Mexborough & Swinton Times, December, 2, 1932.

60 Years Wed and All in One House

A Pickwickian Wedding.

Here are two old friends, Mr. and Mrs. George Rhodes, of Lundhill, who in a few weeks will be celebrating their diamond wedding anniversary. Mr. and Mrs. Rhodes are a remarkable couple. Not only have they occupied a little cottage in Lundhill Row for the whole of their married lives, but Mrs. Rhodes has been on the same hearth since she was seven. She was a daughter of Richard Taylor, who was enginewright at Lundhill Colliery for many years. Mr. Rhodes was born in a little canalside cottage at Greenland, his father, Joseph Rhodes, then being head blacksmith at Lundhill. When Mrs. Rhodes’ parents came from Stanley, near Wakefield, to live at Lundhill, the house was practically new and the front part was used as a show room by a man named Dobson, who had a foundry in the building now used as Lundhill Wesleyan Reform Chapel.

Mr. and Mrs. Rhodes are among the few people left who remember the Lundhill explosion. George started work when he was eleven as an apprentice for a builder, William Johnson, of Hemingfield, founder of the firm that still carries the name. For a shilling a day be used to walk to work at Edmund’s Main, and was engaged there at the time when they were taking out the bodies after a disastrous explosion. At fifteen he was working with a gang that constructed the pit bottom at Swaithe. When that job was completed he returned to Lundhill to drive a tip horse at Cortonwood Basin.

At that time the hulk of the coal from Lundhill was transported by water and Cottonwood Basin was a busy little “port.” George can remember the time when as many as fifty barges lay in the “docks” waiting for coal to be transported to Hull, the soap works at Wakefield, and to the glass works in the Barnsley and Mexboro’ districts. It was a quite common thing for as many as seven hundred tons of coal to be loaded and discharged in a single day. Subsequently he went to the job of driving a horse that was pulling wagons from the wharf to the colliery, and later was made foreman shunter. When a little over thirty years of age he succeeded Mr. Joseph Brittain as head banksman, which post he filled until the pit closed down some thirty-five years ago. Mr. Rhodes was the last man to be employed at Lundhill, for when the plant became derelict he supervised the dismantling, and afterwards “watched” the site for the Wombwell Main Colliery Co. When he had finished his job there was nothing left of the pitstead except the tops of the cupolas which the Wombwell Urban Council took down later when the site was acquired and laid out as a public park.

Mr. and Mrs. Rhodes were married at Wombwell Parish Church sixty years ago by Mr. Clayforth, the first Rector of Wombwell. Weddings were few and far between in Wombwell in those days, and there were many heads out in the “row” as the old cab rumbled past the back doors to enter the lane at the end. Likewise, wayfarers stopped to look at them as they travelled in state over the hilltop and up Park Street to the church. It was something of a hazardous journey in those days because there was only one cab in Wombwell, and it was not altogether roadworthy.

Mr. Rhodes laughed boisterously when he recalled how they went to borrow the cab from Mr. Bond, the landlord of the Railway Inn, who said they could have it for nothing and a horse thrown in if they thought they would be safe riding in it. Mrs. Rhodes has no faith in the proverb “Happy is the bride that the sun shines on.” Her own wedding was marked by incessant rain and no bride has ever been happier. She said it “temmed” down all day, and the bridesmaids and everybody else were soaked to the skin. Nevertheless, it was a jolly little party that returned to the “Row.”

The bridesmaids, Miss Mary Tunnicliffe, of Lundhill, and Miss Elizabeth Duke, of Hemingfield, have passed on, and so has William Rhodes the best man. Mr. Francis Housley, of Hemingfield, who gave the bride away, is still living.

George Rhodes was earning only nineteen shillings a week when he married, but, as he says, living was much cheaper in those days. The marriage fee was only 2/6, and to get the “makings” put in it cost only one shilling. The same service there days costs eighteen shillings. Needless to say, there was no honeymoon. The old couple were married on a Sunday, and George celebrated the event by having a day off on the Monday. He never had more than half-a-dozen “play days” in his life.

George showed our representative a newspaper cutting giving the fixtures of the Lundhill Cricket Club for the year 1878. The only other playing member of that club still living is Mr. John Redgate, aged eighty-four, of Wath. Mr. Rhodes will be eighty-two on the 10th, December, and Mrs. Rhodes attains the same age in August of next year. Mr. Rhodes complains that although he is the elder of the two, Mrs. Rhodes hoists on his getting up first to light the fire and brew the tea for breakfast. Mrs. Rhodes smiled at the idea of her hubby being “henpecked.” They are both healthy, happy and intensely house- proud.

Mr. and Mrs. Rhodes are among our oldest readers.