What’s happening in Grimey?

Just caught a bit on Calendar

 

https://www.itv.com/news/calendar/2...ious-items-discovered-at-address-in-barnsley/

 

Sounds like a bomb disposal unit has been called in and about 50 houses evacuated. Didn’t catch much else either.

 

40 year old man arrested

 

They have let residence back in my mates mum had decamped to herd but is on her way back home.

 

A bomb in white city?

 

We had a lad at the pit who dabbled in explosives.
And it was at a time we were boring and firing the main headings.
Obviously it didn’t go well - he blew some of his fingers off.
If I remember right he lived up Hoyland.

 

Jeez - if that goes off it’s likely to cause at least £5 worth of damage.

 

First time you've ever made me laugh, well done! It probably helped that I'm from 'Red City' though.

 

I've always heard of red and white city and known which is which but for I've only just realised I've got no idea why they have those names. Is it something obvious?

Hmm having thought about it is it colour of the houses? Yes I'm thick

 

No idea. I'd guess colour of houses but I wasn't allowed up white city (didn't want to get beat up) so I never really went past 'the village' (high street) apart from a handful of times. Quite a lot of the houses around our end were painted red though.

 

I like to imagine that you lived in that one inhabited house in the middle of an entire boarded up street.

 

I’m sure white city was where the pit was and red city was the posh bit but memory fades from tbh .

 

I was talking through memories of my childhood with Will a couple of days ago and it was only then that I realised that my upbringing was probably not normal but you don't know when you're a kid, do you? Our house looked over the 'backies' to the houses that were all boarded up and one was set on fire almost every night. We used to watch it start downstairs and then go all the way up and through the roof before the fire brigade turned up. It happened so often that people would stop calling, presuming someone else would or that there'd be no point because another would be lit as soon as they left. You'd walk to the shops in the village and be dodging needles all over the floor and be walking down streets of boarded up houses. You wouldn't go up white city unless you wanted to be egged or worse. School was an absolute write-off, I can't imagine anywhere with worse behaviour exists. If anyone at work says anything about a student's behaviour I just wish they could spend 5 minutes in my old school. I spend all day, every day in awe at how well behaved our students are (I mean, they genuinely are anyway but when I've got my old school to compare it to they seem even better, I've still not got used to it and I've been there over 3 years).

 

I'm sure I read something on a local history site saying it was down to the colour of the bricks used to build the housing. Red City is the area heading towards Brierley and below where Willowgarth School was, White City pretty much from where the 'Stute was and up past the Red Rum pub to the Cemetery.

My mother still lives in Red City, was born and lived her early years in White City. The old tracky buses that served each bit specifically had the name on their display. I know this is slightly sad remembering this, but the 340 did Red city, 341 White City.

 

I don't know if we just didn't call it Red City because we lived there and you don't tend to refer to your own place but we used to talk about White City (and I remember seeing that on the buses) but I never really heard anyone say Red City.

 

Yeah, to be fair we didn't really refer to Red City as such, but White City was commonly used to describe where other family /friends lived.

Hard to describe what the village was like to my own kids, born in 2000 and 2004, neither of them has seen winding gear and the landscape of an active coal mine. The Grimethorpe skyline I remember was the pithead, cooling tower and conveyors.

 

Police raided a house on Coronation avenue... drugs bust... Whilst they were searching the house they found 3 homemade bombs and chemicals to make more... A 40 year old bloke arrested...( I'm with holding his name... It will be plastered all over the pages soon enough ) anyway
That's what I got told when I contacted a family member to check they were alright after seeing the news item on Look North

 

I lived in the Village and then moved up to White City.

What is it with you yokels that is so hard to understand!! Red City was so called because the houses were built of red brick. White City so called because the houses were rendered. I’m sure that when it was first done it may have been White, but when I lived there in the 70’s Grey city would have been more apt. To confuse matters there were two White Cities - Separated by the primary school. One of them had houses that were Red but it was still called White City not White City (but with red houses). That was presumably so that it didn’t get confused with Red City. The Village was .....well the Village but the houses were red brick but it wasn’t the The Village (with red bricks) probably again to avoid confusion with Red City.
I think the buses were originally numbered 10 and 10a but there was also a number 11 which went through Red City on the way to Donny. They then became the 211, 340 and 341, but I can’t be sure because by then we’d moved to Cudeth - down Darfield Red to be precise and I had enough trouble remembering the 376 and 377 which both went down Darfield road but on different routes.

I hope that’s been helpful to my fellow BBS’s. If you think so, let me know and I’ll run through the extraordinary problems caused when you had to get off the bus at the Stute in Grimey and the very long walk to the top of White City, which was replicated when we moved to Cudeth and we had the same problem if you missed the Darfield Rd buses and had to walk from the middle of Cudeth. Obviously I’m only giving you the highlights here and could go into much more detail if required.
HTH.

 

You forgot to mention the seaside estate lol...