A pensioner who moved to Bingley as a teenager in 1950 has written a book about life in the town during the decade.
Joyce Snow, 73, originally from Thurnscoe, near Doncaster, started work as a domestic at Bingley Teacher Training College, at the age of 15.
Her latest book, Bingley’s Fabulous Fifties, reminisces on life in the town known as ‘The Throstles Nest’ through the eyes of ‘the basement girls’, a group of young South Yorkshire women employed by the college to work in its five halls of residence.
Mrs Snow, who stayed at the college until she married in 1961, said: “We were all miners’ daughters from South Yorkshire.
“There was no work in pit villages in those days so we had to travel to find jobs. The book’s all about our life and times and all the things we did. I have tried to cover everything; films, clothes, hairstyles, music, dances and cars.
“Writing this book has been a life time ambition of mine. Thinking back to all those girls I worked with and the memories and the fun, I felt I ought to put it down on paper for them.
“I had my first sight of Bingley coming over the Cottingley Bridge. Coming from a pit village I thought I had died and gone to heaven. There were dance halls, jukeboxes in the cafes and boating on the river. It was just wonderful. We didn’t have to go out and do drugs to have a good time.”
Mrs Snow has also written Land Army Days: Cinderellas of the Soil, which features a collection of letters by former Second World War Land Girls.
She is now writing a novel set in a South Yorkshire mining village in 1944, called Flat Caps and Pit Boots, and hopes to write a book of ghost stories.
Bingley’s Fabulous Fifties is available at Copy Quick in Bingley and at lulu.com.
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