South Yorkshire Times, April 2, 1949

Wath on Dearne

The old order has changed. For half an hour on Friday morning I have been standing near Wath’s traffic island in Montgomery Road. Wath is busy on its shopping rounds at this time in a morning, but the strange thing is the number of men I have seen armed with baskets and carrier bags bulging with loaves of bread, tins of soup, chops and cabbages. Wath’s older generation has moved up into the front line.

There is a brand of freemasonry of the road about these morning rounds. Shoppers with full baskets exchange the latest news on the queue position in the butcher’s with their fellow-travellers fresh from the grocer’s. The route is readjusted and brought up to date with the latest information.

There are constant Good Mornings, reflections on the possibility of rain, an exchange of the latest family news, and, women stop for a chat who haven’t seen each other since at least the day before.

A little girl in brown goes by on a red scooter.

” How she grows ! Eh, I wouldnt have known her.” ..Aye, she’s shooting up ..

Many in the butcher’s ?”

” How’s your mother this morning ? Oh, she’s getting on nicely. This weather makes her feel brighter.

How’s yourself ? Oh—Just so-so. I’ll he packing up before long. Sixty this year, you know I think it’s time I had a rest

And on the male side.

“Nice morning.” O”Aye, but could do with some raif

“Saving it for the cricket season.-

There was a correction. Saturdays in the cricket season. Funny how it always rains on SaturdaYs.

Dad taps his pipe on the palm of his hand. Wath has said Good Morning ” to another shopping day.

Wath must once have boon a pleasant village. It has changed into a township, not for the sake of change, but because It must. It has changed grudgingly. And that delightful green landmark –its traffic island—is a concession to the past. It could only have been green; anything else would have seemed out of place. Some early May Day morning, who knows . Magic fingers might even have planted a Maypole there.

But this is a cynical world. A Wathonian told of fingers which had spirited away a consignment of bulbs from Holland which would e have made the island a blaze of colour in spring. A pity Wath’s traffic island has become a landmark in keeping with its past.

“You want to get to Newhill Well .. . . you know when you get to the roundabout…” ?

Newhill, once remembered for its Hall, former home of the Paynes and its outdoor anniversaries, has assumed an urban mantle since the war. Village to garden city. It is in this direction that Wath is expanding within its urban boundaries. It is here that new housing estates are going and new roads being laid, new planning undertaken. It is as easy to trace the future lines of this urban district as it is to trace the lines of the past. Wath has few pretensions. If it were nearer to Sheffield it would be a “pleasant residential suburb.”

With the possible exception of its extreme east end. But most families have their Cinderellas, To the south and south-west is the new Wath. The new Wath dominates the old but there is about it a pleasant rural air which is in keeping with the atmosphere of the past, the memory of a village once designated Queen.