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The pond at Foxhill in the 1960s

Alan Ward was browsing our old photos one day when he stumbled across an idyllic scene he recognised. Could it be Alan and his brother Sydney fishing in the 1960s?

We took Alan and Sydney back to the spot to uncover the pond's history...

"I'm interested in local history and I was just looking through some of the old pictures and saw this one," says Alan.

"I thought I recognised the man - I thought it were me. Me and my brother used to go fishing on that pond on Foxhill Road.

"My brother used to go fishing - he used to work at Moss and Gamble and so I had the job of carrying his rods there and back. While he was fishing I just explored, played, and basically that's how I spent the day.

"In the winter when it was snowy, there was a steep hill at the side and it used to be a bit hairy coming down there sledging. You had to stop yourself before you got to the bottom or you finished up in the water! Dozens of kids used to love that place for sledging in the winter, it was brilliant!"

Sydney at the site of the pond in 2004

Moss and Gamble pond, revisited

We take Alan's brother Sydney to Baxter Drive which looks on to Foxhill Road. Sydney was 18 in 1966.

"We're standing where the picture was taken - that's the five bar gate over there, the steps are across the road. The steps went up to where the new houses are, the cottages are gone now of course.

"The old Moss and Gamble pond would have been right in front of us just here. We're stood right in the middle of the pond, near enough.

"Our dad was a fisherman but he never fished here because you had to work at Moss and Gamble to get a permit to fish the two ponds here. Just a little bit further down the road by the old Moss and Gamble's building there was another smaller pond. It was on the corner opposite The Pheasant pub.

"There was loads of fishing there... big carp would come swimming past your feet. It was nice to have a couple of hours fishing down here."

Tackle

"We used to catch carp, roach, tench, it was good fishing. Good carp on old fashioned tackle: it were good, we used to catch quite a lot.

"We used cane rods, there weren't nylon lines then - it was like silk, plaited silk. Not like today where they use the pole and all the modern gear.

Alan saw the pic on 主播大秀 South Yorkshire

"My little brother Alan used to carry my tackle to the waterside. He used to sit and watch me, he wasn't really a fisherman."

Moss and Gamble

Moss and Gamble is just around the corner on the main road: "They're turning it into flats and they've built houses around the back. That used to be Moss and Gamble's forge.

"When I worked there, we hammered steel from ingots into steel bars. They had the biggest steam hammer in Sheffield I think.

"It was 10 tonnes and you could hear it all round - up Parson's Cross and round Grenoside you could hear it bumping at night.

"You had to work when the steel was hot, we didn't work any particular fixed shift. They used to put a lump of steel in the furnace, light the fires and then they went home, because it took so long to get the steel hot.

"Then they'd come in at 10pm and hammer that piece of steel down to shape, then load up again. And off home they'd go again, and when that was hot, ten hours or twelve hours - they'd come back again.

"The old turning mill is being turned into new apartments. That was the place where they did the turning. They'd hammer the steel in the forge - they had massive great lathes in there, they used to turn them into round propeller shafts or something.

"It was fantastic in there - they had a lathe so long that they had to have a turner on a little stool and he used to go down the lathe as it were cutting.

"And now they're going to turn them into flats. I couldn't afford one I don't think."

Tragedy

"The pond would freeze over in the winter - that's when people started walking on it and that's when accidents would happen.

"The houses were built on the site of the pond in the 1960s when they shut the dam.

The pond at Foxhill in the 1960s

"Did you know about the accident on the dam? Two little lads got drowned. They were fishing on that wall there and they went missing, then they found them in the water. I think one was about six or seven, the other about ten.

"That's when they decided to take the fish out and drain it - and then they built on it.

"Apparently years before that, another youth drowned in it when he was swimming one summer evening. So it were a bit tragic that weren't it?"