Ernie Bettles

I have to say first and foremost growing up with the name of Ernie was never going to be easy even in a place like Denton but here are my thoughts and memories of growing up there.

The Early Days

Denton was a marvellous place to spend your early years.

I was born in Wareings Lane the middle house on the left as you look down the road from the Bedford Road.  Next door on our right lived Mr and Mrs Parrish and their daughter and on the left were the Waites. On the opposite side of the lane was a terrace of three houses closest to the lane was Jocker Knight and his family of two sons Reg and Michael and his daughter Heather. Next door lived Bob “Polly” Wyman and the third house was Johnny Finney and his mother and father, Mrs Finney was a nurse at the hospital in Northampton and his father was Canadian and drove a Morgan three wheeler. This is the best you can expect from an under five year old.

Our play ground, once I could walk was Perrett’s scrap-yard, before I could walk it was my pram or push chair being wheeled around the village by Mrs Parrish’s daughter and her friends.

Perrett’s scrap yard was an Alton Towers to a boy of three or four in the fifties and then there was the slipe going down to the brook that ran all the way through the village starting somewhere out towards Horton.  The brook travelled under the bypass and probably still does and as children we would paddle through the dark culvert to the other side. I remember a time playing in Perrett’s yard on a derelict car when I slipped off into a large patch of stinging nettles, I was stung from head to toe and ran home screaming, Mother immediately swamped me in calamine lotion, it didn’t help but it was the best we had. Trevor my brother reminded me of a time when down the slipe I decided to climb a tree that I couldn’t get back down so he had to go and fetch my father to get me down. Needless to say I was banned from there and from climbing trees it didn’t stop me. Along the new road as we called it was a wooden bench where we would sit and collect car numbers along with a number of laurel bushes in which we built dens. We never had to go far from home to have some great adventures.

Before starting school I was constantly with my mother and often went to the church with her where she would help with many activities along with Gladys Warren and my playmate around the churchyard was her daughter Gillian, my first love. Lucky for Gillian she got away from me.

I started school in September 1949 the term of my 4^th birthday as they were the rules at that time, I don’t think it was compulsory to start then but it was allowed so off we all went in our family. The schoolmaster and schoolmistress were Mr and Mrs Battison, Mr Battison teaching the seniors and Mrs Battison taught the youngsters. Mr Battison often moved between the two classrooms and as he wore crepe soled shoes it was unlikely that he would be heard as he came up behind you and should you be transgressing you would feel a hefty hand hit the back of your head. Mr Battison was known throughout the school although I don’t know who first gave him the name was Pussyfoot.  I am left-handed but that appeared not to be allowed and it wasn’t until the Battisons retired and Mrs Jones took over that she noticed that I couldn’t hold a pen correctly in my right hand that I was actually encouraged to write left handed. Of course I had a lot of catching up to do which meant writing exercises at home for some time to come.

One thing I learnt after starting school was that all ages of children mixed together and often played together and it was very educational in a worldly way that we were mixing with lads of twelve, thirteen and fourteen and probably learning words that shouldn’t really have been part of our vocabulary.

My first day at school was not a problem for me as I had an elder sister and brother to take me there but I do remember a couple of lads who started on the same day who were dragged in kicking and screaming one of whom had to be taken home, don’t worry lads I won’t name you.

I also remember at regular intervals the village would be visited by a rag and bone man and for a bag of rags you were given a goldfish. We had one of his gold fishes in a polythene bag so mother had to find something to keep it in, out came a fruit bowl half filled with water and what to feed it as we had no fish food so the top of the water was sprinkled with cake crumbs. Needless to say the next morning the fish was found to be swimming on its back.

Once a year we had a visit from Billy Hickman and his pony and trap to sweep the chimneys.  He always had a cup of tea before he left which was accompanied by 4 or 5 spoons of sugar and the tea was never drunk from the cup but always from the saucer. He had the whitest teeth we had ever seen and because of this if we ever ran out of toothpaste on the brush went a coating of soot to clean them with.

