Open Writing

Between the buildings in Littlewood’s Yard and Dransfield’s Yard there was a slot. It couldn’t be called anything else. The space was too narrow to be a ginnel, snicket or, in the accepted sense, a passage, although it was a throughway.

This gap would be 12 to 15 inches wide at most, just enough to allow us juveniles to side-hop through. Rolf was an Alsatian dog -- a wolf-hound to us -- a large animal. Well, he looked large, but not exceptional, and he couldn’t get through the slot.

Rain never reached the ground throughout. The floor was covered with builder’s rubbish. We knew there was nothing of value there, even for us. We’d poked about in it often enough by the part-light that strained its way along the slit.

However, this aperture did serve a very useful purpose. It acted as a bolt hole when we were being chased, either by bigger boys or by some irate householder whom we had upset with some boyhood prank. Shoot into that vent on a dark night and our pursuer would be fair flummoxed as to where his quarry had gone.

This space was between two blocks of buildings. One was the stable and garage belonging to Bob Littlewood, or more correctly, the Tadcaster Brewery, since they owned the surroundings and Bob was landlord. All this was to the north of the gap. To the south were houses in Scatchard’s yard. It was the backs of these which invariably we faced when hoppetying along from whichever direction. I don’t know why. Who can fathom the workings of a child’s mind?

Needless to say, the backs of these houses held no windows. Mind you, the house fronts with windows looked out on no panoramic vista. There was the customary bare stony ground intermingled with cinders. Then, no more than ten yards from the house doors, were the lavatories and ash-pits. Convenient, especially since one end of the yard was blocked off by the backs of yet more houses, so creating a secluded and private area. Private, that is, to some extent, since next to the closets there was another building.

Mr. Scatchard was a butcher, one of four which the village sported, and it was to him that the aforementioned building belonged. It was his slaughterhouse -- abattoir today -- but what’s in a name?

More houses ran at right angles to the ones just mentioned, and at the yard bottom as it joined High Street there was situated on the left the butcher’s shop and on the right Hill’s cobbler’s shop. Beef on one side, tanned hide on the other. Each shop owner helped support the community.

On Sunday mornings or maybe afternoons the cry of a young voice would be heard, “T’ cow’s coming. T’ van’s ‘ere.” The residents of the yard would have already been alerted. That particular news travelled fast.

It was the arrival of Saxton’s cattle wagon that created such a flurry of activity. Doors slammed shut, faces appeared at downstairs windows and heads craned out of bedroom sashes, all hoping there would be no damage to property, as there had been from time to time. Stories abound of the time when a startled steer made its unceremonious way into an upstairs chamber, the disgruntled householder later relating, “Ah wudn’t care but ah’d nobbut just made t’ beds and ah ‘adn’t managed to dust!!”

With the bottom of the yard blocked off by the cattle wagon in reverse position, ‘guards’ or ‘deflectors’ were posted at all possible bolt holes. The frightened bullock was driven out of the truck, and it dashed half-crazed up the yard, to be shepherded into its awaiting ‘cell’. There was straw on the floor and a bucket of water. Yet often the animal’s plaintive cries could be heard throughout the night. Small blessing it was unaware that come morning it was to begin the journey from stable to table.

One thing though, potential customers could see what quality of meat would be available for the weekend joint. It passed before their very eyes.

Monday mornings in school holiday times were ones of excitement and anticipation for us bloodthirsty brats. They were the killing days.

The abattoir door was of stable fashion, and we were of sufficient height to peer over the lower half and ogle at the performance beyond. There was much pushing, jostling and shoving to gain a satisfactory viewpoint. But if we made too much noise, we were ousted and our day was ruined.

The adjoining yard was Dransfield’s. I once heard Mr. Dransfield describe me as “always looking as cleean as a new-scraped carrot.” He was also a butcher, and his supply of beef arrived on a Monday. His abattoir was at the end of the aforementioned slot, again adjacent to WC’s, sewage arrangement no doubt.

Dransfield’s operations were more accommodating for us onlookers since not only were we allowed to watch, again over the half door, but we were also permitted to pull on the rope. One end of this rope was looped around the victim’s neck, and the other end led through a hole in the wall. This was necessary since the animal, understandably, was reluctant to change its place of abode and thus had to be ‘persuaded’.

The crack of the humane killer told us the deed was done, as did the sudden slackening of the rope. There was usually a scramble for a vantage point and to obtain the brass cartridge case along with our awed gaze at the lethal weapon from whence it came. A poleaxe hung on the wall, but it was never used in our presence -- rotten.

