LAUGHING JACK CHETTER – lived in the Town Well.

DICK BENTON – always in trouble with the police because of his whippets. Lived at Hells Corner lodging with Joe Pearce.

‘MASSA’ (George Mason) – Ted’s grandfather. Fought the black bear at the Wake around 1880 as told many times as a local legend. He worked in a Cannock pit walking along the railway track to work every day carrying sweets in his pocket for the kids. He had a family of 8 children and was known for a quick temper. Once when he came home from the pit and found them all inside the house with a delivery of coal still in the yard he shovelled all the coal into the front room – so they had to shift it then. He lived in the cottage next door to the Dance Hall and once when on nights and unable to sleep because of the music he boiled a kettle of water, stormed into the Hall and poured the contents over the dance floor. When he was 17 he had a passage to South Africa to work with the ‘blacks’ and told the tale that he once had the ‘cat o’ nine tails’.

HARRY PARBROOK – used to take refuge in the Old Chapel and constantly talked to himself.

FRED PERKS – Kept the Red Lion and used to have the ‘shakes’ very badly but he was never known to spill a drop of beer. He was 80 when he finished there. The regulars used to play darts in a back room called ‘the Deep’.

DICK SHORTHOUSE – lived at the top of the Alley and killed pigs.

LES SLEIGH – once took his trumpet down Hawkins’s pit and frightened the horses and one bolted.

SAM JELLYMAN – was said once to have volunteered to move a pigeon loft. Eight men struggled to lift the pen and put it in place without any sign of Jellyman. When the job was completed out steps Jellyman from the loft saying that he had been inside ‘carrying the perches’!

ARTHUR POTTS – son was said to have been born on the day of the FA Cup Final that he played in but unfortunately he was regarded as a ‘bit slow’. Arthur or ‘Mac’ as he was known went on to keep a pub ‘Red White & Blue’ in Featherstone.

TOMMY BEARDSMORE – lived down Landywood Lane and you could get your batteries for the early wirelesses there.

MISS DOYLE – a teacher. An old spinster – very strict – an ‘old b****r’!

MISS SANDERS – Headmistress. Lived in Wolverhampton Road. Very kind.

MISS THOMAS – Lived in Station Street – lovely teacher.

ERNIE CARTER – Headmaster. Absolutely brilliant.

MRS ALLEN – Headmistress. Ted’s mother remembered her as an ‘old sod’!

TOMMY CARTER – First known case in Cheslyn Hay of polio. Caught in by swimming in the local canal. He died as a youth in the 1950s.

ENOS COPE – Giant of a man. Well known singer of the Cannock Choir.

LOCAL MINES – During WW I a horse was killed down the NOOK PIT and it was cut up and eaten by the miners. At HAWKINS’S there was a constant fire underground that could not be expunged and so it was bricked up whilst at the NOOK PIT miners were constantly working in a foot of water.

In 1946 – A glider manned by a pilot and a co-pilot was blown off course but managed to land safely at the back of the Cemetery.

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