Conisbrough and Denaby After the War

These notes are not written primarily for Conisbrough folk at home, but for Conisbrough men for the past three, four and five years, who have had to endure the unwelcome vagaries of foreign climes. May I record through the eyes of an ex-Service man just returned after 5 ¼ years absence some of the impressions of the old town one receives ?

The physical face of Conisbrough and Denaby has changed little. Like every other town in Britain, the twin townships are revealing the shabbiness of six years of wartime austerity, but there are welcome signs that the urban district is preparing to shed its wartime make up.

The gardeners are busy in the War Memorial Park at Denaby this week preparing the beds for their spring dress of enchantment, and Morley Place School is being refreshed with new green paint.

Elm Green Lane will be hard to recognise, for it is here the site for Conisbrough’s prefabricated houses – when they arrive. The boundary wall the side of the Lane as yet built upon has been torn down, and instead stones to form the basis of a wider road set there. The field, which once held a small Army unit, is now in the hands of the road and sewer layers.

At Conanby in the field facing Welfare Avenue, is the site of the Urban Councils permanent housing scheme – but the waiting list Mr R.J.Troughton, the rent collector, holds at the council offices is already more than 500 strong.

Denaby has acquired a monstrous cone-shaped new pit tip.

The bus stop opposite the Star Hotel, has blossomed into a real pull in of Doncaster Road, and the short cut across the field between Daylands Avenue and Morley Place appears to be taken over by the general public with a vengeance.

Denaby and Conisbrough retain, for the most part, their drab, lovable ugliness, but the returning wanderer is assured of the same solid South Yorkshire welcome I received this week. Week by week more Service men come home (for example, four or five of the office staff at Amalgamated Denaby Collieries recommenced work on Monday), and Conisbrough and Denaby are justifiably proud that out of a population of 17,000, 1,200 (comfort fund officials estimate) have served in the Forces.