Margaret Holloway "Peggy"

Memories

1930s

1. 11 February 1934

   Born at home on Springvale Road

   Second of four, in a front bedroom in Crookes during a snowstorm that kept the midwife until morning.

   

1940s

1. 1940s

   Evacuated to a farm near Bakewell

   Two years with the Pearsons, where she learned to milk, to darn and to hate turnips.

   

2. July 1947

   Left school at thirteen for the cutlery works

   A polisher at Viners for one summer before her mother found her the apprenticeship at Cole Brothers.

   

3. 1949 to 1951

   Apprentice seamstress, Cole Brothers

   Three years in the alterations room. She kept her first thimble in her purse for the rest of her life.

   

1950s

1. 2 June 1953

   Coronation street party, Springvale Road

   She made bunting from old blackout curtains dyed red and blue. It is still in the loft.

   

2. 17 September 1955

   Married Frank Holloway at St Timothy's

   The dress was her own work, finished at two in the morning the night before. Frank was late because the tram broke down.

   

3. 30 April 1957

   Jan is born

   At Jessop's, after a labour Peggy described for sixty years as 'a bit of a to-do'.

   

4. 1959

   The house on Toftwood Road

   Bought for £1,850 with a mortgage that Frank said would outlive them both. It didn't.

   

1960s

1. August 1962

   First holiday abroad, Ostend

   Ferry from Dover, one week, one suitcase between three. Jan was sick on the crossing both ways.

   

2. 30 July 1966

   World Cup final in the front room

   Frank stood for the whole of extra time. Peggy did the ironing and pretended not to care.

   

3. September 1968

   Started teacher training at Totley Hall

   At thirty-four, the oldest in her year and, by her own account, the only one who could cook.

   

1970s

1. 6 September 1971

   First day teaching at Ashcombe

   Class 3H, thirty-seven children, a leaking radiator and a piano with no middle C.

   

2. 1975

   The nativity with the real donkey

   Borrowed from a farm in Dore. It ate the manger.

   

3. May 1979

   Frank's fiftieth in the Scarborough caravan

   Rain for four days, cards for five nights, and the photo of Frank in the paper hat that was on the mantelpiece until the end.

   

1980s

1. 25 June 1983

   Jan marries Pete Whitmore

   Peggy made the dress again, twenty-eight years after her own. Same seam allowance, better fabric.

   

2. 14 March 1986

   Tom is born

   Her first grandchild. She knitted a cardigan a week for a year.

   

3. July 1989

   Retired from Ashcombe after eighteen years

   The school gave her a rose bush and a book signed by every child in the school. The rose is still flowering.

   

1990s

1. 1992

   Frank dies

   Suddenly, in the garden, in April. She kept his shed exactly as it was for thirty-one years.

   

2. August 1996

   Tom's first time at the Thornbury Athletic ground

   Peggy took him because Pete was working. She bought him a scarf and a pie and complained about both for the next twenty-seven years.

   

2000s

1. 2001 to 2004

   Sewing for the amateur dramatics

   Costumes for eleven productions at the Crookes Playhouse, including forty-two pairs of breeches for a musical nobody remembers.

   

2. 11 February 2009

   Seventy-fifth birthday at the Botanical Gardens

   Sixty people, two cakes, and a speech from Tom that she said was too long and kept a copy of.

   

2010s

1. June 2014

   Eightieth: the whole family in Whitby

   Fish and chips on the harbour wall. She insisted on walking up the 199 steps and did.

   

2. 2019 to 2022

   Lockdown letters

   She wrote to every one of her former pupils she still had an address for. Forty-one wrote back.

   

2020s

1. 8 November 2023

   Died at home, Toftwood Road

   With Jan and Tom, in the front room, with the bunting up because she'd asked for it.