Down Your Way

Mansfield in Yorkshire

admin — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 14:47:54 +0000

Blonde bombshell Mansfield

She was the American blonde bombshell who two months after appearing at Batley Variety Club met a tragic end in a car crash in the States.

Now the story of actress Jayne Mansfield’s brief time in Yorkshire is being told for the first time on DVD.

Mirfield-born celebrity interviewer Neil Sean returns to his roots [...]

Land Army girls are called up again

admin — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 15:01:32 +0000

Women’s Land Army girls at Leavenheath circa 1944 with Phylis Rose, from Marsden near Huddersfield, second from right.

TENS of thousands of young women from all walks of life were recruited into the Women’s Land Army to work in agriculture and feed the nation during World War Two.

They often left families, friends and [...]

Did you see the 1948 London Austerity Games?

admin — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 14:42:45 +0000

Leeds City Council want to hear from anyone who saw the post-war Olympic Games in London, or has memories, or any memorabilia.

It aims to record these recollections – working with the West Yorkshire Archive Service – to form an oral history of life in Britain at the time, as part of a special exhibition in the [...]

Sixty glorious years

admin — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 09:36:47 +0000

February's DYW cover

ANNUS horribilis apart, hasn’t she done well? Prime Ministers, pop stars and fashion crazes have come and gone, and the country isn’t remotely recognisable as the one in which twenty-five-year-old Elizabeth Windsor ascended the throne on 6 February 1952 following the early death from lung cancer of her father, George VI, a heavy [...]

All the fun of the panto

admin — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 16:27:11 +0000

Programme from the Bradford Alhambra panto Cinderella starring Wilfred Pickles

We love our pantomimes – oh yes we do – and in January’s issue of Down Your Way we roll back the years to the Sunday school and church pantos of youth, and to the professional ones put on at theatres in our towns and cities.

Barbara [...]

Tidings of comfort and joy

admin — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 10:02:00 +0000

It’s a merry old Christmas of memories, angelic carollers doing the rounds, gifts to our troops on the Western Front, peace and harmony and a chance bumping into the Messiah maestro Sir Malcolm Sargent in Huddersfield.

There’s a school play thrown into uncertainty when the boy playing Rumplestiltskin goes down with chickenpox. And a letter from Santa Busby Claus still treasured after [...]

A transport revolution

admin — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 10:20:06 +0000

Trams on Briggate, Leeds, in the 1930s evoke our memories of transport from the past in November’s Down Your Way magazine.

We take an inside look at everything from the penny farthing to space travel in the latest Window To Your Past exhibition, which you can still catch up on by visiting www.window-to-your-past.com.

There is West Yorkshire Police [...]

Calling all Avon ladies…

admin — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 10:59:53 +0000

Did you once do, or still maybe are doing, the doorstep rounds of your village or town in Yorkshire selling Avon cosemetics? Avon first arrived in the UK in 1959 and this year is celebrating its 125th anniversary since the company was set up by the bookselling son of Irish immigrants to America?

In November’s issue of [...]

Spirit of the 1940s

admin — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 10:16:53 +0000

In our Life on the Home Front Special – out in the shops now – Down Your Way magazine turns the clock back to that heroic time when the nation’s fate was in the balance, and when it responded with a bulldog spirit and a will to win that still marks it out as an exceptional [...]

Moving with the times

admin — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 09:09:39 +0000

A wing and a prayer – and not much else for early fliers

Wakefield’s A Window to Your Past is on the move – to a new venue and with a look at transport from the penny farthing to space travel.

Many of the images on view until 24 September at the Davie Fine Art Gallery in [...]