Last month I returned to Barrow Hill. It’s a small Derbyshire village near Staveley and not far from Chesterfield. It’s where my dad, Maurice Reuben Bates, was born and grew up. Dad died nearly 5 years ago, aged 91 and a bit. I live in Teesside now and haven’t visited Barrow Hill since I was a child. It sounds like an interesting, ancient place doesn’t it? Being a retired history teacher, I have a fertile imagination, especially to do with artefacts from the distant past. Was my father’s birthplace the site of an important Neolithic grave? Had there been any significant excavations there? In the dictionary, “barrow” is defined as a “grave mound” or “tumulus”, an “ancient, sepulchral mound.” I had always thought of barrows as long, oval mounds where stone age or bronze age people interred their dead. Only a few months previously I had been crawling into such tomb chambers on a visit to the archaeologically rich Orkney Islands. Had I missed out on an exciting historical site right on my childhood doorstep?
Well, the short answer is “no”! Barrow Hill was in fact a Victorian creation, built to house the workers in collieries and ironworks owned by Richard Barrow. It was a dormitory village for local industry. The houses were built in blocks up the side of a hill. In fact, they were referred to as “the blocks.” The ironworks were locally known as Staveley Works, after the little nearby town of that name. Later, a chemical works was added. The result was a sprawling eye-sore. It also led to my nostrils being frequently invaded by the “bad-egg” smell of sulphur as I waited for a bus or went shopping. That’s if the wind was blowing in the wrong direction. But it was this same industrial complex that provided essential employment for many people living in this north-east corner of Derbyshire and put food on many tables for many years. It was the reason why my paternal grandparents lived there, the reason why my dad was born there and the reason why I entered the world just a couple of miles away from the glowing furnaces and the belching chimneys. My other grandad worked at the iron and steel works as well. Barrow Hill, although disappointingly having nothing to do with ancient archaeology, and not at all picturesque, is still a fundamental part of my roots.
So why did I return there after all these years? The answer will quickly be revealed if you google Barrow Hill on the internet. It is the site of a unique and notable railway heritage centre — the Barrow Hill Roundhouse. This is where my father worked for much of his life. He was a railwayman.” Roundhouse “again sounds like a bronze age dwelling but in this case, it is the name of an early type of railway engine shed. It was a place where steam locomotives were: cleaned, repaired, watered, coaled and turned around before going back out on the line. Early Victorian railway sheds were known as “roundhouses” because of their conical roofs. In the 1860s, roundhouses grew larger and lost their circular roofs but the name stuck.
Barrow Hill Roundhouse was operated by the former Midland ( LMS) Railway until 1948 when the rail network was nationalised. From then on it was known simply as Staveley Shed.( code name 41E.) My dad worked there under both regimes. Maurice started as a locomotive cleaner. He progressed on to being a fireman or stoker. When the TV railway celebs, Michael Portillo or Chris Tarrant shovel a bit of coal into the loco’s furnace as it chugs along, it looks easy and good fun. However, the fireman’s actual job was much more important and complicated than that. He had to check that the fire and water tanks were at the right level. He had to know the route and control the fire, as more power would be needed in certain places. He also had to know the driver as different drivers had different styles. Some required more steam than others. After doing this for about 10 years Maurice qualified to be a driver. Around 1960, when steam was quickly being phased out and diesels brought in, he went back to school and studied how to drive the new locomotives. He succeeded is qualifying to drive Diesel-Electric locos which was a great achievement considering he had left school when he was 13 and had always struggled a bit with reading and writing. Many sheds were closed down when the steam era came to an end, but Barrow Hill was adapted for diesel trains which continued to move coal from the local mines to the power stations. It finally closed in 1991.
