Joyce Bailey was born Joyce Hambleton in Leek in 8th January 1927. She lived in a house in Grace Street (they had moved from their original home in Furmston Place and Mill Street, respectively), which was on the main route from Macclesfield to Leek. She lived there with her parents, brother Ted, and sisters Joan, Joyce and Frances (click here to read about Frances’ story). She thinks the girls had the front bedroom and her parents slept in the front room.
A typical day in the Hambleton children started with biscuits for breakfast, followed by a walk to school, then a normal school day followed by tea of eggs at home and listening to the radio with the family. Joyce has a vivid memory of evenings spent at home listening to the radio and having a bath in the tin bath:
jolly mr plum Transcript of joyce’s audio clip
During the Second World War she can remember seeing a German pilot dropping incendiary bombs on fields overlooking Rudyard from her house. And then the evacuees arrived. She was 13/14 at the time, andthinksthat they had two girls for about a week before they left and they had two more from Ancoats, Manchester. Their names were Maureen and Dougie, and Joyce has a wonderful tale about one of her favourite dresses becoming infested with lice: