Up Dykes Hall Road

[RichardB]

Avondale Road

Proceed 50 yards, on your left is a dark building which was used as a garage/repair place. Any pictures (Street View etc, I can't use it, it makes me "seasick"); any idea what the building was/when it was built please ? (Childhood memories from 53 Dykes Hall Road in the late 60's - mid 70's)

[Stuart0742]

Avondale Road

Proceed 50 yards, on your left is a dark building which was used as a garage/repair place. Any pictures (Street View etc, I can't use it, it makes me "seasick"); any idea what the building was/when it was built please ? (Childhood memories from 53 Dykes Hall Road in the late 60's - mid 70's)

Looks like they have built on the land/garage

Courtesy of Google SV

[Stuart0742]

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Have an explore and try not to be ill

[RichardB]

Looks like they have built on the land/garage

Courtesy of Google SV

Also of interest the two houses directly opposite; always seemed more impressive that the rest of the Roadl that would be the building directly to the rear

of 49 Dykes Hall Road (on the corner with Avondale); may have had something to do with wood supplier/carpentry/workshops.

[RichardB]

Bunch of Church-related people living on there early doors last Century.

[Stuart0742]

Also of interest the two houses directly opposite; always seemed more impressive that the rest of the Roadl that would be the building directly to the rear

of 49 Dykes Hall Road (on the corner with Avondale); may have had something to do with wood supplier/carpentry/workshops.

Courtesy of Google SV

[RichardB]

Am I correct in thinking the rest of the road is smaller, brick built houses ?

Thank you for the pictures.

[Stuart0742]

Am I correct in thinking the rest of the road is smaller, brick built houses ?

Thank you for the pictures.

Spinning the google map in post #3 around I would say the rest of the houses are smaller, brick built but stone front elevations.

[RichardB]

Spinning the google map in post #3 around I would say the rest of the houses are smaller, brick built but stone front elevations.

Strange selection of buildings on such a short stretch of road; especially the missing garage building; it backed onto common ground between the back gardens of lower Dykes Hall Road and Clarence Road - did there used to be an old garage (unused/delirect ?) on the lower (flat) part of Clarence Road anyone ?

[RichardB]

Do any maps cover the area ? Single story building but very well built; almost like it was meant to be bigger, impressive windowsills, windows filled in, big stone sided doorway; building was always very dark from pollution, I assume.

[vox]

Strange selection of buildings on such a short stretch of road;

I think Hillsorough is a bit like Walkley in that there's always a surprise to be found. Odd mixes of building styles, buildings hidden away between two streets etc. I've lived around that end of town for years now and I still find things I've not really noticed before.

[hilldweller]

Avondale Road

Proceed 50 yards, on your left is a dark building which was used as a garage/repair place. Any pictures (Street View etc, I can't use it, it makes me "seasick"); any idea what the building was/when it was built please ? (Childhood memories from 53 Dykes Hall Road in the late 60's - mid 70's)

My cousins lived a few doors down from Avondale Road at Number 35 for many years. The building you mention was used by a scout troop in the 1950's. From memory it had double doors and in summer they used to leave them open. We common kids used to stand and watch the antics. The open space it backed on to was used as our playground and there were several underground air-raid shelters which we used to try to tunnel into. On an old map I saw this ground was originally part of the gardens of the houses in Dykes Hall Road but I don't know when it was fenced off seperately, perhaps for the shelters in WW2 ? Towards the bottom on the Clarence Road side were some brick-built garages with a cinder path from the bottom. During the sixties a modern building was put up at the bottom of the site, could it have been a car salesroom ?, my memory fails me. There was a narrow gap by the scout hut that led into Avondale Road.

My cousin had a water & compressed air rocket, you part-filled it with water and then fitted it on to the end of a bicycle-pump thingy and pumped so many times. Of course he kept increasing the number of pumps until the rocket, made from heavy polythene began to swell alarmingly. When he launched it from the waste ground it went with a great whoose and climbed almost out of sight. Unfortunately it came down through the slate roof of the house next to the scout-hut and embedded itself into the attic floorboards. His father was not amused when it came to paying for the roof repairs, but at least we got the rocket back !

Something else that didn't amuse his father was our quest for the ultimate explosion. In those days you could buy large bangers at firework time, they were made by Standard and called 3-2-1's.. We experimented with electrical firing of these by piercing them with a needle and threading a large bundle of them onto a length of electrical resistance wire (old fire element) and connecting the ends to a long length of flex. Wrap the lot in a polythene bag and bury it in the middle of the flower garden. We rigged up a low voltage transformer at the other end of the flex and waited until we heard someone come up the entry from the road. We switched on and about a second later the entire garden lifted up by about 3 feet and then it fell back down again leaving his father's prize dahlia plants, tubers and all resting on the surface. The person coming up the passage was his dad !

HD

[RichardB]

Do any maps cover the area ? Single story building but very well built; almost like it was meant to be bigger, impressive windowsills, windows filled in, big stone sided doorway; building was always very dark from pollution, I assume.

