Christmas 1991 now, and again the Yorkshire Area Christmas Dance was held at Castleford Town Hall. The main function room there is a big wide room place with a stage along one side and a balcony at the other.  It had entrances at either of the short ends of the room which had stairs up to the balcony and the Gents toilets at one side and the ladies at the other (it was in the Ladies toilets that Ellie once smacked another girl in the face for being dis-respectful to Wharfedale… but I digress) Continue reading →

My Grandfather William Bettis’s father was also called William Bettis, he was born on 1st August 1861, worked as an Agricultural Labourer for his early years when he lived in Epping Forest. After his wedding to Sarah Eleanor Laws on 11th August 1888 (at St Mary’s Church, Theydon Bois) the family moved to Leytonstone in London where he worked as a labourer for the Great Eastern Railway (G.E.R.)
He died on 31st August 1927  Continue reading →

My paternal grandparents William James Bettis and Elizabeth May Perry both came from Leytonstone in the east end of London. My Grandfather was a Wire Rope maker who had worked in the British Ropes factory in Dagenham. After British Ropes opened their new factory in Doncaster he moved up to Yorkshire with his family in 1936 to become a foreman there. My Grandmother worked as an ‘Operator’ in the telephone exchange (in the days when calls were patched through by the Operator) Continue reading →

Christmas 1993, and the Waffledale group’s Christmas Meal is the feast for this posting. The venue was a restaurant up in Tong, which I can’t remember the name of at all.

It was a typical Christmas party night for these places, they had jammed in loads of extra tables and set them in long rows so there was hardly room to move, I remember that I was at the end of the row up by the wall where the table leg was hooked behind the heating pipes… so I was jammed with my ankle up against this red hot pipe.

Actually that is about all that I remember, I can’t remember the food… having been to so many of these they all tend to become much of a muchness, and as I can’t remember the food being either good or bad it was obviously unremarkable. Continue reading →

My maternal Grandfather was born in 1895, so again appeared on the 1901 Census. He married my Grandmother in 1921 after he moved to Kiveton where he worked in the Coalmine Continue reading →