Fellowship of Young Ramblers Meeting Hut.

[Albert T Smith]

In the early Nineteen fifties I belonged to a youth Rambling Club which met or had a meeting hut near to Malin Bridge. I believe we met on a Thursday or Friday and the name owners of the hut may have been, ' ?? Allotment Society '. (Anyway that rings a bell.)

 

The meeting hut was situated on the right-hand side of the road which runs up to Stannington, Not veryfar from a pub at the junction of Wood Lane?.

 

The Fellowship of Young Ramblers was the youth attachment to the Ramblers Association and I believe a Frank or Fred Broomhead or Turton was in charge of its younger element.

 

Can anyone add to this?

[hillsbro]

The Nissen-type hut belonged to the Woodland View Allotments Society. It is still there; it's about 150 yards up the hill from The Anvil pub at the corner of Wood Lane, and is surrounded by the allotments on three sides (standing back from the road it narrowly survived the 1970s road widening). My dad was an Allotments Society committee member, and at the annual show he won the prize for tomatoes with annoying regularity (annoying for rival tomato growers, that is). In the early 1950s the Woodland View Chapel would have been just below it. The Allotments Society is still going strong as far as I know. In the 1950s it had other social functions and the hut was well-used for such things as bingo (or tombola as it was then called), jumble sales, "socials" etc. I can quite imagine that a rambling club would have been just the sort of thing that the Allotments Society would encourage and provide meeting facilities for. The Broomheads were well known on nearby Low Road (where I was born - more years ago than I care to remember but I get my bus pass next year). I think that Frank Broomhead was the father of Edna Broomhead (now Mrs Hall) who still lives nearby. Another member of the Broomhead family owned the little shop (general store) at 55 Low Road until the terrace was demolished in 1964.