Crooksmoor Park/Weston Park

[dynamicdebz]

Had to take my daughter to the Childrens hospital today, once we'd finished we had an hour to kill before my fella was picking us up so decided to go round the 2 parks.

It made me reminise, it must be decades since I last went there (In the 70's). I ended up telling my 8 y o daughter all about what I got up to there.

Living in Broomhall Flats as a child, we'd go most weekends to Weston Park/Crooksmoor park with my older & younger sisters (no parents). We'd start by going into the museum & art gallery, usually get thrown out by security for being noisy. We'd then walk past the duck pond, feed them if we'd brought the bread. Occasionally fall in & make sure we were dried off before going home. Walk past the tennis courts, sometimes throw acorns at the players & run away. We'd then go down the big hill into Crooksmoor park. I remember riding my bike down there & running my sister over at the bottom of the hill, got the scar on my eye as proof.

We'd then go on the swings & roundabout, got scars on my chin from being hit in the face walking past the swings. Then we'd sit on the hill in front of the boating lake. Thats when there did use to be boats on it including a big one that took several passengers. I always had a fear about the lake and it all came flooding back to me today.

Did someone once drown there. All sorts of rumours went around about it being haunted by a little girl who had drown & even now looking at it, it still seemed very eerie like in horror films.

Anyway after sunbathing, ladding it, & general larking about we'd make the same journey back stopping to climb about on the war statue with the 2 soldiers on it.

I was telling my daughter how when I was her age I'd climb onto the shoulders of these statue men, she couldn't believe I would do something so dangerous!

That was when kids were allowed to be kids, the fun we had, the trouble we got into, it is nothing compared to what is happening now. It was all part of growing up.

[Plain Talker]

yup, I, too spent many a happy hour in those parks.

 

My father and grandparents were from round there, so we got to know the parks intimately.

 

My fave was, on a sunday afternoon, my dad taking me and my sister into the museum, and being scared witless by the mummies, and the sumo wrestlers. I loved the old polar bear, snowy, (not the newer one they have now) this one was on all-fours, a huge adult, not the Juvenile, that stands upright, that's there these days.

[dynamicdebz]

I remember all the things in the museum but still nothing but the fear in me as much as the lake did especially when we'd heard about the drowning.

In fact I think that is where my fear of being out of my depth during swimming comes from.

[CHAIRBOY]

The unfortunate person who drowned was Beverley Wall, a pupil at the time at High Storrs School.

[dynamicdebz]

Was that in the 70's choirboy?

I went to High Storrs but only for the 1st 2 years in 78 & 79.

[CHAIRBOY]

Was that in the 70's choirboy?

I went to High Storrs but only for the 1st 2 years in 78 & 79.

 

Chairboy (as in Wycombe)! Yes, given the summer of '76, I think it was then, one very hot Sunday afternoon.

[mrteabag]

i used to spend hours and hours in these parks

i lived on kelvin flats and when the weather was nice used to take a towel up with my mates and when everyone gone home from the boat house used to swim in the boating lake

i remember too standing on the soldiers near the hospital and getting thrown out of the museum :hihi:

i heard there was a body in the bottom of the boating lake that couldnt be recovered and that no one had touched the bottom cause it was that deep but this aint true as we used to swim out to the bouy in the middle and swim down the chain that was keeping it there to see who could touch the bottom

aaaahhhh the good old days you brought me some good memories back talking about this

[Guest]

I used to visit those parks regularly when I lived in Sheffield, right from being a little girl in my pram, through school to just before I left for uni. I remember the bus fare as a kid used to be 2p for me, and 5p for my mum; I knew we were going a little bit further than usual because the trip to town on the 95 used to be only 4p for adults. Later, I used to meet my boyfriend for lunch in the park, as he was at uni in one of the surrounding buildings.

 

I remember the gorgeous greenhouse, with the stunning plants and flowers (a screen of passion flowers in one corner stands out especially), the bees in the museum (of course), climbing on those strange, metal tube sculptures (and burning my legs on them in the summer), ice creams from the van outside the museum, the pond with the bridge next to the uni Geography building, playing rounders on the grass near the rhododendron bushes... I could go on .

 

I distinctly remember the big boat on the lake in the other park, the fishermen sat around the edges, the pub just up the hill from it, and the banks of beautiful bluebells behind it. Oh, and the little enclosure with swings and that huge barrel thing that you could run inside. Didn't they have to take it down because someone got trapped under it? There are excellent conker trees around there too. I remember walking around there with my bloke on a foggy Autumn morning to the sound of conkers falling through the leaves to the path below. Wonderful! I miss Sheffield .

[CHAIRBOY]

I haven't been in either park for some time now so my comments are past tense. The park with the boating lake is called Crookes Valley Park and I believe that the restaurant Dam House is owned by Carlton Palmer.

I share many of Hecate's memories but can just add a few more. The tennis courts, near the University library, were where Sheffield's tennis legend, Roger Taylor cut his teeth; following in his mum's footsteps. That is Weston Park and there was always a throng of people there at the Whit Sing on Whit Mondays. The bandstand offered light entertainment on Sunday afternoons in the summer with band concerts and on light evenings (Thurdays) there would be jazz or Indian music concerts on. They were happy occasions and people took blankets to lie on and be soothed by the music.

Just how safe these parks are now, I'm not sure? There was a time when there were some strange folk loitering by the toilets at the bottom of Mushroom Lane but I've no idea if they still stand?

[last orders]

This brings back so many happy memories of times spent fishing and bird nesting in both these parks in the 50's when I was about 8 or 10.

We bought sixpennyworth of maggots from Bennets original tackle shop near the parks and used a cane and bent pin to catch minnows and sticklebacks in Weston park.

Remember the drinking fountain in Weston park near the tennis courts? It seemed so cleaver in those days.

Then into Crookesvalley park down to the playground by the bowling greens and onto the "bottomless" lake where fish were always harder to catch than in Weston park. Sundays my grandad used to take me for a ride on the speedboat, was it called the Queen Elizabeth?

Great times when youngsters could spend all day in there on their own with no worries of anyone bothering them.

Except that is the "parkie" if he caught you fishing