Derek Clarke (b.1924)

It was a poor area, we used to live on the Derby Road and you'd got the Victoria Street, Mill View, Charles Street, and there was a little passage then into John Street. And then the hosiery factory at the side of my home, that was pulled down and made into the fire station. Then at the back of the church they dug a reservoir so that we'd got two reservoirs, one up Mill View and the other one was up Leicester Road where it is now.



Derby Road, Hinckley

He (Dad) was a baker, on the Co-op. It used to be very nice...the 

It was all more or less within a mile, from Leicester Road down to Butt Lane, down to the centre of Hinckley and down to the railway station. You knew everything - you knew it all. Hinckley itself was little tiny houses in a clump. It was all little...squares, a little square there...and there...if you took from Leicester Road right the way through down to Coventry Road...the railway comes straight through the middle. 

Now from the railway you'd got the Sketchley Dye works, but from there up to the top of the hill there was about two big houses. You come further along up into Burbage you'd got a few medium big houses, then you got into Burbage and that was only more or less Burbage Road, Hinckley Road, and you're coming back into fields again, just farms, that was all it was. You could spit that way, spit the other and you'd near enough done the lot!