The National Forest’s LANDshapes project interview with Ken Betteridge

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LANt022 Ken Betteridge
LANDshapes Oral History interview summary

In this absorbing recording Ken Betteridge takes us back to a slower pace of life, to Saturday mornings in Moira when (before they were allowed out to play) the local miners kids had to take their dad's picks down to the furnace "to 'ave 'em sharpened" ready for work at the pit face. After that the young Ken would go out to play "on the road 'cause there were hardly any traffic". Reminiscing about washing day and the sheets drying in front of the fire where his mother's "big wooden mangle" used to sit, Ken "wonders what some of the youngsters would think if they'd got that lot facin' them now!" Making his own amusement Ken and his friends went 'mushrooming' and 'nesting' down Lords Lane and Blackfordby Lane End. Share with Ken his sorrow at the loss of the yearly 'pilgrimage' to the bluebell wood near the railway bridge on Willesley Lane, destroyed by the coming of open cast mining, Ken laments that he won't be around to see the present planting mature. Hear more about 'Wakes Week' and oh yes find out where Ken and his companions 'went a courting'!

Interviewer: Roger Kitchen.
Date of interview: 22/03/2005
Date of birth: 08/1937
Landshape Zone: Leicestershire and Derbyshire Coalfield
Parish: Coalville and surrounds
Location: Coalville, Leicestershire,
Location of Original: Originals held with The National Forest Company.
Reference: LANt028

Last updated: 15/9/2005
East Midland Oral History Archive Web maintainer
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