Mansfield

 

Debdale Lane today [2009] is a very busy noisy road with traffic of every size and description travelling along it. This picture taken around 1905 shows the piece and tranquillity of that time.

Debdale Lane, Mansfield circa 1905

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  • Kevin Barker … if the old couple you chatted with were on the far end … they were my grandparents, Ethel and William Gee♡♡♡

    By kathleen m lake (12/02/2019)
  • I remember the cottages on Debdale Lane very clearly from the late 1950s onwards. The one nearest to Woodhouse had a garden at the side then next to the garden was a small quarry, as I recall the water that had collected in it was about 20 feet lower than road level, how deep the water was I’ve no idea but a few kids that lived in that area used to swim there, it’s now filled in. The couple who lived in this cottage from what I remember from the early 1960s had a barbers shop and second hand shop on the corner of Ladybrook Lane and Browning Street, which was a timber framed building covered in corrugated iron sheets, he ran the second hand shop and she ran the barbers. The building was demolished many years ago, and as for the couples name I forgot that a long time ago. The secret garden that Kev Barker mentions I would think was probably the garden belonging to Debdale Hall which was a convalescent home in the 1950s for people who had big operations at one of the local hospitals. My mother spent a couple of weeks in there in 1953 when I was 6yrs old and at that time children were not allowed to visit people in hospital but the nurses let me go in the ward to see her, if you could call it a ward, it was more a room with two or three beds, it was on the ground floor with French Windows opening onto a beautiful garden. This was probably Kevs secret garden.

    By Peter Bowler (26/11/2013)
  • I have fond memories of these old cottages in the early sixties. As a child, I, along with my younger brother, sister, and parents, would walk from our home near the Rufford Arms at the weekend, to visit our grandparents in Mansfield Woodhouse. As we passed, an elderly couple who lived in the cottages would chat to us, I seem to remember they knew my father somehow, as I grew a little older the area around the cottages became my play area, exploring the woods, and what we knew as the secret garden within those woods. I recall that the cottages had to be demolished to make room for the planned outer ring road for Mansfield, but as yet I have seen no change to the layout of that particular stretch of road. Happy days!

    By Kev Barker (19/07/2010)

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