The cartridge case provided amusement for us. Placed on the end of one’s tongue, a quick sucking movement removed the air in the shell case, and there one had a small tower of brass on one’s tongue tip. This could also be done on a finger tip. How we never came to swallow one of the things remains a wonder, and what eventually happened to the shell case is another mystery.

We viewed the dispatch of sheep with equal morbid interest, and when all traces of the performance had been swilled away, off we went to find some other pastime, gaily chattering about the mysteries and wonders of the internal structure of cows and sheep and wondering if it was dinner time.

The placing of domestic lavatories and ‘ass-oils’ around the village was turned to good use by us juvenile explorers. The roofs of these facilities provided ready access to higher roofs of larger adjacent buildings.

Scatchard’s dwelling house and butcher’s shop was a three-storey structure which offered a roof as an attractive and intriguing goal. We made it on several occasions, and to see High Street from a bird’s-eye position was literally heady stuff for us. Added to this of course was the bonus, as it were, of seeing without being seen.

The local Co-op roof was just across the road and even higher than Scatchard’s, but although we searched diligently many times, access to that height was unavailable to us.

It was not so with the Methodist Chapel. We scaled that. Lavatories weren’t involved there. That made a change. The top of a boundary wall of the sanctified area was almost at the level of the roof edge, and since it was only a cock-stride distance from the guttering, it was considered a mere trifle to leap across, even though the drop beneath was some 30 to 40 feet. “Young ‘uns can’t see t’ danger,” wise old crones would cry. To us there was no danger because our pumps provided a good grip when we landed on the sloping roof. Fortunately, perhaps, we never attempted such escapades in wet weather.

See, I’m as bad as the old crones of yore. I can visualise danger now.

After achieving such dizzy heights, the ‘new shelter’ or ‘little shelter’ in the park was taken in our stride. Built in the mid-30’s, this building was always known under one or the other of the two names mentioned above and will so remain in all probability to those who witnessed its construction. ‘New’ as opposed to the two old shelters serving the bowling green and tennis courts and ‘little’ since it is of single storey height. This shelter is further down the park and possesses some very accommodating fall-pipes.

Often we would be on its roof when the alarm was raised, “There’s Alfie.” Alfir Goodhall was a park keeper, a small man, age unknown, but he was a grown-up, and couldn’t he run? He would have been seen approaching across falling ground which gave him added impetus. We were still on the roof, but, as today’s saying goes, we truly ‘hit the ground running’ and took off for the main gates some 100 yards distant. He never caught us and always stopped at the park boundary. Besides, it was only two cock-strides from our house, and Alfie daren’t enter there unbidded. Mi granma wor in.

However, the Methodist Sunday School, Highfield Congregational Church and School rooms, St. Peter’s C of E, all eluded our climbing ambitions. These buildings were isolated islands of unscaleable temptation. They had been built by grown-ups who had no consideration for the ’rising’ ambitions of young boys. Killjoys.

Well, if we couldn’t go up, we’d go down.

Behind the Spangled Bull pub on sloping ground was an area known as t’ Bull Fields. There were no fields actually. It was simply ground overgrown with grass, willow herb and convolvulus. The site was divided by a footpath which led down to the railway station.

Also at the bottom ran a stream, the same one that ran along the bottom of the park, some mile to mile-and-a-half distant. This stream had passed beneath two main roads and three mills, besides footpaths and waste ground. We knew its meanderings very well. Finally the water disappeared into a circular brick-lined culvert, some three feet in diameter to run below the railway lines on its way to we knew not where. Odd that, we slipped up there, but probably into the river. It was heading that way.

Our fascination was captured by the brick tunnel. If we spread our feet, we could walk clear of the water and progress into the darkness. This was real exploration, but not for long. With a flash lamp we might have proceeded further, but once the darkness began to develop us we backed off. Besides, there were rats about, and we didn’t know how many. Stories circulated of rat packs devouring men, and we were too young to die. Some were still too young when they did so a few years later in adventures not of their own making.

In happier days though, it had been search among the elder trees, of which there were many, to find a shoot suitable for a rapier, a whip if the tip leaves were left in situ. Or with a penknife cut away the soft green bark in designs that would be enhanced by the underlying woody-whiteness. Otherwise, split short lengths of shoot, scoop out the central pith, except at the ends, and lo, there was a native dug-out canoe. Back to t’ watter for more sport.

But now an internal emptiness tells us of the need to head for base camp and there stoke up with fresh supplies in readiness for our next great safari. For, as Shakespeare writes in ‘Twelfth Night’, “Youth’s a stuff will not endure.”