Hyde Park flats

I am now 40 years of age but grew up on the flats on Manor Oaks Road. (now demolished). Top floor St Johns gardens....where everyone useed to jump from!! I went to St John c of e school where there were some fearful teachers, not least the head Mr martin and jean Dodsworth. A force to be reckoned with, much as teachers should be today!! I now work in a large school with a sixth form and to be honest, discipline has dropped over the years. The teachers and senior staff find themselves tied and unable to manage unruly people. Cane and slipper was the order of the day in the 70s and plety of it. Did anyone else go to St Johns or did you live in my block??? Give me a shout!!! Do you remember Steven Dooley, Craig Oprey and the taff sisters Tina and Michelle....wow! Those were the days...

Steve in Rotherham,

I lived on the floor below you at number 76 Rowland Row..The heating and hot water supply was great..rent £4.25 a week..but the lifts hardly worked, and one morning when i woke up I looked from my bedroom window down to the floor below and the Police and an ambulance were there removing the remains of a jumper, He lived about 6 doors away from me..He was an ex school teacher and his wife had died a few months before, and in depression he decided to end it all..Saddly I remember a group of young lads who were measuring the depth of the indentation he had made in the lawn 75 feet below.

I 2 lived on st johns gardens top floor

dont know if its the same man but a man jumped from outside my door

i also remember a women fell asleep on her balconay sunbathin and fell off under the shops breakin both her legs i think

that was from in1983

then moved 2 live at lowedges in about 1985

i remember the young woman who fell off her balcony, whilst sunbathing, and, yes it'd be the summer of 83 or 84 when that happened.

I saw it all "kick off". My flat was on the opposite side of the big block, directly overlooking the shops and the Crow's Nest Pub. (I lived on Dacre row, right above the "Target" pub on the Manor Oaks Road end.

I can still remember the screams as she waited for the ambulance.

She was sitting on the balcony rail, sunbathing, and fell asleep. She unbalanced, and fell off the "wrong" side of the balcony, landing in the flower-bed-y thing outside the little shop owned by the pakistani lady (I forget her name, but we were always in her shop for our supplies of cigs and food)

Fortunately for the lass, the flower bed had thick shrubs and stuff which softened her landing. God only knows how bad it would have been if she'd have landed on the concrete instead of the shrubs.

Also iirc, the fall was from one of the lower levels, about chancel row (so it'd have not been as bad, again, as if it would have if she'd have fallen from any higher)

if I recall correctly, the young woman was very lucky, she suffered something as (relatively) minor as a broken hip

PT

There was also a youngster about two years old who fell from a window on the second level, and he got away with no injuries at all.

Also a friend of mine who visited me on night arrived at my front door in a state of distress..While he was waiting for the lift at the Duke Street end of the flats (The Highest point) he heard a sound like a bag of cement hitting the floor..He went round the corner and and saw the body of another jumper...witnesses said he had been hanging around all day on the stairs at St Johns Row.

There were happier times at hyde Park Flats like the time "Monkfords"(the tent and tarpaulin manufactures) caught fire

We all had great afternoon standing or sitting on the balconies watching the event below..I remember an old gent walking passed the burning building and he stepped over a hose pipe, and it burst under him ( the Firemen had a problem with high water pressure that day and several pipes burst) the poor old gent was just stepping over a weak pipe as it split, water shot up inside his raincoat and spouted out of his neck and sleeves..It looked very funny at the time "but not for him".. A Police car came to his attendance and took him off home to dry out.

I lived on High Pavement Row, number 48 I believe, circa 1982. I remember a horrible incident of an 8 year old girl having one of those old-fashioned massive televisions land on her, thrown from one of the balconies and killing her instantly. Am I right?

I went to St John's School at the time, teachers I recall are Mrs Godbehere and I *think* one called Mrs Powell...

Does anyone else remember the derilict dog track? I used to be fascinated by the giant scoreboard. (Probably wasn't fantastically massive, but it looked it to a 6 year old!)

my mate had a flat on dacre row and all i can rember is the ants dont no wheather all the flats were the same but here were hundreds of the little bliters in his flat happy days eh!!!

I remember the little girl getting killed. it was a 15 yr old lad who threw the telly off the upper floors I I R C. I believe he was "not quite a full shilling" although that does not excuse what he did.

the problem was even then, anything and everything that could be thrown, got thrown off the balconies. (from animals to garbage)

I remember the landlady of the "Target" pub and her three little yorkie terriers, when she used to take them onto the grass outside for their last "wee" at night, all the dead-heads would be cobbing milk bottles and rubbish bags over the balconies, she'd be dodging the missiles... (there really were some lame-brained imbeciles!)

I remember the milkman (and the shops on the parade below the flats) being made to stop selling milk in bottles, because of the frequency with which the bottles got (coff!) "recycled" as throwing objects.

we had to put up with the horrible "Krypton Factor" cartons (as in 'it takes a "Krypton Factor" contestant to fathom out the mechanics of pulling the carton flaps apart and opening the "spout" bit out without either ripping the carton, or spilling the contents all over yourself, the floor and the worktop!')

on the nights before "bin-day" everyone would leave their black sacks of rubbish outside the flat doors, and the caretakers would drive a weird electric "Kart" along the landings, with some massive "paladin" bins (industrial-sized circular bins) and collect the garbage.

well, the caretakers collected what rubbish was actually *left*, on the landings, after the drunken idiots had traversed their merry way along the landing, and hurled the rubbish over the balconies.

You'd hear the sound of the imbecile drunkards, running, above your head, at about midnight, and 1, maybe 2 in the morning. and this sort of "Whee-thud-splatter" noise as the bags went over, whizzed past your bedroom window, and struck the concrete below, spilling the contents all over.

steevie d.. I lived on Dacre row, too! I lived bang-smack above the Target pub... it's 20 years, nearly, now since.. i was there 83 to 86-ish, and I well- remember the ants. They were a real pain in the neck, because they were, literally everywhere.

the environmental health (EHO) used to come along, and put little Phials of ant-poison/ and ant -bait down all through the flat. It was only a "stop-gap measure", the council could not eradicate them, ( I was told) because on the flats complex, there was a "hard-core" of about about a dozen flats, where the residents would not allow the EHO access to their flats. The ants were nesting, breeding, and congregating there, and using the service ducts to spread through the rest of the buildings. the ants were no respecter of persons!

I remember buying a loaf of bread from the shop that used to be the co-op (the one nearest the Crows Nest pub and the housing office) a thick-sliced Fletchers loaf... it was around the time that they changed from the greaseproof paper wrapper to the cellophane bags. I got back to my flat, put the loaf down on my worktop, went nto the fridge for my sanwich filling, and by the time i had turned back, to make my sarnie, the rotten ants ahd got into the loaf, through a split in the wrapper, and they were through all the slices!

UGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

do you remember the shops?

from my right, as you looked at the shops, from my front door, there was the Paper shop next to the community centre, then there was a sort of freezer food/ mini market place, then there was a little shop owned by a Pakistani lady, called Sue.(Sue was okay, cos you could get "strap" off her if you were skint, a day or so before your girocheque was due! lol She used too write down what you'd had in a little book and you could go in and pay her on giro day) there was the community shop/drop-in and advice centre, which I think used to be a hairdressers. then there was the old co-op which got taken over by an asian bloke. Then, finally, there was the bookies and the housing office, all along that parade of shops.(with the crows Nest pub, right at the very end, by the lifts)

oh, memories!

PT

does anyone remember the lad getting his head chopped off....both the inner and outer doors had the little glass window smashed he put his head through both of them and someone called the lift.......it was around 78ish.........still goes through me now thinking about it:|