The Wreck of the 'Sandford'

[Bramley4woods]

roundhegian wrote: raveydavey wrote: The estate pub is largely a dying breed.How can they be expected to compete with supermarkets charging 22p for a can of lager?I think the smoking ban will turn out to be the final nail in the coffin though, although I doubt you'd get any politician to admit it. When did any politician ever admit to being wrong ? Pass on that one ;-)But don't discount the effect of cheap bootleg beer.I never went into the Sandford. But looking at the pics it looks to me as if it was intended to appeal to the wives on the estate.Life on the Sandford Estate was pretty spartan when the houses were first built, 1932-39. IIAC in the first houses (on the bus routes) the kitchens weren't even plastered just bare brick with exposed pipes, most people wouldn't have had a carpet in the house, and then within a year or two the war started which would have cut everybody's aspirations short.To be able to get dressed up and go to t' Sandford once or twice a week where it was warm and where there were big rooms with nice decorations and furnishings was probably the only escapeism most people had available to them.By the end of the war, and certainly by the end of rationing all the furnishings and fittings would have been well past their kill-by date and because of the war there would have been no money for replacements. Soon after the Coronation people had TV in the house, then came ITV. The wives would lose interest at this stage, they were more comfortable in their own homes watching soaps, and could press their blokes to take them into Leeds for an occasional night out.Then came the breathalyser, not that very many people would have been driving to the Sandford, which just became a beery pub for the boozers on the estate, and now there's the smoking ban.It looks as if the era of the big pub with large bay windows and soft furnishings is out of time wherever it is located. Very very many are boarded up. (

[kelly]

my father worked on the sandford arms when it was being built in the mid 30smy mother and her family moved onto the sandford/broadlea estate when some of it was still under construction .she always said it was like another world compaired with the poverty of the slums in the west street area