I remember dad taking me there when I was a young child. In the centre of the shed was a large round, turntable surrounded by a circle of giant, black locomotives at various stages of maintenance. The turntable is still there today and forms the centre-piece of the museum. It’s welcoming notice board proclaims that it is ” the only operational roundhouse in Britain.” When dad took me there I vividly remember the mixtures of smells — steam, smoke, soot and oil. I remember the floor and the engines being sticky with grease and grime. I recall being thrilled when dad lifted me up into the cab of one of the steam locomotives and I pretended to be an engine driver, just like him. I suppose, after that, it was inevitable that I would become an avid train spotter and a life-long railway nerd with a particular, nostalgic affection for steam trains. I feel fortunate that I now live just half an hour’s drive away from the North York Moors railway which regularly features steam locomotives on its scenic run from Whitby to Pickering. Once a train spotter, always a train spotter. It’s surprising how many people, usually men of a certain age, feel the same.
In the early 90s, Barrow Hill roundhouse was due to be demolished, its long working life finally over. However, it was saved by a far-sighted railway heritage society. Thanks to their campaign it became a Grade 2 listed building. Now it has been restored and given a new roof. It has had a modern new entrance, a shop, a café and an information centre added. But the old shed with its big, rotating turntable is still its centre-piece, just as it was in Maurice’s time. Next door to the shed, the foreman’s office has been beautifully preserved. On the desk are his papers, a pipe and a round, white, metal container for tea. It is as if he has just popped out and will be back in a minute. I think the tea container was called a “snap-can”. I remember dad taking one with him on every shift, along with the metal “snap” box containing his sandwiches. It was oval and flat, and the top slid off to reveal the food. This was before the era of Tupperware! The foreman’s office was where the men would come to clock-in and get their job for that particular shift. It was weird and slightly emotional standing in the same room where my dad had signed on for thousands of shifts, at all times of day and night. He was pleased to be a railwayman, as in the 1930s it was regarded as a job for life. Previously he had delivered Coop shoe repairs on his bike with a basket on the front and he had then worked in a light bulb factory . He told me it was either too hot or too cold in that factory and he hated it. In 18 months, he said he caught 18 colds. (Coincidentally, that glassworks has now been knocked down and is the site of Chesterfield FC’s modern football ground, the Proact Stadium.) Maurice , miserable in his factory job, constantly called in to the railway shed just down the road from his home, to beg for a job. I think they eventually must have been impressed by his stolid persistence and finally told him to report in on the following Monday morning. His life as a railwayman had begun. I think this must have been around 1938.
That railway job prevented him from being conscripted for the war. It was an essential service, keeping the power stations fuelled, which in turn kept the factories running, to support the war effort. Dad told me he wanted to join the Navy but didn’t pass the medical. That decision, although disappointing at the time, possibly saved his life and enabled yours truly to be born! In the war, he told me that they had to have a special cover to hide the glow of the engine’s fire, just in case it was spotted by a German bomber crew in the sky above. One night, his coal train was directed into a siding to allow an express to come through on the mainline. As he waited in the dark with his mate, they heard the drone of German planes returning from a bombing raid on nearby Sheffield. One of them dropped a spare bomb on the railway and it exploded on the main-line where dad’s goods train had been only a short time before. The express never got through!
Dad worked all sorts of shifts, many of them very anti-social. His worst shifts were nights, early evenings and early mornings. As a child I would sometimes hear the front door click in the middle of the night. It was dad going to work on his bike. The constantly changing shifts must have played havoc with his body clock and largely destroyed any social life he may have had. I think he was very tough to stick at it for 50 years. Mum was tough too, for putting up with such a marriage- wrecking schedule. The marriage stayed solid however, despite the occasional argument and rocky patch, especially when my sister and I were very young and crying in the night. Dad must have sometimes suffered from sleep deprivation and it may well have contributed to the impatience and short temper that he sometimes displayed. Me whining away because I had lost my cowboy hat or broken my toy six-shooter, must have been the last straw for a man who was already short of proper sleep and had to get up for work in the early hours of next morning. I think my patience would have snapped too.
