Click on the audio link below to listen to an interview with Bob Parkin born 1920 at Pye Hill.
Photo: Pye Hill Road 1931
Bob recounts his memories of growing up at Pye Hill, his first bike (a ladies cycle) and attending Jacksdale School. He gives details of life at home, keeping fowls and the killing and salting of their pig. He remembers Tate’s, Pressland’s, Burnham’s & Lord’s Shops and the soup kitchen set up by the United Methodist Church at Pye Hill during the miners’ strike in 1936. He tells tales of games on the Pye Hill ‘Bind Hill’ and the day Billy Lounds lost his eye. Jacksdale Picture Palace is mentioned, the black and white silent films accompanied by piano music and once there was a film ‘The Green Archer’ which was green instead of black and white. Bob was aged 91 at the time of this interview and his memory is quite remarkable. In Part 2 Bob tells us all about his working days at the Pye Hill Pipe Yard from the mid 1930s onwards.