Once a week the fishmonger would arrive in the village in his van and a group of boys would be seen following him around after his ice, something that we saw very little of, so we would grab a piece and pop it in our mouths, it makes me wonder what we saw in that ice that tasted of fish. Also round the village was Mr Smith in his baker’s van, Smithy as he was known baked in Yardley and often his bread had very black crusts, well the same group of boy’s would be seen sneaking around his van to steal a black crust off those loaves whilst he was selling his wares on Flannel Row or somewhere that took him out of site of his van. 

Out of school activities

My grandfather ran a small pig farm and we would often go there to help even as a 5 or 6 year old. The smallholding or allotment as it was called had a field attached in which Pap would grow corn or root crops used to feed the pigs and at harvest time it was part of our job to make stooks from the sheaves of corn and when we were big enough to help throw them up on to the trailer where my father would be to catch them and build the load. We had an old Fordson Major and it was a constant disappointment to me that only Trevor was allowed to drive it whilst I was left to do all of the manual tasks. At some point in time the corn needed threshing and this was the case on many of the farms in the village so along came the Phipp’s with their thresher normally towed by Ron who would manage the threshing machine whilst we helped with the sacks catching the chaff and the grain. I remember whilst threshing was taking place at Tommy Dick’s farm in a barn on the Whiston Road some of the bigger boys would try and catch us youngster and put us in one of the large grain sacks and tie us in. It only happened to me once but I remember one boy being caught and put in one and they threw a mouse in with him, how he did not come out completely mad I never knew, but he was absolutely frantic whilst in there.

When Pap grew beet for the pigs they were  lifted by hand and thrown on the cart normally during freezing wet weather but none of us seemed to care we just got on with it.

When a sow became barren she would end up being driven down to Fred Onleys butcher’s yard where she would be slaughtered and this was great entertainment for most of us young boys, watching the carcass being de-haired by burning straw around it and then eviscerated. As a relative of the owner one of us often ended up with bladder to dry out and use as a football.  

The allotment and orchard were a large part of my life as we had to spend a fair bit of our weekends and evenings either cleaning out, feeding or shutting up the pigs or hens but it did mean that we always had eggs, pork or bacon and often chicken especially when chicken was a luxury for Christmas only for most people.

One of the major pastimes during late summer and autumn for all of us boys was to go scrumping and many a feast was had on apples, pears, plums and sometimes peas, straight from the pods, carrots, radishes etc., straight from the ground.

If there was nothing else to do there was always cricket on the green during the summer and football on Main Street during the winter. How many of us got football shirts and stockings or boots for Christmas and birthdays, no computers and playstations for us.

After we moved to 15 Northampton Road one of my favourite play areas was the old hay barn attached to the cow byre in Ching’s field behind the houses, the same field in which was the Fishpond and the sheep dip. I spent many an hour hiding in the tin shed at the side of the Fishpond if we were playing hide and seek around the village.

Especially when I was young a mixed group of boys and girls would be found somewhere around the Green playing “Tin Tan Tommy” a game that involved a tin and a brick only, but great fun. Or we could be found under the Gatehouse playing “Farmer Farmer may I cross your water”.

A few were lucky to have bikes many of which were cast offs from their parent or rebuilds from parts from the tip situated down the Bedford Road and some of these would have no brakes often fixed wheels and I remember having one with no saddle, not a lot of fun that.

There was the time of the building of the old people’s bungalows in the Leys where for a number of months as children we had sewer pipes foundation trenches to play war games and the like in. That was a terrific time as unlike today there were no fences to keep us out.

One thing that was absolutely necessary for every boy in the village and some of the girls was to pas the initiation test that was walk round the horse trough on the walls without slipping in and then to jump from one side wall to the other without falling in. I think I spent quite some time in that water not drinking too much fortunately.