When I walked into the original part of Barrow Hill shed the other week, I felt my heart pounding. I hadn’t been there for 60 years but it was almost exactly as I had remembered it. I was ashamed that I had never bothered to go back before. I should have gone with my dad and collected a few more of his precious memories. My sister tells me he did go back a couple of times with her grandson, my niece’s son. ( My grand-nephew?) But it wasn’t a particularly comfortable experience for him. Some of the guides at the museum were ex-colleagues whom he had fallen out with at the end of his career.
Unfortunately, sadly, his long career at the roundhouse ended on a very sour note. In 1984, during the hugely controversial and distressing national coal strike, he had disobeyed his union’s orders and driven trains from the Nottinghamshire mines to the power stations. The Nottinghamshire miners had defied the NUM’s call to strike because their pits were more productive, and in many people’s eyes, betrayed their striking colleagues. They were probably given incentives to do so by Mrs Thatcher’s government in a cynical policy of divide and conquer. Margaret Thatcher was determined to smash the power of the miners after her uncomfortable experiences in the early 70s when their strikes had helped to bring the Edward Heath government down. ASLEF, my father’s rail drivers’ union, had ordered all its members to support their trade union colleagues in their fight and refuse to transport coal. Maurice, who had clashed with the union bosses on many occasions, now ignored their orders and worked on. I know he had grown to hate the ASLEF officials whom he believed had too much power over people’s careers. They had successfully organised a “closed shop.” Anyone who worked on the railway had to be in a Trade Union whether they wanted to or not. I know my dad deeply resented this. I had some uncomfortable conversations with him at the time as I was a loyal member of the National Union of Teachers . But I sympathised with Dad over the closed shop. At least, in teaching, we had the choice whether to join a union or not. So, my father deliberately undermined the miners’ strike and helped the Conservative government to defeat it ( and eventually close all the pits). In the union’s eyes he was a “black-leg”, the lowest of the low. The local ASLEF officials never forgave him for that. As Maurice got into his early sixties he was really surplus to requirements at Barrow Hill as the shed was running down and it needed to shed staff. The management offered him a decent early retirement package, a reward for his long, faithful service. However, the union officials, out of spite, blocked this time and time again. They also used their considerable influence to make sure he got all the rubbish anti-social shifts which proved to be an increasing strain as he got older. Dad finally got his retirement just 2 days before his 65th birthday. He paid a terrible price for his defiance in 1984.
I walked round the roundhouse slowly, trying to take it all in. I tried to retrieve the memories from all those decades ago. If I blocked out the museum information boards and the sprinkling of tourists wandering around, I could still sense the spirit of my dad moving around that atmospheric room. Even after all those years, it was a moving moment. Our deceased loved ones live on in our memories and being back in Barrow Hill magically conjured up some vivid ones for me. I reflected on this as I had a snack in the new museum cafe and witnessed all the volunteer engineers in their oily, blue serge overalls ( just like dad’s), coming in for their lunchtime burger and chips.
I had a last wander around, inspecting all the steam, diesel and electric locomotives that had been saved from the scrapyard. The railway heritage movement had appeared just in time in the late 1960s to save them, although many of their fellow locos had already disappeared into oblivion. Railway enthusiasts get all dewy-eyed about the age of steam and I know some people who even get emotional about diesels. I suppose it’s because, stupid as it may sound, individual locomotives seem to have a more distinctive identity that the anonymous and ubiquitous multiple units that have now invaded almost the entire rail network. However, British Rail made the hard, ruthless business decision to scrap most of their steam locos. I remember going down to the shed with my sister and seeing a forlorn line of rusting, decrepit locomotives waiting to be broken up. It was a sad sight for a keen train-spotter even though by then I had become more interested in girls, pop music and football. Later, I asked my dad how he felt when the age of steam finally came to an end. I expected him to get all nostalgic and a bit emotional, but he simply said he was glad to get rid of them! Steams locos to him were dirty, temperamental and a lot of hard work! They were always breaking down, usually in the middle of no-where on a cold, winter’s day. He much preferred the warmth, comfort and reliability of the diesels. So much for the romance of the age of steam, which we now look back on through rose-coloured glasses.
