Ilkeston - Friday Was A Special Day
w/e 24 January 2010
All this week's pictures were taken with a Kodak DX6490


Parkhurst

It rained nearly all day on Friday when these images were captured but it didn't spoil the fact that it was something of a special day for me. You see I can now officially be called a senior citizen, old age pensioner, grumpy old man or any combination thereof. It was in January 1945 that my mother trudged in deep snow down Park Drive to the Parkhyrst Maternity Home to have her little bundle of joy delivered. The building still exists but it is now known as Brooklands and is still part of the NHS although it is no longer a maternity home.
81 Nottingham Road

She returned home to 81 Nottingham Road, a two up, two down cottage in the middle of a row of three that were eventually demolished to be replaced by this single property. It was there though that I spent the first twenty two years of my life before marriage took me away to pastures new.
Kensington Mission

Just down the road from home was the Kensington Mission (Picture The Past link) and it was there that I attended Sunday School first meeting my future wife at the age of two. In our teens we founded and ran a youth club there but in due course, the building became too costly to keep in good repair and it eventually had to be closed and demolished.
Schools Site

I was educated at Gladstone Infants School and from the age of eleven at Hallcroft. Both schools along with Gladstone Boys School, since made famous by being where award winning actor Robert Lindsay received his education, have now been demolished and replaced by an infamous housing estate.
Junior School

In between the infants and the senior level, my schooling took place at Kensington Junior School and lo and behold, the majority of the buildings here are still in situ although some of the classrooms that once stood off St John's Road opposite today's site were removed along with a playground and canteen.
Butcher's

My first paid employment was a butcher's round on Saturday mornings that often stretched into the afternoon as well, from Glover's shop at the bottom of South Street. That business has gone although the building still remains. There were two more shops belonging to the Glover's on Bath Street (Picture The Past link) and Granby Street.
Park Road Depot

When I first started a "proper" job, I worked for two or three years in Nottingham but moved back to Ilkeston to work out of a former omnibus depot (Picture The Past link) on Park Road for the East Midlands Electricity Board. That building too was flattened and is now part of the same housing estate as the Hallcroft/Gladstone School site. I stayed with EME under various guises, names and locations for thirty four years before joining a sub-contractor for another three and a half years - one of the most stressful periods of my life.
Derby Road

The first place I moved to after leaving Park Road was into a temporary building on the car park of the Board's Derby Road offices and then onto the top floor of the main building. The temporary building has gone and the main offices were sold on meaning another move to Nottingham in 1986.

Although I've now been retired for a number of years - I didn't realise how stressed I had become until I finished work - Friday was the day of my sixty fifth birthday. Birthdays come, birthdays go and some are more significant than others but Friday, despite the weather, was one of those special days. I was able to spend time with my family and also received lots of messages from friends and family including one that I must mention from an old school friend that I had not seen for more than forty years. It's little things like that that make ordinary days special - the buildings can be demolished and changed but the memories linger on. Friday will be another of those days that linger long in the memory.

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