Joan Batty (Gledhill)

JOAN BATTY (GLEDHILL)

Joan Batty - who was born in 1925 - was the youngest of the three daughters...

My own early memories of her are rather hazy, but they have strong links - for some reason - with a leatherette sofa and large piles of Film Magazines, by the wind-up gramophone in the front basement-room at Parsonage Street...!

That would have been around 1955, when I was about seven, and Joan - who married Jack Gledhill in 1952 - would have been about thirty...

And that seemed rather odd to me at first... - until I discovered that Joan and Jack both lived at Parsonage Street after they were married... and were there until June 1955, when they moved to a house in Bramley...

Right: Joan, with Alex Selina, outside Parsonage Street around 1946...

Joan was evacuated during the war, but apparently was rather unhappy and 'escaped' back to the family house in Leeds...

Feeling that she'd missed too much school (Notre Dame), she took a job at The Queen's Hotel in the centre of Leeds, and was working there when she met Jack Gledhill in 1950...

Left: Joan, Helena, Grandma Batty, Maurice's first wife, and Billie, in - I would guess - part of Roundhay Park, Leeds, c.1934...

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Right:The three sisters -
Billie, Joan, and Helena - being The Three Wise Monkeys - probably at Helena's first house in Wepener Place around 1948...

Book cover & inside page photo

Susan Haywood from the 1949 edition of the Film Review Annual...

Of the three daughters, Joan seems to have been the one who was most taken by 'the movies', and she often went to The Tatler cinema in Leeds City Square with her brother Maurice to see the latest releases...

My own earliest memory of going to the pictures, was seeing Robert Taylor in 'Ivanhoe' - which we saw as a family at The Hillcrest in Harehills, around 1954... and after that there were war films such as 'Above Us The Waves', and 'The Cockleshell Heroes'...

In those days - and in fact well into the 1960's - cinema names had a particular ring and pattern to them... The Regal; The Essoldo; The Dominion; The Rialto... and often the interiors tried hard to live up to the lavish expectations of their names... - with ornate gilded plasterwork, and fish-filled fountains, lit by sparkling chandeliers..

I haven't found a cinema site devoted to Leeds... but this one covers Bradford and the surrounding area...

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Gledhow Road near it's junction with Gledhow Terrace, Leeds, c.1953.

Jack Gledhill was born in New Wortley, just south-west of Leeds city centre in 1927, and was the fourth child born to Sidney and Janey Gledhill, with three brothers and two sisters... (Dorothy:1921, Eric:1923, Frank:1925, and Margaret:1932)...

The family moved to 14 Gledhow Terrace, off Gledhow Road, just north-east of the Sheepscar area of Leeds, when Jack was about one month old...

Jack went to Roundhay Grammar School during the war, and then joined the Navy in 1946 at the age of 19...

As a small boy, I had very vague visions of him crossing the North Atlantic in winter on the bridge of a battered Destroyer... with John Mills and Humphrey Bogart alongside... - Until I discovered that Jack wouldn't have been old enough at the time, and didn't actually join the Navy until 1946... when he then apparently spent most of his time in the service stationed at Butlins near Skegness... (to be confirmed...!)

The 1950's

Joan first met Jack Gledhill in September 1950 at a Social Evening and Dance held at the Headingley Pavilion... - which was at that time shared by both the Rugby and the Cricket Club...

Jack was working as an Insurance Clerk with General Accident when he met Joan, and they were married two years later in 1952, with both of them living at Grandma Batty's house in Parsonage Street initially...

The first two of three daughters were born before they could afford a house of their own - Helena, in 1953, and Andrea, in 1954 - but in 1955, ''armed with a deposit of £150.00'', to quote Jack., they finally moved into their own house at number 14 Blairsville Grove in Bramley...

Upper Town Street, Bramley c.1959

The Thrift Store, Upper Town Street, Bramley c.1959

Left:
Joan and Jack in the back garden of our house in Brooklands Avenue, c.1953 - with me lurking in the background...

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Joan in the kitchen of 152 Brooklands Avenue

For me, the most startling aspect of this rather wonderful photograph of Joan - (taken in the kitchen of our house in Brooklands Avenue, around 1955...) - is how BARE the room looks...!

