Peter was born in 1947 and has lived in or around Golcar, Huddersfield his entire life. His ancestry can be traced back to 1210 in Barkisland, near Halifax, when the family name was then de Northcliffe. It changed to Norcliffe around 1650. He's been married to Moira for 53 years and they have one daughter, Rachel.
Peter Norcliffe’s latest piece goes into his own family’s history and the ‘make-do-and-mend’ culture of earlier times. Revisiting his childhood he recalls old ‘Jerries and English battles’ and ‘erry carts’.
True stories from ‘Norky’ who comes from Scapegoat Hill, a small, isolated farming village, high on the Pennines in West Yorkshire. Textile mills had been allowed to run down before I started working, mainly through lack of investment, and cheap foreign imports. The management no doubt assumed, as did the management of many other British […]
True stories from ‘Norky’ who comes from Scapegoat Hill, a small, isolated farming village, high on the Pennines in West Yorkshire. After the Norman invasion of 1066, there was an immediate and obvious separation of society into a two-tier structure: the ruling class who spoke French and the rest. Then, as the ruling class from […]
True stories from ‘Norky’ who comes from Scapegoat Hill, a small, isolated farming village, high on the Pennines in West Yorkshire. You can catch up on his ramblings so far via his author page. The war took a different turn for my father in 1943. He had served on the Scillonian for about a year, plying between […]
True stories from ‘Norky’ who comes from Scapegoat Hill, a small, isolated farming village, high on the Pennines in West Yorkshire. You can catch up on his ramblings so far via his author page. In the months following the end of the Second World War, millions of military personnel were returning to their homes, at […]
In 1890, my great grandparents Joseph and Eliza Senior took the whole family to Sagan in what was then Germany (now Żagań in Poland). This is where a Yorkshire mill owner called Oldroyd set up a textile factory (which is still running today, now in local Polish ownership). He took a skilled labour force with him fro
There’s another puzzle. For many years it seemed almost socially acceptable for older women to have relationships with younger boys, but not the other way round. It’s as though society developed a view that girls should be allowed to mature at their own pace without the sexual advances of an adult, but not so the boys. There is probably some rational, sensible reason for it all, but I don’t understand it.
At 11 years old, I was quite comfortable being naked within the family environment, but when we did PE (physical education), we had to use the communal boys’ showers. Not only was it the first time I had used a shower, it must have been the first time I had even seen a shower. It was also the first time I had seen other boys without clothes.
Have you been following Norky’s ramblings? This week he returns to his high school days in the Colne Valley and recounts some of his memories of teachers’ so-called discipline.
True stories from ‘Norky’ who comes from Scapegoat Hill, a small, isolated farming village, high on the Pennines in West Yorkshire. Over the next few weeks, he will share with us his memories of early life. You can catch up on his ramblings so far HERE. My sister Rhondda recalls one of her most embarrassing […]
True stories from ‘Norky’ who comes from Scapegoat Hill, a small, isolated farming village, high on the Pennines in West Yorkshire. Over the next few weeks, he will share with us his memories of early life. I was born at St. Luke’s maternity hospital, Huddersfield, at 5am on the 21 June 1947. Dawn on mid-summer […]