Blasts from the past

Our Sopwell Memories website has had nearly 100,000 visits since we launched in 2014, 97,928 as I write. It is good to know that it is well used. In case you haven’t had a look at it lately, there has been a small flurry of new stuff which should interest you.

There have been several changes to Sopwell over the past year or so: Betty Entwistle House was demolished to make way for a new development presently under construction and also we have lost The King Offa pub. I have posted about Betty Entwistle and am waiting to see what happens on the King Offa site before I publish. We have also acquired several photos of living in the prefabs in Tavistock Avenue. Thanks to Michelle Mackenzie and family for letting me use them.

Back in 2011, while researching material for our book, I interviewed a lovely chatty lady living in Boleyn Drive, called Margaret Brown. Margaret was born in 1928 and lived on the Mentmore Estate since she was eleven, so she had plenty of stories to tell of her childhood growing up in the Cottonmill area. I put some of these stories in the book but I was denied permission to select extracts from the audio recording to put on the website. As I said in my previous blog, Margaret is no longer with us. However, permission has now been given by her family to use the material, so seven extracts of Margaret’s memories are now up on the website. I hope you will have a listen to them.

If you or members of your family have photos of the Sopwell area from long ago, I would be delighted to receive permission to include them on the website.

Enjoy the rest of the summer!

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Sandy Norman