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Wesley Centre Memories > Doris Stevenson

“Both my dad and granddad were local preachers and one day grandma took me to Maltby Methodist Church – I’d be four or five; there were fruit and vegetables decorating the church so I guess it was a Harvest Festival. I continued to go to Sunday school and joined the Band of Hope.

On September 6th 1930 I married George Stevenson at the Chapel. Ours was the first wedding there that didn’t require the registrar. By then an extension had been built on the old church and my foundation stone, engraved with Miss D Ingham can still be seen today. I was converted when I was young but there was a time when I was “immune” but we had some good preachers and I felt I had a second blessing. Prayer is a very important part of my life.

I was born in Effingham St, Rotherham on boxing day 1906 and we moved to Morrell Street in 1912. My dad was the weighman at the colliery when the first ton of coal was weighed just before in 1911. George and I lived with my parents and we moved to Rotherham Road. We helped look after my younger brother and a niece whose mum died in childbirth, while mum and dad worked in the fish shop they opened on Morrell Street. George was an ambulance man and he helped nurse my mum when she became ill up until her death.

We’d been married 31 years before we finally got our own place in Millindale where we lived very happily until Georges death 19 years later. I moved out of there to my present home in 1982 because the garden was just too much for me to manage.

I remember some really good times at the Chapel and I enjoyed going. A minister came visiting once and I told him John Wesley had once preached in Maltby. He’d asked if I’d seen him and I had to tell him that although I’ve had a good run I wasn’t that old!

During the war a local nurse used the vestry to look after the local children and I know the pit doctor used it too sometimes. In 1922 there were terrible floods that went right up to the Chapel doors. I remember the year because it was the year my brother Ernest was born. Floods so bad there was a boat on Milton Street.

My sister in law, Ivy Ingham, was the Sunday school teacher and also a local preacher so she went out on the circuit. The Sunday school anniversaries used to be so big when I was young that we used to have hold them in the old picture house rather than in the Chapel itself.

It was very sad when the Church had to close and I went to the last service there. I still go to a service every week but I have to get collected by a bus and go to Wickersley. I feel very happy and comfortable there but I’m sorry that I won’t be able to have my funeral in Maltby where I’ve spent my whole life. I don’t mean to sound morbid but you think about that sort of thing at my age!”

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Maltby Community Development Trust, The Wesley Centre, Blyth Road, Maltby, Rotherham, S66 8JD
Telephone: 01709 811118 Fax: 01709 811119 Email: ian.cruddas@maltbycdt.org.uk

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