Saturday afternoons in the football season were often taken following the Denton football team and this meant loading pub benches on to one of Wrefords lorries kindly supplied and driven by Ronnie Bell to villages all over Northamptonshire such as Spratton, Brixworth, Bugbrooke and Harpole.

Notable Events

The first notable date I can really remember was the Coronation of Elizabeth II as this was a day of  great fun for all especially the children. The celebration started off with a fancy dress competition in which Trevor and I were dressed up as “dead end kids” by my father and we were lucky enough to win second prize of ten shillings. Later on up at the Rec we had all sorts of races such as sack races, three legged races, and the egg and spoon race. I remember coming away from there with quite a bit of money certainly more than I had ever had in my life before.

We were lucky enough to be one of the only households in the village with a TV set and we seemed to have half the village in our front room staring at a nine inch screen that often rolled round and round.

A memorable day every year was the Church outing which would start off at 5’o’clock in the morning  and off we would go in a Knights coach to Skegness, the Chapel on the other hand would have their trip on a York’s coach and go to Clacton. On the way back we always sang songs like “Ten Green Bottles” and “The Quartermaster’s Stores”. We always stopped at St Ives on the way home for fish and chips and as we got older we would try and slip into one of the pubs on the square in the hope of getting served with a pint of beer.

During one summer holiday the Reverend Eltoft took us on a bike ride to Naseby, our adventures were quite limited but it was a good day out.

Another thing that was part of the Sunday school’s  activities were  trips to the pantomime at the New Theatre that used to be on Abington Street. As a small boy this was really magical and I remember a performer called Nat Jackley who played the Dame, in Aladin I think, doing his silly walks and me trying to emulate him for what seemed weeks after.  We also had a tea party up in the Vicarage when Rev Hilton Clayton Robinson Eltoft would fetch out his violin and double bass and play for us and we would be expected to sing along. Gill Parris reminds me that one year we had a bun fight but I doubt that I was involved as I was quite a withdrawn child.

We often held whist drives, beetle drives to help raise money for our annual school trip and one year early in the fifties we went to Heathrow where I spent a shilling on a drinks dispensing machine and out popped a chilled bottle of Pepsi, it was magnificent for a small boy from Denton.

One year we held a Christmas concert and I remember quite clearly dressing up in a fur coat with a brown mask and singing “The Teddy Bears Picnic”. We never did it again!

There turned out to be a number of notable trips with the school and it got even better in 1959 after we had started at Wollaston Secondary Modern School and went to Paris.

When I was 8 or 9 it was decided by the parish council to resurrect the fair on the Green and Strudwicks fair suddenly appeared. Struddy’s fair as it was known consisted of a coconut shy, a rifle range, and a couple of other stalls. Every young lad was convinced that all of the coconuts were glued to the holders and the air rifles all had bent barrels.

In the autumn the most notable time for many of us was firework night, note in Denton it was called Firework Night not Bonfire Night as only once do I remember the village having a bonfire and that was up in  Norketts at the top of the Moulting. Firework night for us was a night for mayhem where we would run around the village in the dark throwing “bangers” at everyone and one year when we made a prolonged attack on the Red Lion, Mike O’Brien who worked on a farm had brought some crow scarers with him which he used to fight us off by opening the front door and throwing one at us occasionally. It was great fun for us! The bang they made was tremendous and made our penny bangers and two-penny cannons seem so lightweight.   

My Tribute to Denton

As I said earlier there was never a better place to grow up than Denton even though we didn’t have a Rec as good as Yardley, we weren’t as posh as Little or Great Houghton and we weren’t as hard as Brafield.  But we did have Mackies or as it is know now the Red Lion where we could hide away in the top room and play skittles sipping at a half of shandy all night, no it probably wasn’t the way my Mother and Father wanted me to be brought up but it was great fun.

The people that I grew up all were marvellous kids and their parents were friendly and kind to a little boy who probably wasn’t the best behaved lad in the world so to you all

THANK YOU DENTON FOR EVERYTHING.