Memories of Syston

Dear editor,
I spent my early childhood on Broad Street in the late 1950s so I loved Christine Wilkes‘s memories of Syston back then. (March Issue). Her descriptions of the varied village noises are wonderful. I had forgotten the wailing siren on Eatough’s roof! But not the alarming screeching of the rag and bone man….
My father kept hens, bantams and for a while one large Muscovy duck: all this poultry – and the occasional rabbit – mucked in together at the bottom of the garden. 
Does anyone remember Mrs Bone who kept pigs behind the church? And wasn’t there a farmyard on Brookside where the car park now is? As Chris says, there were a lot of unescorted dogs wandering about.
I remember an old three-legged white dog in particular, a real old bruiser. These dogs used to have frequent violent scraps in the street to the excitement of passers by: “come quick! a dog fight!” 
My brother and I spent a lot of time in the brook catching minnows, sticklebacks and tadpoles: it was easier to access then, and people cared less about safety – “just don’t go cutting your foot open on tin cans!” I suppose the railings had gone off for wartime salvage : we used to scramble down by the Brook Street bridge. 
Then there were the two post offices; at Mr Gamble’s on Melton Road I was hoisted up to sit on the counter and inspect the inked pads. Afternoon walks round the reccy – The Memorial Recreational Ground – and waving to the engine drivers up on the embankment. The entrance to the reccy was then as now, at the end of Necton Street. What was the name of the former factory down there?

And what are these ancient cobbles now exposed on Necton Street? Pictured left.
There were also the more dangerous pleasures of the railway line itself: going down those water meadows behind the old gasworks (at the top of Upper Church Street) and listening with one’s ear to the line for the oncoming Leicester train. Mr Albert Garner was a real old Syston Victorian who used to tell my mother about a human head he’d once found on the tracks: ‘so heavy, it took three men to lift it’. Mr Garner was susceptible to ‘cat scratch fever’ and he had a fund of horror stories: he told us that if we dug our holes in the garden too deep we’d fall into eternal flames at the centre of the Earth. His wife Eva, who had once been in service at Belvoir Castle, cut wonderful sandwiches for the Bowling Club teas on the Park.
Those ice creams Christine describes! We weren’t supposed to have them. Our grandmother had a theory that such ices were “made under the bed”. But her father had been a Leicester Food Inspector in the 1880’s so maybe she was wiser than we knew. We children used to meet her off the Leicester bus at that stop at the top of Broad Street on Melton Road. The smell of hot summer dust and the privet hedges in flower brings it all back. I remember nuns occasionally walking by in pavement-sweeping black habits and long veils. Were they from Rearsby convent? We loved sitting on the warm pavement eating a sticky Walnut Bliss from Mr Jacques’s wonderful log cabin on the corner. If some kind person gave us kids the occasional Mars Bar – a huge and rare treat – our father would take out his pen knife, wipe it on his hanky and cut the bar into a dozen slices which were doled out day by day from behind the kitchen clock on the top shelf of the dresser.
All the shops: the wonderful new shoe smell of Startins; Goodalls and Hutchinsons for groceries; kind Mr and Mrs Pole for fruit and veg; Miss Hunt – and Rose Fisher – the hairdressers. Todd’s the Chemist was very refined; then there was the lovely lady behind the counter at Jellis’s, who I used to think was the Queen. And Goadbys on Melton Road – suppliers of ‘fancy goods’. That sounded intriguing but I don’t think we were ever allowed in there. I remember an old lady outside the shop once giving my brother a thrupenny bit. My mother said it was “far too much!” and hid it in the baby’s pram ‘til we got home.
And the Fair: held in a long-vanished scrubby field down by the Railway Bridge at the bottom of High Street. Clouds of candy floss – “so bad for you!” –  and toffee apples as hard as cricket balls.
There was another wild patch of grass, bushes and hillocks – great for bikes – opposite the Gospel Hall on the Broadway. This was built over long ago: in the late 1960s, I guess. We crossed this little wilderness to buy sweets at Mavis’s little shop on St Peters Street and so through the gate into the Park to gawp at the bowls players in their immaculate whites and hats.
Syston: then as now – always full of spectacle and excitement!
Thanking you!
jrc