Layerthorpe today is a mainly commercial and industrial area of York just outside the city walls. But until the demolitions and clearances of the 1950s and 1960s it was a close-knit community of terraced streets, pubs and shops.

Reader Maurice Hill, from Huntington, remembers it well from his years as a teenager before the war. Here, he recounts his 'Layerthorpe memories'...

"My grandparents lived on Hallfield Road in the middle house of a block of three which faced towards Layerthorpe. For a reason I never understood the passage from front to back was boarded off. To get from front to back one went out of the front door, round the end of the block, past the cobbler working in his workshop of the house next door, into the back yard, past the outside loo and in through the back door.

"The house had two cellars. The rear one was the laundry and the front one the coal cellar. The coal, probably nutty slack, was delivered by Mr Horwell on his horse-drawn coal cart, at the rate of one bag a week. On wash day the laundry was full of steam from the coal-fired boiler and I well remember turning the handle of the mangle with its large wooden rollers.

"One of my regular errands was to ride on my bike to the market in Parliament Street. The farmers wives sold butter, eggs and curd (Grandma always said crud) loose from white enamel pails. My reward was to stop at Sadds in Goodramgate (Goothramgate to Grandma) for one red apple.

"Layerthorpe in those days was thriving, with all the shops you could wish for together with two pubs, one of which was the Frog Hall. The largest double-fronted shop was the Co-op. Many items were in bulk and had to be weighed and measured by hand. Small bars of Cadbury milk chocolate were sold unwrapped and put in a conical bag folded from a sheet of brown paper. Grocery was regarded as a trade: my pal Derrick Warriner was taken on as an apprentice grocer.

"They had no electricity and if we stayed the night we went to bed like Wee Willie Winky with a candle to light us to bed. The wireless was powered with accumulators and these had to be taken to the electrical shop weekly to be recharged.

"The fireplace was a big old-fashioned one with a central fire, with an oven at one side and a hot water tank at the other. Saturday was the day for it to be blackleaded and the ash grate whitewashed. The mantlepiece had the obligatory twin white sitting dogs and two highly polished gun shellcases from the First World War.

Fresh milk was delivered twice daily by Eddie Morrit who had a dairy farm on Stockton Lane. He came in his horse and cart with milk in churns. Customers took their jugs to be filled by hand with the required measure.

In those days we could play in the street without fear. We used to wait for the Timgleairy Man to come and play on his barrel organ and dance around."

Many thanks, Maurice. Some wonderful memories...