Beckett Park/Queenswood Drive.

[bluebell]

I am talking about 1950 or so to 1954 here.I was 5 to 9 years old.We lived in a prefab then brand new council house on Queenswood Drive (no. 116).This was an idyllic time in my life.Post war development meant that "Leeds 6" was reaching into the countryside and we children who were impressed by the natural world were in our element.We played in three "woods".The nearest were 2 between Q Drive and the railway (Headingley to Knaresborough?) near to the Woodbridge cul de sacs.The steam engines in those days used to set fire to the grass and woodland now and again. Great excitement! unknown to kids today (they start their own fires, don't they?!!). Once the fire brigade had to turn up with more than one appliance and the towering smoke and flames looked to us kids as if they were going to consume all the woodland!After a break in the woodland as you went northwest (past beautiful sunny grassy banks with harebells) you came to what we called "little woods". The trees here were not tall and it was great country for cowboys and indians well into the twilight on summer evenings.Across Queenswood Drive towards the college, the woods comprised mainly mature trees close together at the southeast end. It was dark and gloomy underneath with a carpet of dead leaves and hazlenuts.As you ambled northwestwards towards the open parkland (within the estate and behind deteriorating railings with lethal pointed spears as the uprights) you got into dappled sunshine (I can still recall this after 55 years) where bluebells grew in May. More scattered young birches gave we small boys great climbs into the sunshine where we would sit for a while surveying our domain below.The woods beside the railway were thronging with bluebells and I can remember girls carrying bunches so large they could hardly get their arms round them!The walk to our brand new Beckett Park primary school (after the gloomy Victorian one at St Stephen's) was a delight in retrospect.Having to move away back to Scotland after the sudden death of my father in 1954 was hard. I still dream of going back and walking these areas after more than half a century.PS - I see BP Primary closed in 2006 (falling numbers of pupils?) and google satellite shows incredible changes and growth in the district.