CHRISTINE Chadwick may have left her beloved Holmfirth 40 years ago, but her spirit has always remained here.
Her childhood memories have stayed so vivid she has now put them in a book to share with others and evoke an age that was so very different.
And she will also strike a chord with many Examiner readers as she recalls some wonderful characters from her youth in the book called Yon Green Garden.
Christine moved to Paignton in Devon with husband Keith and their two sons, Philip and Stuart, almost 40 years ago.
She said: “There have been many childhood memoirs published in recent years.
“Many of them have been sad childhoods blighted with poverty and hardship, illness and abuse – stories that were immensely moving and disturbing.
“Yon Green Garden is not like that. I was a happy child – my childhood was sheltered, safe, secure – like a garden where the plants are nurtured and cherished, but beyond the garden gate the weeds take over and the harsh stony ground is exposed.’’
She adds in the book: “My childhood was spent in a world that has long since disappeared – a world where the child had space and freedom.
“A child then had the freedom to dawdle on the way to school, to daydream, to play endless games of make believe and explore the fields and woods and lanes and time to cultivate that most precious of God’s gifts – imagination.’’
And she writes of Holmfirth: “If the town had its own distinctive character the same could certainly be said of the people who lived there – hardworking, fiercely individualistic, hospitable people who chose their words well and whose humour was so dry, finding its target with deadly accuracy.
“Thrift was a highly prized virtue and very occasionally ran over into meanness.
“It was said of one woman who kept shop in Underbank that she would cut a currant in two. She was, according to Mam, a ‘nipscrat’.
“Such an attitude was not at all typical, however, and people seemed always ready to open their homes and entertain friends and family to huge high teas with trifle, pork pies and cold meats and pickles or bread and jam if that was all the larder could yield.
“Homemade food was always preferred and baking and home-making skills in a woman were regarded as essential.’’
One of the greatest characters Christine remembers in her book is Grandad Strange and people will have heard tales of his hairdressing skills in Huddersfield during the early years of the 20th century.
He had a shop on Northumberland Street with a big lettering on the wall that simply read A Strange Hairdresser, but built up a formidable reputation as the best hairdresser in Huddersfield.
Christine writes: “His arrogance, however, led to his demise. In the 1920s when bobbed and shingled hair became the fashion among the young ladies, grandad refused to cut off the long locks.
“He declared firmly that her hair was a woman’s crowning glory and he would have no part in the short hair styles of the fashionable set. Inevitably, the customers went elsewhere.’’
Christine also recalls her on family history in detail – and candidly by revealing that her parents were a ‘mismatch’ and talks of her schooldays at Penistone Grammar when, in 1949, she became one of the first children from Holmfirth to be allocated a place there.
l Copies of the book are available by mail order priced £8.99 plus £1 towards post and packing.
To find out more email monty845623@yahoo.com or phone 01803 845623.
