Excerpts from Interviews with Betty Franks (nee England). 03/05/08 and 20/06/08

These interviews were conducted by John Millington

Betty was born in 1924 at Tickhill Station where her father Charles England was Station Master.

Betty’s father had charge of both Tickhill and Maltby Stations and also the signal boxes as far as Kirk Sandal

Betty went to a small private school in Tickhill run by Miss Goodwin.  There she had a broad general education, including some French. 

In the evenings, the family listened to the radio which was powered by an accumulator ( a bulky and heavy rechargeable battery). The family had two accumulators, these were used in turn and recharged weekly at Priestley’s Garage. Listening time was therefore limited and Betty’s father decided what was to be listened to.

Betty liked shopping at Jarvis’s which was a “lovely shop, very refined” with Crawford’s biscuits on display and a musical box playing at Christmas time. There were three butchers in Tickhill.

In the New Year of 1940, two months before her sixteenth birthday Betty started work in the South Yorkshire Office of British Railways. On reaching the age of 16 she was paid £1 a week, which she gave to her mother.

During the war, Betty remembers ….  one weekend, when relatives from Deepcar were visiting, Sheffield “went up”. There was an air raid. Betty remembers standing at the door with her father seeing a red glow in the night sky.  Sheffield was aflame as the Luftwaffe were trying to put the steel works out of action.

For a fuller version of these interviews, illustrated with many photographs, please click here