Silk Street

This is a picture of Silk Street, where we used to live. We moved there when we were three and six years old. It was very near to Lister's Mill, in fact you can see it in the background. I remember the first time I saw the mill. I couldn't believe how big it was - the chimney seemed to go on for ever! Silk Street was knocked down a long time ago - 31 years ago in fact. Our house had two bedrooms, one for my mum, and one for my sister and I. Margaret and I also had to share a bed. It was a very cold house, so we used to put our coats on the beds to keep warm at night.

The houses were very small, with only one room downstairs, and a side scullery. They had outside toilets, and no electricity, although we did get electricity after we'd lived there for a while. It was on a meter, and we used to have to go down the cellar steps with a candle to put a shilling in. Sometimes you could feel a mouse running over your foot. We didn't have a bathroom, and we used to have to have a wash in the sink at the top of the cellar steps, which was very cold because there was always cold air coming up from below. We used to go to the slipper baths on Drummond Road to have a bath. Lots of people got scabies at that time, and had to go and get scrubbed in a sulphur bath. There used to be slipper baths all over Bradford.

There was a Co-op shop just up the road, and shops on nearly every corner. We used to go and spend our money at Grimshaw's sweet shop. It was a typical old shop, with stuff piled up to the ceiling, he seemed to sell everything. The Co-op was the main grocers, and there was a little bread shop called Dowlings.

Because Silk Street was very near the mill, we used to hear the knocker-up come around every morning, waking people up for their early shifts in the mill. We could hear people's footsteps on the cobbled streets, in the mornings, at lunchtimes and in the evening at about 5pm. There was always rumbling from the machines in the mill, which we could feel in the street, and in the houses. A lot of the houses had problems with mice - lots of mice lived in the mill and they used to get into the houses as well. Silk Street was always really busy, the whole area around the mill was like that. The Labour Club was close by, and so we used to hear people coming out of there at night. One man used to whistle all the time. Another used to yodel!