South Yorkshire Times, April 23, 1949
Down Your Way
- Mexborough
A jovial Sheffielder tucked in to his meat and potato pie and told me Mexborough hadn’t changed in twenty years. There was the verdict of a casual eye. With a roving commission, his job takes him into many parts of the north and accustomed as he is to Sheffield’s grime he still finds the slow train ride to Mexborough a depressing job. That isn’t entirely Mexborough’s fault, but if you must come by train it is apt to put you into bad humour.
Mexborough as a town has grown too quickly and has never grown up. Its shops have jostled so closely together in High Street that you might imagine they were a crowd in a London street waiting for a Royal procession to go by. You half expect to see a squad of policemen waving them back. That again is a fault of circumstances. High Street was scheduled for widening before the war caused another halt to long ambition. Work of demolition has left scars which might have been the work of German bombs. New industries have come to the south, near railway and canal; a new housing estate has brought colour to the west. Half way along High Street you can take in industry, commerce and green fields; three or four minutes’ walk from the traffic lights will take you into residential suburbs.
If you are interested in old and far off things, Mexboro has much to offer you. Mexborough. Mechesburg, fortified place of Meches, is mentioned in the Domesday Book. Baines, in his list of Yorkshire names derived from the Anglian dialects, gives the origin of the name as Maegburg the union of a family, or a clan.
Modern Mexborough is Mecca to thousands of neighbours and if, some week-end, you spend half an hour browsing through old records, then pick your way through High Street, you may not be surprised if you brush sleeves with Ulfac or Swein fitz Ailric.
There are few things more typically Yorkshire than a plate of meat and potato pie. ‘To a good Yorkshireman, all cafes should serve meat and potato pie, and If you are a good Yorkshireman, then you’ll feel at home in a twinkling in Mexborough
I have spent an amusing half hour in a Mexborough cafe, watching Mexborough clerks and trades folk, shopgirls in their fancy brooches and neat bows, and schoolboys, snatching a few minutes with their homework books. They all ran their finger down the menu and found the pie. After a little hesitation the young ladies passed on; this is a man’s fare. But the Sheffielder and the plumber at my table were thoroughly enjoying themselves.
I watched the plumber finish his pie and sit back with a sigh.
“All right?”
“Very nice,” said he. “Mind you, there’s not the variety there used to be. Can’t expect it.” His eyes brightened with reminiscence. “Now I could have taken you to a restaurant before the war . . . . a smash up meal for five bob. Waiters to wait on you. Blimey (a sweep of his hand) if they saw a crumb on the table they’d flick it off.” He sighed anew and ordered his currant duff. I could feel his satisfaction in such lofty heights of service.
I have been standing in the entrance to what was once Mexborough Hippodrome. If you daydream hard enough you can still catch the sound of the orchestra tuning up and watch theatregoers making their way into the stalls just before the curtain goes up on the ‘six high steppers.’
Years ago Tommy Handley played his “Disorderly Room” on the stage of Mexborough Hippodrome. There is only a pile of rubble where the stage used to be; there are bills on the walls noting his national memorial. So time goes by.
There was a workman waiting for a trackless car. He asked me for a light and we chatted.
“Like Mexborough?” I asked him.”Not much,” he said “Now’t very interesting ‘ere. ”