Does anyone remember Risdale's Grocer's shop at the bottom of the Market Place where they cut you a 'pat' of butter from a huge wooden barrel using a wooden spatula and served sugar in a plain blue paper bag?

Remember entering the town hall up steps from Commercial Street?

Batley market stretched over the Market Place, along Wellington Street and Commercial Street and was open until about 9pm. Wednesdays and Saturdays were, and still are, market days in Dewsbury and as all the buses along Bradford Road were usually full, the old Yorkshire Bus Company used to run single decker buses from Hick Lane in Batley to the old gas showrooms in Dewsbury. These buses were called 'duplicate' buses.

Did you know that the Frontier club is practically built on the old sewage works and the car park is the old roller skating rink?

This area of Bradford Road was a hive of industry at that time. A company called Henry Burrows stored half ton pressed bales of new virgin wool for the government. It also had a large carbonising plant, using suphuric acid vapour to reduce the cotton in wool garments to a pure carbon state. The garments were then shaken in a cage, leaving only the wool, which was then washed and sold or sorted.

This mill also exported thousands of tons of mixed rags to Russia and Eastern Bloc countries in huge half-ton pressed bales. It also sorted rags for shoddy to be blended with new wool for suits and overcoats.
The blends of material now passed to the woollen mills such as Joseph Newsome's (now Redbrick Mill) in Batley Carr.

On the other side, near Rink Street was an ice-making plant where we used to call on our way home from Warwick Road School for a lump of ice to suck.

At the back of these streets was the spinning room of the Co-op Mills, right up to Warwick Road itself. As kids, we used to watch the spinning mules (machines) stretch the yarn over six foot. This mill used to spin different colours on different days – one day all green, the next all red – a wonderful sight to see.

On the same side of Bradford Road at the bottom of Grafton Street was the Co-op Laundry – now Dixon Hall's. I was told that Stan Laurel of Laurel and Hardy fame once lived at the top of Grafton Street.

At the bottom of Upper Mount Street on Warwick Road was the famous weighing scale company of Avery – this building stands with the well of spring water inside.

Further down Warwick Road was a quarry which, of course, had to be explored, then up Mount Street, over the rhubarb field, past the football ground and home to number 6 Broomhill Terrace, Warwick Road, where I was born in 1935.

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LAST week's photograph of Carlinghow School from 1924 brought back happy memories for reader Sheila Firth.

Sheila's mother, then Mary Graham, was on the picture – she was sitting on the front row, third from the right.

Also pictured were Mary's sisters, Sheila's aunties, Nellie Graham (later Cookman) who is on the front row, fifth from the left, and Sally Graham (later Binns), who is on the fourth row back, far left.

Sheila said the three sisters, who were brought up in Pearl Street, Carlinghow, had only two years and nine months between the youngest and eldest so they were very close.