Grandma Was Athlete – Conisbrough Matriarch Won Many Races (picture)

November 1947

South Yorkshire Times November 15, 1947

Grandma Was Athlete
Conisbrough Matriarch Won Many Races

To be seen any day in Conisbrough doing her housework with a vigour many a younger woman would be glad to emulate or walking about the township with a sprightliness that surely belies her age is Mrs Lucy Clark, of Wellgate, Conisbrough. Grandmother of 14 children, great-grandmother of 16 more, Mrs Clark, pictured in this four generations picture, was 80 on Wednesday.

In her younger days she was an athlete of no mean capacity, and this week her 56-years-o daughter Mrs Amy Cliff, Wayside, Castle Street Conisbrough told a South Yorkshire Times reporter of some of her exploits at old Conisbrough Show sports.

My mother came from Thorne, near Doncaster,” Mrs. Cliff said “and one of her feats was to win a greasy pg at the show held in Elm Gren Lane about 42 years ago.

The pig was well greased and e competitors had to run after it and catch it. My mother picked it up in her arms.

“She always ran from scratch and she always won except on one occasion when she first came to Conisbrough. This was at a Conisbrough show in Park Road, and she always claimed that the person who beat her was not a woman at all, but a man. The person never showed his face during the race and immediately afterwards went straight to the dressing room.”

Despite her great age, Mrs. Clark still does her own washing and retains all her faculties except that her sight in one eye is slightly impaired She has been a widower 29 years; her husband, who was employed at Denaby Main Colliery, died a week before the Great War Armistice in 1918.

Seen also in the picture above are: Mrs Clark, and on her knee, Sandra Cliff, her 18-months old great-granddaughter; father Mr. George Henry Cliff (34) , standing left, who resides with his mother at Wayside. Conisbrough; and Mrs Amy Cliff, (56), standing right, whose husband is Mr Arthur Cliff, is a quarryman at Conisbrough Cliff Co. Ltd. where he has been employed since 1926. They had two sons married. and a daughter at home.

Mr. George Henry Cliff is like his father a quarryman at Butterbusk