IN AT THE DEEP END

The old garages/sheds, between Grammar School Road and Wesley Road, have now been almost demolished, helping tidy up what's been a rather derelict area of Brigg for many years.
These old brick structures were used to store a variety of items down the decades (including milk crates), and John Rhodes, in his recently-published book on growing up in Brigg between 1930-1950 makes reference to one of them being utilised by his father for business purposes.
The removal of these old garages, and the earlier demolition of the old grammar school art room and the scout hut, means a nice open area for car parking, presumably for staff at nearby Sir John Nelthorpe School.
It's a safe bet this small area of town will see more changes. The council's blueprint for future house-building has the former school canteen site, just across the road in Colton Street, earmarked for redevelopment, with the ugly 1940s buildings giving way to something modern and more pleasing to the eye, no doubt.
I'm sure some long-standing Brigg residents must be the same as me when they drive down Grammar School Road and get to Glebe Road corner: We still expect to see the gold-painted lion (ceramic or metal?) which used to be perched on the brick wall, above the postbox.
It was very much a feature of Brigg when the Proctor family had the nearby house, and the shop just round the corner in Glebe Road.
Returning to the site of the old garages, who remembers the green-painted house (Oakleigh?) which used to stand on the other side of Grammar School Road - now the site of a two-storey classroom block at Sir John Nelthorpe School?
One year, in the very early 1970s, vegetation in the garden of this house began to grow to Triffid-like proportions, due to leakage, we believed, from the school swimming pool, just the other side of the brick wall.
Walking down Wrawby Street this morning, I glimpsed a sign in a shop window, offering special deals on swimwear.
Chance would have been a fine thing back in the late 1960s, when young grammar school pupils were ordered to swim in the nude by a certain sportsmaster, once we'd finished our games of football on the school field. No trunks with you? Then in you went as nature intended. Now, at the time, the pool had no heating. And it would have been mid- to late-September.
Not all memories of Brigg past are necessarily pleasant ones!