Perhaps I'm in a minority in thinking that it looks as if no-one actually lives in the house... or that we are just moving in... Or that we've just moved in... - but we can't afford any objects or furniture...!

The comparison with Victorian homes... or perhaps with our own - sometimes rather self-conscious home environments - is interesting...

The two wooden spoons on the cupboard door (from our trip with Grandma Batty to Blankenburgh, if I recall...), seem to be the ONLY signs of human habitation...!

However - eagle-eyed observers will have spotted the fringes of a classic radio on the left-hand edge of the image... which I have since discovered was a ''Midgetronic'' by Hale Electronics... - and it was upon this very receiver that Tony, Dad, and myself cast our imaginations once a week... as we gathered round to listen to 'Journey Into Space'...

The other things I remember about the house in Brooklands Avenue around 1955 are - in no particular order: -

lGarlic was unknown, or if it was known, it was VERY foreign..!
lBeing Gay was illegal - but Round The Horne was a Sunday lunchtime institution..!
lIn winter, you could draw pictures with your fingernail, on the frosted glass of your morning bedroom window...

Above: Jack, Joan, Helena, Howard, Grandma Batty, and Tony on a country outing c.1952

Although we never actually went camping, outings to various bits of Yorkshire with improvised tea-making and bits of cooking were fairly frequent...

Malham Tarn and Gordale Scar were favourite places - though I've no idea how we got there, as nobody in the family had a car and I don't remember going by train or bus...

Above: Joan and Jack and Howard on an outing to Malham - I would guess, by the look of the dry stone wall - around 1952, the year they were married and a year before Helena, their first daughter, was born...

At this time they would still have been living at Grandma's house in Parsonage Street... and I might have still been taking Soda for a walk in Burley Park... (See Howard - The Early Years...!)

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From the 50's into the 1960's...

With two daughters born (and one to come), Joan & Jack moved from Leeds down to Lincoln in 1956, when Jack was promoted to Chief Clerk...

I don't remember anything about their first house in Bramley - (but as they were only there for a year perhaps that's not surprising...!)... - However - the contrast between the two photographs on the right, is I think, rather interesting...

The first photograph is one of Alex's 'Plate Camera Portraits', taken about 1955, outside our house in Seacroft, when Joan & Jack had just about moved to their first house in Bramley...
[ For me it has the early 1950's written all over it, and it is a rather wonderful portrait of a time, as well as four people and part of the family...]

The photograph below of Jack and the three daughters at the seaside, must have been taken around 1958... and it's as if the 1960's are somewhere in the air over the ocean...!

It's partly just the difference in the 'style' of the photography I know... but I also think there are other factors at work... - and it's one of the things that makes exploring the old family photo box such an interesting experience...!

I spent quite a few summer holidays down at the house in Lincoln (although I don't remember the arrival of the third daughter - Isobel - in 1957...)

What I do remember however is:
That the two buses that you could catch back to the house from town were destined for either Hykeham Road or Doddington Road... And that Jack and I dug up some very large radishes in the garden one time... And that the train line from Lincoln to Skegness followed the banks of the River Witham for a long way out of town, across a flat and farmland landscape...

I used to stand in the corridor by an open window, and sing ''Last Train to San Fernando'' (by Johnny Duncan and the Bluegrass Boys)...

Jack, Helena, Joan, and Andrea at Brooklands Avenue c.1955

Helena, Isobel, Jack, and Andrea (probably at Skegness) c.1958

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The 60's and beyond...

Under Construction...

The Gledhills moved back to Leeds in 1960 and spent eight years at no. 5 St. Chad's Avenue, Headingley... until Jack was promoted again, and they moved to Sheffield in 1968... only to move again the following year when Jack was made Manager of a new branch in Stockton-on-Tees...

The next move was in 1975 and to Scotland, where Joan and Jack bought a large house in Bridge-of-Weir, east of Glasgow, known as Freeland House... - And there they stayed until 1981, by which time all three daughters were married...

From 1981 Joan and Jack have lived in Helensburgh, on the Forth of Clyde... Jack retired in 1988...

Jack with Andrea & Helena in Lincoln, probably in the winter of 1956/57 shortly after Isobel was born.

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Left:
Jack & Joan with Isobel, Helena, and Andrea, probably at the house in Billingham near Stockton-on-Tees, around 1970.

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