In a recent Memory Lane picture on our Feedback letters page we showed a photograph of the centre of Holmfirth in 1950 at the junction with Dunford Road.
The buildings there looked somewhat scruffy but reader Sheila Walshaw is keen to point out that it was the aftermath of a terrible tragedy at that spot three years earlier.
In October 1947 nine members of Bolsterstone Male Voice Choir were killed and 13 injured when a coach taking members to a concert at Holmfirth Civic Hall crashed down a hill into a warehouse in the centre of the town.
Sheila’s maiden name was Brook and she worked at her father Thorp Brook’s family grocer’s shop near the bottom of Dunford Road at the time of the accident and witnessed its aftermath. The shop is now the The Gonzo Bar.
Bolsterstone is a hill village between Sheffield and Barnsley and has attracted choir members from as far away as Huddersfield and Manchester.
There is a magnificent memorial window at St Mary’s Church in Bolsterstone which pays tribute to those who lost their lives that day.
If you have any memories of the tragedy or its aftermath email them to andrew.hirst@examiner.co.uk
