Old Kettering – A View from the 1930s - Tony Ireson

This book and the previous one deal with aspects of Kettering in and around the 1930s — the railway, doctors and patients, the Grammar, High and Central Schools, the Old Grammar School Foundation, the furnaces, ironstone mining, shops, shopping and shopkeepers, boots and shoes, early motoring, the Cooperative Societies, old Newland Street, Percivals’ curiosity shop, and the Evening Telegraph, besides touching on many more subjects.

A long list, but it covers only part of life. There is scope for further books dealing with the General Hospital up to and during the 1930s, the nursing and ambulance services, theatres and cinemas, the gas and electricity works, the Post Office, many manufacturing trades, hotels, pubs and clubs, road transport, farming, and local politics.

Then there are such important topics as the churches and chapels, local government, more of the schools, law and order and the police, cricket and football, other games and sports, the operatic, dramatic and musical societies, especially the brass bands, the naturalists and country life, art and artists, the beginnings of radio, and the many remarkable people who helped to make Kettering.

Memories of the 1930s will be lost for ever unless collected now, and once again I shall be delighted if anyone with stories that ought to be placed on record will contact me.