Games

The Cosy Cafe, Sharnford, date unknown. Courtesy of the Record Office for Leicestershire, Leicester & Rutland.

Interviewer: Did you play any games like whip and top and …?

Mr Morton: Oh yeah, oh yes, we had all them. Shuttlecocks, the girls had shuttlecocks. They used to come in turn, in each season, and we used to play whip and top up Sharnford Hill, course there weren’t no traffic around them days. You’d have a, one’d whip one road, one’d whip the other and you’d see who could get top of the hill first, or to the bottom. Course if you broke a window that was your fault, not nobody else’s. Oh yes, we were real red hot at cricket, cricket was the mainstay of the job. There was a little field out in between the two parts of the village, by the bridge we used to say, a bloke left this bit of ground to be a recreation ground for ever and it’s still there now, and that’s where we used to play cricket. And the Reverend, him there, he used in the winter, well, in the summer he used to have three, four of the lads up there training them to get ready for, you know, the matches, Saturday. He were a wicket keeper and batsman. ‘Course it was just up our street, he used to take us in the house and have a cup of tea, bit of cake…

Interviewer: I understand you were the scorer for the side.

Mr Morton: That were the men’s side, the official men’s team, I was 13 then.

Interviewer: Did they have a boy’s team?

Mr Morton: The schoolboy’s, yes, oh yes. They used to play Broughton Astley, Stoney Stanton, Sapcote.

Interviewer: The men’s team, did they used to play other villages?

Mr Morton: Oh dear me yes, they were in the South Leicestershire league they were. Course the South Leicestershire league took in all the surrounding villages: Broughton Astley, Stoney Stanton, Ratby – oh Ratby and all. It’s a dickens of a way from Sharnford to here (Ratby) through horse and brake weren’t it? That’s why they couldn’t get nobody to come to Ratby. All these villages, Earl Shilton, Barwell…

Interviewer: So you used to travel by horse and cart then did you?

Mr Morton: Yes, horse and brake, horses and big brakes, if you had a lot ‘em on, a couple of horses and a bigger brake of course.

©EMOHA