'The Gateway to Barnsley's' extraordinary history on Eldon Street
Sophie Mei Lan Malin reports from Eldon St in Barnsley.
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00:00Walking along Eldon Street it's like walking through history. We're going back
00:06in time with Gemma Whelan. So Eldon Street is incredibly fascinating. I mean
00:11for one in the Victorian era it was built on an incredible industry of
00:16female proprietors of the shops. There was Anne Porter who had the first ever
00:21department store in Ballinsley and the gorgeous thing about it was it was as a
00:26Porter and Sons because they thought that actually people wouldn't want to
00:30come and shop at a ladies shop that was run by a woman. So she thought by putting
00:34her son's name on it, A, that they would inherit it and B, that they would have
00:38more people through the door. And that actually has gone on to do lots of
00:42wonderful things and at the moment it's a business still run, that unit is
00:45still a business run by two women which is Lesley Francis who's the
00:49incredible incredible hairdressers in Ballinsley and they've been training
00:54hairdressers in Ballinsley since the 1950s. So my love story with Eldon Street
00:59that really kind of centres on Ben Charles. He was a jeweller and he
01:04probably did most of the women's engagement rings and wedding rings in
01:09Ballinsley and in fact when I stopped a couple of wonderful ladies in Ballinsley
01:13who are in their twilight years they still talk about the day that they went
01:17and collected their wedding rings and when they got their wedding rings they
01:20were given either a cake slice or a bread knife with their names
01:24engraved on it and the date they got married and some of these lovely older
01:28ladies would say to you, I still have my bread knife but I haven't got my husband's any more and they would show you their wedding rings and their
01:37engagement rings and they would be really proud of being part of the love
01:40story of Eldon Street. So I've done some wonderful stuff, I've dressed up as a
01:44wonderful bride of Eldon Street and with all the pictures and love stories on it
01:48so yeah it's been great.
01:50Ballinsley Civic, so there are some really beautiful bits of the history of Ballinsley Civic, there's some really quite sad bits as well some really poignant bits and it is being
01:59reopened, it's been regenerated, it's been reopened at the beginning of September
02:03there'll be a really big celebration day I think it's the 14th, the weekend of the
02:0614th, I'll be there in a ridiculous costume, but it's got a really
02:11peppered history of beautiful moments and there was a sad moment.
02:15There's a story that took place when they used to do penny cinema and so all the kids in Ballinsley came and they'd come every morning, it was in January and there was a penny cinema and all the kids paid for their pennies and it was snowing outside so lots of kids piled into the cinema and unfortunately there was a stampede and some of the children were killed because of the fact that they got crushed as people were trying to get in out of the snow for their penny pictures so there's lots of stories which are bright and beautiful.
02:43And what draws you to Eldon Street today?
02:49I feel like it's one of those places where history has been captured and nurtured and covered and all of a sudden they're uncovering it and reawakening it and it kind of asks you to just look up from street level and if you look above you can see things from the 19th century, buildings from the 19th century
03:13and on the 20th century, moments of beauty of the art deco era and then also through to modern moments if you turn around and look at the glassworks and this marriage of history and story and brick and people and places, it's all there on Eldon Street and often the living history still walk all past you and you can stop and go oh tell me what's your connection with Eldon Street and I'm like oh my gosh I met my husband here at the parkway for my first date ever or they'll say oh I got really rip-roaring drunk over
03:43there on the Dolly Run and so they'll tell you all of the stuff about it so the living history is
03:49there to be captured and I think with through all the regeneration that's happening in the moment
03:54you're getting the opportunity to be able to see it coming back to life.