Brigg youngsters who use the Woodbine Park Play Area will not recognise the historic significance of the name.
However, there's a chance that some of the grandfathers and grandmothers who accompany young relatives while they enjoy the swings and other equipment might do so.
The farmhouse at Woodbine Farm, and its outbuildings, occupied land now occupied by the car park at nearby Brigg Recreation Ground.
Brigg Urban District Council bought the farm not long after the Second World War to develop it for recreational purposes. And what a far-sighted decision that has proved!
Post-war prefabs were also built on nearby land and given the name Woodbine Grove, being demolished in the 1970s.
Good use of the vacant area was made by turning it into a children's park, managed by Glanford Borough Council until 1996 when North Lincolnshire Council took over.
The park is bordered by Brigg Town Football Club's Hawthorns ground - established circa 1960 - and the houses in South View Avenue, on the post-war Springbank estate.
So although many Woodbine cigarettes were smoked by residents of the prefabs at this location, the name has nothing to do with the very popular brand of fags.
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| Life circa 1957/8 at Woodbine Grove prefabs - from the Fisher family archive. The brick-build houses seen in the background of the picture below are in Hawthorn Avenue. |
Talking about Woodbines, or Woodies...in my ankle-gripper days they came in green packets....one could get a packet of 5, which came in a green, open-topped, envelope-type packet.
ReplyDeleteIn those innocent days, my Granny Turner use to send me the local sweet shop, Lucy's, to get her 5 Woodies...I got about 8 Flying Saucers...a farthing each (4 to an old penny 1d...that would be roughly equivalent to getting 12 Flying Saucers for a new 1p)
We used walk to infant and lower junior school alone...some 1 mile away....go mushroom hunting...train spotting..sometimes in gangs, sometimes in pairs...
We moved out of Granny Turner's house when I was 7 years old, so it perhaps demonstrates how perceptions and societal values have changed over the decades.
....one of my favourite pastimes living at Granny Turner's house was to climb down the coal hole; scramble down the heap of coal..escape from the cellar by the stairs and repeat....as a change, I would go the other way round.
ReplyDeleteAt that time, the sacks of coal arrived on a Co-Op horse-drawn dray....on so did the bread cart..
Every time the horse's left a deposit, various little, old ladies would rush out with a shovel eager to feed their roses...Those were the days..
Over the roofs of houses, I would sit on the doorstep at weekend's and watch the local TA Parachute Regiment jump from baskets below WW2 barrage balloons.....they say history repeats itself, and I did the same in 1965 when I was in the RAF at Weston Under Green in Oxfordshire...later, I jumped from a bi-plane....one couldn't say that RAF was at the forefront of technology at the time!!!