Mexborough & Swinton Times – Saturday 02 August 1941

Mr. H. B. Sparkes Leaving Mexborough

Mr. H.B. Sparkes, M.M., of “Domus,” Racecourse Road, Swinton, Postmaster at Mexborough for the last nine years, has been appointed Postmaster at Charlton-cum-Hardy, an important residential district on the outskirts of Manchester.

Mr. Sparkes, a native of Oldham, came to Mexborough from Lancashire, and before that was Postmaster at Chatteris, Cambridgeshire. Previously, he had spent twenty years in various Post Office departments in Manchester.

Mr. Sparkes served the Great War with the Royal Corps of Signals and won the Military Medal in 1918 for maintaining communications between Corps H.Q. and the front line when the Germans started their final push.

During Mr. Sparkes’s period as Postmaster at Mexborough, there have been a number of important improvements in the local postal services, the chief of these being opening of the new Post Office on September 15th. 1939, and the establishment of Mexborough as a sorting centre for the immediate district.

Mr Sparkes is a member of Mexborough and District Rotary Club and has fulfilled appointments as a Methodist local preacher from time to time in the district.