the dark hill towards me, pressed against the blank wall. Then I reached the safety of our house. “Lock the door, lad, and you’re late”, the family called out. One night, they heard a woman wailing outside bombed Leighton House, calling the name of a lost acquaintance: “Martha Bycroft!” “Do not tell Patrick”, someone muttered. “He’s nervy enough over strange imaginings”. But it was too late, I had heard. That voice and figure I never knew now filled my thoughts. Among many almost too young to grasp the full terrors of the war, I found that post-war era, when the borough changed much through its Gothic-like features and characters, fading into history. But it stayed impressive in that farcical range of made-up horrors.
Rotary fair was gusty but successful Words and photos by Dave Barry Strong gusts of wind disrupted an annual community fair in the town centre. Items for sale blew off tables and gazebos briefly became sails - they were in danger of lifting off. But by and large the fair passed off successfully and about 35 charities were happy with the result. Run by the Rotary Club of Scarborough Cavaliers, the fair has been held in the pedestrian precinct every year for the last 15, usually on the third Saturday of August. Rotary volunteers borrow tables from the Horticultural Society at the Rainbow Centre and hire them out to charities, said Rotarian John Dudley. The table-hire proceeds go into a Rotary pot which is distributed around good causes; mostly local plus a few abroad, such as one
which builds sand-dams and improves water supplies in Ghana. A second after the photo of the Guide Dogs for the Blind stall was taken, half the things on the table were blown onto the ground, startling one of the guide dogs. The other was too laid back. Ann Nowacki, branch organiser for Scarborough, Filey and district, and her colleagues dashed around, gathering up the wind-blown items. The fair had a fancy-dress theme and Gladys Freeman, who chairs Scarborough Ladies Lifeboat Guild, sported a medieval hat. Gladys said the guild was planning an afternoon tea with a My Fair Lady theme, at the Palm Court Hotel on 28 September, from 2-4pm. The entertainment will consist of a singer, a pianist and Alan Hargreaves doing a soliloquy. Tickets cost £16.
On the RNLI stall were, L-R, Minnie Raper and Gladys Freeman of the Ladies Lifeboat Guild with Gladys’s grandchildren, Daniel Smaling, 18, and Holly Smaling, 15
The Guide Dogs for the Blind stall was run by, back L-R, Sheena O’Connell, Suzanne French and Ann Nowacki, with Denise Wilcox and labradors Zane and Wilson
L-R, Anita Cassidy, Pauline Bedford, Margaret Barker, Julie Janes and Yvonne Quinsey of the Derwent Valley Bridge library
No prizes for guessing which group Jan Cleary and Susanna Robinson were representing
Four lads from Barnsley in a big deckchair
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