Football picture leaves us on a sticky wicket

We used a photo in Pictures From The Past the other day showing a football match in the snow. It had been loaned by Mrs Margaret Hammond and the only details with it - apart from the fact that the goalkeeper in the dark top was her late husband Maurice - was a handwritten note "Dawley v Allied, 14/2/53" written on the back.

Mrs Hammond, nee Parr, who lives in Madeley now but hails originally from Dawley, thought that game was played at Hinkshay. Her husband, who quickly became an outfield player, played for various local sides, including Dawley Rangers and Sankeys.

But Mrs Hassall, whose maiden name is Oakley and was born and brought up in Hinkshay, has dropped us a line to say: "The picture is not Hinkshay. Dawley played football on the field next to Dawley Park, so that photo may have been taken there.

"I have enclosed a picture which was taken of the Hinkshay playing field. Later the Ever Ready factory was built on it."

Her caption for her photo taken at Hinkshay reads: "George Oakley playing cricket with a Harper, grandson of the landlord of the White Hart, or 'Jerry' as the locals called it. The photo was taken in the late 1930s."

In the background is one of the terraces, or rows, of the old community of Hinkshay. Mrs Hassall was born at Single Row, and there were two other rows, Double Row, and New Row, which was nicknamed Ladies Row by the locals as it was considered, relatively speaking, to be a bit posher.

The Ever Ready battery factory was built in the 1950s, with production beginning in 1956. The rows of homes were demolished in the late 1960s.

The lost community of Hinkshay could be about to be "revived," after a fashion, as there are controversial proposals to build over 150 new homes on the site of the former factory, which was closed in February 1994 and demolished in June 1995.