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#821 Clive People laugh, when I tell them this, but it's perfectly true

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There were no pavements, no road, no lamps, no nothing.

Clive

My name is Clive, Clive Rea. I were born in 1946. That makes me 77 in a few months, and I haven't always lived up here. I lived in Holbeck when I were born, as a toddler. And I lived about a mile from Marshall's Mills. I don't know if anybody knows Marshall's Mills. But it's an old cotton mill. It's still there, the building, because they can't demolish it, it's a listed building. 

But the thing about Marshalls Mills, now you'd laugh at this but it's perfectly true, it used to have a grass roof. And sheep used to graze on the roof, primarily because it was a cotton mill. And the inside of the mill itself had to be kept moist just in case. They didn't want the cotton to break. And people laugh, when I tell them this, but it's perfectly true. And the reason they stopped having sheep on the roof was because they kept falling through the skylight. Now this again, is perfectly true. 

The mill itself is still there. It's not a cotton mill anymore, it's not nothing. It's just a building. And one or two people have said that they're going to utilise it for something but backed out so it's still there empty. And that's that. 

So when I came to Moortown, I came in 1949 with me parents. And it was just mud everywhere. There were no pavements, no road, no lamps, no nothing. And so, I've lived around this area ever since. So yeah, so that's my story. As I say I'm 77 and I haven't moved much.

Precis

An unlikely story about Mill in South Leeds...