Mexborough & Swinton Times – Friday 05 June 1931

Mr. and Mrs. W. Shaw.

There will be joy in a little cottage home in Beech House Lane, Hemingfield, this weekend. Mr. Walter Shaw and his wife Alice, both 74 years of age, have been married fifty years, and to-morrow is their golden wedding day.

Mrs. Shaw is in a delicate state of health at present, but she is looking forward to the day. A smile illuminated her features as she talked to a “Times” representative about their modest plans for celebrating it.

In all probability the two boys will come home and it will be possible to arrange a little party. One lives at Cadeby and the other at Maltby.

Mr. Shaw was born in the village of Billingley, the son of a farm labourer. When he was eight the family left Billingley and lived for periods at High Melton and Thurnscoe, where Walter used to help on the farms. At eleven he was hired to a farmer in the Doncaster district for £3 5s. a year, afterwards to work on farms for Mr. Atkinson at Brodsworth and Mr. Bingley at Swinton.

At 24 Mr. Shaw was receiving only 15s. per week as a farm worker, but he had the offer of a cottage and a garden and be did not hesitate to take unto himself a wife. The couple were married at Brodsworth, and never have they had cause to rue the day, for they have lived happily ever after.

One has only to enter their humble home to feel that serene contentment dwells there. In early married life Mr. Shaw left farm work for plate laying on the railway at Rotherham at 19s. a week. Afterwards he became a brick burner at Frodingham, with a wage of 38s. a week. In similar work be also spent several years at Conisboro’. He had another spell of farming as manager for his sister, the late Mrs. Toolen, of Wombwell Hall Farm and Beech House Farm, Hemingfield, and then took over the position of sewage works manager at Lundhill under the Wombwell Urban Council, which post he had held for twenty years, retiring on account of ill-health four or five years ago.

As a servant of the Council he was much esteemed. Idleness is foreign to his nature and in his declining years he spends a good deal of time in his garden. He has won many prizes at local flower shows. For over fifty years he has been a member of the Druids, and is one of the oldest members of the Silver Spur (Alma Inn) Lodge, Wombwell

Mrs. Shaw is a native of Brodsworth.