This fascinating photograph of Spinkwell Lock and the house behind it was sent to me in response to Simon Black’s memory of living in Oliver’s Lock House on the Bradford canal. It came from Peter Greenwood, who now lives in Trentham, Stoke on Trent, but grew up here.

He writes: “When I was quite small, my parents moved around 1927 from Manningham to Spinkwell Lock House, where I and my two younger brothers Arthur and John (both now deceased) were brought up.

“In the 1920s and 1930s the city cleansing department was tipping extensively in the area, with landscaping and tree planting on and below the steep hillside which leads up to Bolton Road.

“My father was the foreman for this work under Jack Call, the manager, the Lock House being handy for my father to keep an eye on things.

“I have a photograph taken about 1910 of the Spinkwell Lock House and the large chimney and brick buildings which were called the Pump House, the steam pumping gear having been removed. This had the job of maintaining the water levels in the upper reaches of the canal.

“From Spinkwell it would have been about a mile to Wharf Street and the canal basin at the end. This was in the area where Canal Road and Bolton Road come close together below Stott Hill. Nearby was St Mary’s Infants School which I attended (and walked to and from) at the age of five in 1929.

“With the gasworks a quarter of a mile away, Bradford Beck about the same distance, the half-drained canal on the doorstep, the tipping, mill chimneys as far as the eye could see (at times not that far), you would be forgiven for thinking this would have been the last place to live.

“But it wasn’t quite like that. My memories are of a happy childhood, a close family and none of us the worse for it.

“So many details come to mind of those days, including the festive occasion of the Royal opening of King’s Road from Queen’s Road up to Wrose; the land adjacent to the Pump House was used by Frank Hainsworth Removals to park his vehicles; the empty stables, feeding troughs and outbuildings associated with horses and chandlery; the old outside ‘middens’ and areas of fenced-off ground where my father grew vegetables and a few flowers.

“For us boys it was a vast playground though we were warned about the dangers of the locks and the remains of the canal. Our transport was my father’s 500cc BSA motorbike and sidecar (registration number KW1867, with acetylene lamps) with trips to Otley, the Dales, Morecambe at the weekends, all five of us aboard – though John was a babe in arms.

“We moved from there a year or two after the heavy snow fall in 1933, my parents opening a mixed grocery shop on Bolton Lane where Ashbourne estate was being built by Thos. Feather.”