Tom Treddlehoyle and Progress at Pogmoor [1]

Where?

The delightfully named Pogmoor is now a suburb to the west of the centre of Barnsley, former mining town and birthplace of Michael Parkinson.** Its origins lie in a small mining village but fbb has been unable to find any explanation of the name.

The area has two significant features. There is the massive Barnsley District Hospital ...

... and the local hostelry, with its rather strange name.

So who was Tom Treddlehoyle? He was once celebrated annually ...

... at a big fun fair and frolic weekend of which the highlight was the re-enactment of "our Tom's" drunken ride to the nearby village of Higham - seated backwards on a donkey ...

In the picture above, Tom is facing the right way, i.e. the wrong way; but the whole celebration came to an end in the sixties and the land is now a housing estate. Sadly, Tom is a purely fictional creation of the Victorian author Charles Rogers ...

... and written in the strongest possible Barnsley dialect as in the verse below.

Charles Rogers had a political motivation for his writings; he was campaigner for improved working conditions in the mines and factories, as shown above in the cynical "they love the sound of the factory bell".

Pogmoor's bus service has, since equally pre-historic times, been provided by Yorkshire Traction and its successor, Stagecoach. In early PTE days, when a sensible county wide numbering policy was in place, the Pogmoor circular was the 343 (as here) and 344 ...

... later the 43 and 44.

But the all-conquering Stagecoach is facing competition on the Pogmoor run from 20th July, a typical Stagecoach vehicle shown here loading in the centre of Barnsley.

Stagecoach has the reputation of crushing intruders into a jibbering lump, so it will be interesting to see how Uncle Brian's boys respond to this encroachment into their traditional operating area.

** Michael Parkinson was born and brought up in Darfield, a mining village to the east of Barnsley. His father, Jack, was a miner. After retiring from his iconic TV show, Michael returned, with a pal, to his old haunts and visited a local Working Mens' Club. He was introduced to an old ex-miner who remembered the family, but vaguely. Then the memory returned and the elderly gent said, "Aye, Jack's lad, ah 'member. Tha's not bin in 'ere fora bit, lad. What's tha bin up to, eh?" (digested from MPs autobiography, recently read by fbb).

 Next Blog : Wednesday 4th July