Book - What’s Tha Up To? Moving memoirs of a Yorkshire beat bobby (Sheffield)

Martyn Johnson never intended for his stories to become a book. He was just writing things down for his grandchildren.

But there has been so much demand for the former Attercliffe beat bobby’s heartwarming anecdotes there is already a reprint in progress, despite What’s Tha Up To: Memories of a Yorkshire Bobby not hitting the shelves until September 15.

The book is full of tales of criminal antics, impromptu fights and ‘domestics’. Readers will also find out about the time that PC Johnson unwittingly helped a local thief steal coal, about a dead horse that moved, a lost peacock and even UFOs.

In the 1960s and 1970s Sheffield, Martyn, who grew up in Darfield, near Barnsley, and still lives in nearby Wentworth, worked as a beat bobby in the Attercliffe area, which he admits was ‘a real shock to the system, after coming from such a small village’.

He left school at 15 to start his working life as a blacksmith, but joined the Sheffield City Police force at 19, and became a well-known ‘beat bobby’. He joined the CID after seven years - but missed grassroots policing so much that he returned to the streets only two years later.

Martyn said: “The reason I wrote the book is that I was ill, and my son said to write some of my stories down before it is too late.

“All coppers have got stories to tell, and I love to be funny, so the book is humorous, as well as a bit weepy and sad in places.

“There is nothing grand about it – it is just the ordinary stuff that every bobby sees, but that no-one seems to write about.”

Martyn’s stories about life on the beat were originally published in April 2010, after local author and historian Brian Elliott got hold of some of them and contacted Barnsley-based book publishers Pen and Sword.

And the book has been given a ‘uniform’ five stars by reviewers on Amazon’s UK site.

“The interesting bit of the story is that I got a call from a lady in London who had just happened to pick up the book. She was absolutely thrilled with it, and her publishing company bought the rights,” Martyn said.

The latest edition of the book, released by Little Brown imprint Sphere, will be available right across the region in supermarkets and book shops.

Martyn will be taking part in the Off the Shelf literary festival in Sheffield in October, and will be doing several talks and signings to promote the book. And a follow-up, What’s Tha Up To Nah?, will be released later this year.

Martyn, the son of a coalminer, was also involved as a researcher for Catherine Bailey’s best-selling book Black Diamonds, about the reality of life as a miner in Wentworth between the world wars.

One of his main hobbies is as a ‘metal detectorist’, and he has appeared on BBC Radio Sheffield to talk about it.

n Visit www.martynjohnson.co.uk for more information about Martyn and his memoirs.

From: http://www.thestar.co.uk/community/what_s_tha_up_to_moving_memoirs_of_a_yorkshire_beat_bobby_1_3721675

Book - Life and death choices in the Great Flood (Sheffield Flood)

FOR Joseph Dawson, the Bradfield village tailor, the choice was stark but simple.

As flood waters tore around him he tried carrying both his ill wife and their two-day-old baby to safety.

Battered by the rising current, he had not the strength to keep hold of both.

“I was obliged,” he later recounted, “to leave the child to its fate, or I could not have saved my wife.”

Thus, the still-unnamed baby – whose body was found days later in a coal cellar – became the first of some 240 Sheffielders killed in the city’s largest Victorian tragedy: the Great Flood of March 11, 1864.

The statistics from that stormy Friday night are still astounding.

An estimated 650 million gallons of water – travelling at 18 mph and in some places more than 24 foot high – destroyed or damaged 800 homes, 100 factories and 15 bridges.

It surged down the valley from the newly-built Dale Dyke Reservoir, where a collapsed dam released the torrent, through Hillsborough, into the city centre and on to Attercliffe. One body was found as far away as Mexborough. A witness, Samuel Harrison, declared “a bombardment with the newest and most powerful artillery could hardly have proved so destructive”.

It is against this catastrophic backdrop that a new novel by city writers Maggie Lett and Geoff Rowe is set.

Flood Waters, published by ACM Retro, is a multi-layered love story which tells the tale of a community torn apart by the devastation.

It is a work of fiction but many real people appear, including John Gunson, the reservoir’s engineer who many blamed for the disaster.

“When I first arrived in the city in the 1970s, I stumbled on some plates commemorating the flood in Weston Park Museum, and I’ve been fascinated ever since,” says higher education tutor Maggie, of London Road.

“This was such a huge disaster yet the more I spoke to people about it, the more I realised very few people had any idea about it. There isn’t even a monument.

“I researched it for years – vaguely thinking I might publish a leaflet – but when I found myself unemployed in 2005 I sat down with Geoff and we thought a novel was the best way of telling the story.”

Certainly, there was no lack of harrowing drama during the incident.

Among the victims, entire families were wiped out, including the Armitages, a family of 11 who ran the Stag pub in Malin Bridge, and the Tricketts, a farming family of 10 from Loxley.

Dozens of children were drowned in their beds, including the two sons of the paymaster sergeant at Sheffield Barracks, and 17-year-old Jonathan Turner, in Nursery Lane, city centre, who awoke to find himself trapped in his ground floor bedroom as water poured in through the window.

And yet, if the victims were many and tragic, there were also great tales of heroism and bravery from the flood.

At Damflask, a woman known only as Mrs Kirk refused to leave her home until she found her cat and dog, eventually carrying both pets to safety only seconds before the water washed her house away.

William Watson, meanwhile, had been washed from his bed at Malin Bridge and said later he feared certain death only to be literally plucked from the torrent by a stranger hanging from a first floor window.

"The records of the flood are so complete and so vivid, it made describing the scenes difficult because they are so harrowing,” says one-time Sheffield Telegraph reporter Maggie.

“But I do think this is something to be commemorated more in Sheffield.

“Of course I hope our book is popular but I also hope it can help the city sit up and take notice of its past.”

From http://www.thestar.co.uk/community/the-diary/life_and_death_choices_in_the_great_flood_1_3522729

‘Grand Old Lady’ the Adelphi is for sale

One of the most iconic buildings in Sheffield, ‘Grand Old Lady’, has been put on the market by the owner in hopes that someone will bring it back to its former glory with a much needed refurbishment.

The real name for the building, The Adelphi, located on Vicarage Road in Attercliffe is going to be sold through the London firm Paramount Investment in the hope of attracting a serious buyer. It’s on the marketing for £220,000, however the owner will consider ‘unconditional offers’.

Stuart Oliver, agent for the company, said: “The Adelphi is for sale with full vacant possession.”

The Grand Old Lady is a Grade II listed building and was originally opened in 1920 as a picture house but has now been disused since 2006. However, there is heaps of opportunity for a number of different redevelopments including a leisure or shopping facility!

It is a stunning building and has had many purposes in the past including both a venue for Asian weddings!

This building is a dream for any property developer and the right person could really make this structure into a vital and prosperous asset for Attercliffe. But it is in need of a good clean up and someone with quite a lot of vision.

The building, which is made of red-brick and terracotta, was designed by the architect WC Fenton as an auditorium and help approximately 1,350 people. There were tiered stalls and circle levels, in addition to a projection room at the back of the building. There was also a kitchen, dining area and office space!

The Adelphi was a cinema until 1976, when after it became a thriving bingo hall from 1990 right through until 1996 when it was redeveloped into a night club until 2006. And it has been closed ever since!

From: http://blog.londonbingo.net/london-bingo-news/grand-old-lady-the-adelphi-is-for-sale-1830/