All those maps, all that effort ... Dykes Hall Road and Avondale Road missing ... lol

[hilldweller]

My cousins lived a few doors down from Avondale Road at Number 35 for many years. The building you mention was used by a scout troop in the 1950's. From memory it had double doors and in summer they used to leave them open. We common kids used to stand and watch the antics. The open space it backed on to was used as our playground and there were several underground air-raid shelters which we used to try to tunnel into. On an old map I saw this ground was originally part of the gardens of the houses in Dykes Hall Road but I don't know when it was fenced off seperately, perhaps for the shelters in WW2 ? Towards the bottom on the Clarence Road side were some brick-built garages with a cinder path from the bottom. During the sixties a modern building was put up at the bottom of the site, could it have been a car salesroom ?, my memory fails me. There was a narrow gap by the scout hut that led into Avondale Road.

My cousin had a water & compressed air rocket, you part-filled it with water and then fitted it on to the end of a bicycle-pump thingy and pumped so many times. Of course he kept increasing the number of pumps until the rocket, made from heavy polythene began to swell alarmingly. When he launched it from the waste ground it went with a great whoose and climbed almost out of sight. Unfortunately it came down through the slate roof of the house next to the scout-hut and embedded itself into the attic floorboards. His father was not amused when it came to paying for the roof repairs, but at least we got the rocket back !

Something else that didn't amuse his father was our quest for the ultimate explosion. In those days you could buy large bangers at firework time, they were made by Standard and called 3-2-1's.. We experimented with electrical firing of these by piercing them with a needle and threading a large bundle of them onto a length of electrical resistance wire (old fire element) and connecting the ends to a long length of flex. Wrap the lot in a polythene bag and bury it in the middle of the flower garden. We rigged up a low voltage transformer at the other end of the flex and waited until we heard someone come up the entry from the road. We switched on and about a second later the entire garden lifted up by about 3 feet and then it fell back down again leaving his father's prize dahlia plants, tubers and all resting on the surface. The person coming up the passage was his dad !

HD

Further to the above I've had a snoop at the council planning website and discovered that the entire former waste ground including the old garages has now been built upon with a little estate of apartments and semi-detached houses. The planning application makes no mention of the former uses other than refering to garages. Looking at Google Maps it appears that the developers must have used a giant shoe-horn to get them all in. My 1942 Kelly's Directory makes no mention of the little stone building on Avondale Road but does indicate that No. 2 Avondale was in use as a boarding-house. Perhaps the building was a stable or coach-house for the larger houses opposite.

HD

[RichardB]

Further to the above I've had a snoop at the council planning website and discovered that the entire former waste ground including the old garages has now been built upon with a little estate of apartments and semi-detached houses. The planning application makes no mention of the former uses other than refering to garages. Looking at Google Maps it appears that the developers must have used a giant shoe-horn to get them all in. My 1942 Kelly's Directory makes no mention of the little stone building on Avondale Road but does indicate that No. 2 Avondale was in use as a boarding-house. Perhaps the building was a stable or coach-house for the larger houses opposite.

HD

Thanks for looking into this Hilldweller; I wonder if the two houses opposite were, at one time, one large house ? and if they pre-date the rest of the houses. I like the stable/coach-house idea; very grand for a stable but you never know.

[hilldweller]

Thanks for looking into this Hilldweller; I wonder if the two houses opposite were, at one time, one large house ? and if they pre-date the rest of the houses. I like the stable/coach-house idea; very grand for a stable but you never know.

From memory the building was of single story construction with, I think, a hipped slate roof. The front elevation was stone with the rest brick.

When you consider that most of Hillsborough was built around the turn of the 20th century, any tradesman would have needed a horse and cart of some type and stable-blocks are more common that you might think. Around my childhood home in Wood Road off Holme Lane a number of the villa type larger houses had small stables, latterly used as garages. Even our little corner shop had a small building at the top of the yard which must have been used for that purpose as it had the usual wrought-iron hay manger thingy high in the corner.

HD

[hilldweller]

From memory the building was of single story construction with, I think, a hipped slate roof. The front elevation was stone with the rest brick.

When you consider that most of Hillsborough was built around the turn of the 20th century, any tradesman would have needed a horse and cart of some type and stable-blocks are more common that you might think. Around my childhood home in Wood Road off Holme Lane a number of the villa type larger houses had small stables, latterly used as garages. Even our little corner shop had a small building at the top of the yard which must have been used for that purpose as it had the usual wrought-iron hay manger thingy high in the corner.

HD

I've just looked on Multimap.com because I remembered that their aerial photo's were a bit out of date and sure enough it shows the entire site before it was developed ! You can select bird's eye views from NSEW.

As I remembered, the scout hut building had a hipped roof and by scaling it from the Dykes Hall terraced houses which were about 12/13 feet wide per unit I should say that the building was about 20 feet by 12 feet. I remember that the interior was white-washed brickwork and just the one room so I don't think that it would have been any sort of dwelling, The second edition OS map (1903) shows the houses opposite as being much bigger than the other houses on the road but definately two seperate dwellings and gardens.

My money's on the little building being a stable.

HD