IT used to be the family's big day out... a Sunday afternoon picnic on the grassy summer slopes of Happy Valley. There to tuck into a jam or fishpaste buttie, with a swig from a bottle of tap-water to wash it down.

All of this was happily staged against an idyllic background of mature trees, the magnificent Victorian railway bridge straddling the valley, and the many-stepped brick channel, taking the tinkling outflow waters of Carr Mill Dam swooping down to a meandering brook below.

It was the ideal place to beat post-war blues. Folk had little or nowt in their pockets as Britain began to rebuild its war-ravaged world.

But in this well-titled Happy Valley you could eye up a potential girlfriend, play kick-about soccer with coats as goalposts, fish for jacksharps at the edge of the dam or perhaps listen to a wind-up gramophone lugged to the scene under the arm of some fit picnicker (only the well-heeled owned a car in those days).

It was a time when folk enjoyed simple pleasures as family units, free from the distractions to come from television, night clubs, theme pubs and bingo halls

During its 1940s heyday, local families scurried along like a colony of ants to claim their favourite spots, eventually occupying almost every square yard of that pleasant glade.

These days, it's rare to see a lone soul on the relatively unchanged Happy Valley landscape. How nice if its pleasant family-orientated and totally unsophisticated atmosphere could be revived once more.

But, alas, in these materialistic times, I very much doubt it!

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.