I left the railway centre and wandered off into Barrow Hill. This was going to be another emotional, nostalgic journey for me I thought. When I was young, the family went there every Sunday to visit grandma and grandad and attend the Methodist Chapel Sunday School and evening service. My parents were both keen, lifelong Methodists. What would the Victorian “Zion”, Primitive Chapel ( built in 1869) look like now? Would I be able to find the street where my father was born? What would the modernised house look like now? Well, it had all gone and I found the village virtually unrecognisable! The old “blocks” had been knocked down and replaced by small blocks of new flats and modern semis. Even the streets seemed to have different names. I certainly didn’t remember any of them. I walked up the hill where the Zion Chapel had been and found in its place, a large detached house. I later found out that the chapel that had featured in so many of my childhood Sundays was actually demolished in 1966. By then our family had moved house and was attending another Methodist Church a few miles away. A few years ago I drove through my mother’s birthplace in New Whittington, a couple of miles away from Barrow Hill, and found that the red-brick, 19th century chapel there, where I had also spent many hours, had been reduced to a pile of rubble. I felt like an important part of my life had been rubbed out. The chapel has now been replaced by a small apartment block. Methodist churches, suffering from severely diminished and ageing congregations, are now rapidly going the same way as the steam ( and diesel) locomotives. They are disappearing into the past.
Inevitably Grandma and Grandma’s end-terrace house had gone as well. It had been in a block of 3 houses, opening straight on to a raised pavement and a gutter. At the back was a long garden in which grandad grew masses of vegetables and fruit. He also ran an allotment and reared pigs and hens on a small-holding, so he was always busy. It now only exists in memory. I wonder if my sister or our few remaining cousins ever think of it? I remember going there every Sunday for tea. ( we visited my maternal grandparents every Saturday.) The family went there in between afternoon Sunday School and the long, “boring” evening service which I learnt to dread. I remember Grandma’s biscuit barrel which was always a treat for us children — custard creams, “Nice” biscuits ( that was their brand name) and malt biscuits with pictures of stick people playing various sports. When you’re a young child, you’re easy to please. Grandma was kind, gentle and loving but I wasn’t so keen on my dad’s dad who was very rough and ready and had a sinister looking glass eye. Going to the toilet was an experience as well, as it was at the far end of a wash-house, stacked high with smelly sacks of pig-food. The toilet paper was ripped up pieces of newspaper stuck on a nail! Those were the days. One day Grandma, when making us some tea, put the tea-leaves in the kettle and the water-filled tea-pot on the coal fire. It was the beginning of her dementia, something we are a lot more aware of these days. Both my parents suffered from it in their last years. As my grandparents got older, my Aunty Harriet moved in to look after them and our regular Sunday visits ceased.
So the nostalgic thrill of returning to Barrow Hill Roundhouse was tempered by the sadness and shock of the disappearance of much of the village I used to know. I drove to the other Methodist Church, the Ebenezeer, where the Zion congregation decanted after their own chapel closed. This is still clinging on but has a highly neglected air . It now doubles up as a community centre but when I went, I saw many of its windows boarded up and it looked more like a place of worship for the local pigeon population. I suspect it will no longer be there if I revisit in a few years time. The Ebenezeer stands just up the hill from Barrow Hill/Staveley Works railway station, but that has been closed down and demolished as well. The iron and steel and chemical works have all gone too. Only the clock tower and the former admin building remains, now converted into modern offices. Inevitably life goes on, but it’s still sad to see important places from one’s childhood now consigned to the past. When I was a kid I always thought of Barrow Hill as a bit of a dump, but now, having been back, I realize it is an important repository of many precious memories. Thank goodness that the now unique Roundhouse was saved! In a funny sort of way, I think of it as an enduring memorial to my dad and his long career as a railwayman.
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