Trades People

Where Desford Colliery and the colliery village used to be is now the 75 hectare Bagworth Heath Woods, a park with fishing ponds.

Mrs Harris: There was, what, 19 houses to start with, then another five were built after. We did get trades people down.

Interviewer: Can you remember any in particular?

Mrs Harris: Trades people? Yes, we used to have a lady come from Desford with a lorry. She used to drive this herself and she used to bring vegetables and different kinds of groceries on the back of this lorry, and we used to look forward to her coming because when she came we had one penny worth of toffees between the five of us children. Mrs Weston was the lady’s name and she knew Mum had five children, and she used to put 20 toffees in a brown paper bag and we used to share these out, so that was four each for one penny, which was great. That’s all we could have in a week, just the one penny worth of toffees between the five of us, nothing more. We had used to have ice-cream man come down, he used to shout ‘okey pokey’, I remember that distinctly, and his name was Mr Milnes, and he lived in the village of Bagworth. He used to sell ha’penny cornets but Mum couldn’t afford to let us have those, very seldom, that was a real treat when we did. Then there was Mr Miles, he was the butcher, and he used to have a little shop in the square at Bagworth. When we were first married I didn’t quite know the joints of meat and I used to say to him, ‘I’ll have half a crown’s (12p) worth of beef please’, and he used to bring us a lovely joint of beef for half a crown.

©EMOHA