KEVIN GOTHARD and his sister Kath MacInante popped into the Chronicle offices on their recent visit to Barnsley. They live in Sydney, Australia, and one of the purposes of their visit to the town was to carry out family research.

CONGRATULATIONS to Anne Hudson of Barnsley who has been presented with a Woman of Steel Award for vital work she did during Second World War. Anne, now 90, worked as a crane driver at David Brown’s Steelworks, Penistone, carrying ladels of hot moulton metal.

THE first we know of Barnsley Lawn Tennis Club is a reference in the Barnsley Chronicle of 1893 where there is a mention of a match played at Victoria Crescent. At that time, tennis was played on numerous private green courts in the town, especially in the Salisbury Street area where the present Barnsley Lawn Tennis Club story begins.

ON January 10, 1905, after having tea, 11-year-old Lily Swain went out to play with friends. Tragically, she was not seen alive again and her disappearance remained a mystery.

ALBERT Braithwaite spent a number of years during his working career driving lorries for Wath UDC. Born in June 1896 at Winterwell Road, West Melton, his first job was at Manvers Colliery.

A PHOTOGRAPH of Barnsley Grammar School pupils in Form 4A in the year 1949-50 is particularly interesting as the class included several lads who went on to achieve sporting and TV fame. Notables are Michael Parkinson (first left, next to back row) who became a TV chat show host, Eddie Legard (fifth from the left on the middle row) who kept wicket for Yorkshire’s Second XI before moving to Warwick County Cricket Club, and Michael Greenwood, second from the left on the front row, who was an England amateur football international winning an FA Amateur Cup winner’s medal with Bishop Auckland.

PRETTY Margaret Roebuck was crowned Barnsley Beckett Hospital Queen at a ceremony held at St James’s Vicarage, Worsbrough Bridge, in the mid-1930s. Anne Whitehead, formerly of Barnsley but now living on the Isle of Wight, has submitted two photographs of the occasion to Memories.

AFTER fighting their way through, the Barnsley lads had done it – they had won the English Schools’ Trophy. Matched with Derby in the 1949 final, Barnsley Boys won two great matches within a few days of each other to secure this magnificent trophy.

BARNSLEY Holgate Grammar School’s Annual Speech Day held on Thursday, June 19, 1947, took place at the former Theatre Royal, Wellington Street. Speech days were special occasions for the pupils because they were presented with certificates and prizes as a reward for all the hard work they had put in over the school year.

MEMORIES featured an article on the first Miss Ward Green, a pretty 18-year-old named Doris Robinson who was crowned by MP Frank Collindridge in 1950.
The delightful dresses and suits worn by Doris and her attendants were designed and made by Esther Beckett, a member of the gala committee.

MEMORIES is delighted that a bundle of family photos which went missing many years ago have now been returned to the owner. A Chronicle reader, who formerly lived in Monk Bretton, received them in the post but he did not recognise them and was not able to find the owner.

IT’S a long shot, but do any of our readers remember taking their dolls along to Mapplewell Junior School during the summer holidays of 1941? The school would be closed for the holidays, but stayed open during the war years so that all the scholars would be near the below-ground, newly-built shelters in the field behind the playground in the event of an air-raid.

MEMORIES featured a splendid photograph of a group of local girls who played for Honeywell Ladies’ Football Club in the 1926-27 season. The photograph belongs to John Conway.

MEMORIES has, once again, succeeded in discovering the history of an old photograph.
It is of a group of ladies and had recently come to light when Carol Matthews was sorting through a number of old family photographs.