'Chesterfield is still a good place to live' says 90-year-old retired AGD worker

These core values are still in place half a century later.

David said: "I am continually surprised by how kind people are to rather clumsy elderly gentlemen who are not as quick with their hands as they used to be or not as steady on their feet."

David recently turned 90, paving the way for a week of birthday celebrations. Friends took him out for meals at Hackney House in Barlow and The Barrel at Foolow, his daughter Maggie treated him to lunch at The Market pub and son Simon paid for his dad to watch a film starring André Rieu at Chesterfield Cineworld.

The birthday boy, who has two grandsons, said: "I'm rather relieved to have got to 90. I have had a selection of aunts and my grandmother on my mother's side who made it through to their 90s. The best I can offer on my father's side is a grandfather who died at 86."

David was 32 years old when he arrived in Chesterfield on September 3, 1963, to work at the Accountant General's Department (AGD). He was among 600 Post Office employees who were relocated from the south.

"Chesterfield was rather a good shopping centre when we came,” he said. "You'd got the Co-op, you'd got Swallows, you'd got Turners, you'd got all sorts of people crammed together on the high street. A lot of coffee shops are there now.

"We have all these retail parks around the town which is all right if you've got a car but if you're finding walking a bit difficult it closes off quite a bit to you.

“A lot of the scruffy back streets have gone and been replaced by car parks around the spire.

"The council seems to be making a good job of improvement with Northern Gateway.

“Chesterfield was a good place to live when we arrived and it is a good place to live now.”

Singing the praises of a town where David feels 'practically naturalised' comes easy. A bass singer, he is the longest-serving member of Chesterfield Male Voice Choir which he joined a few days after moving north. He first saw the choir singing at the White Swan pub where Ruth and he were staying while they were waiting for their furniture to arrive from London.

David said: “They are an excellent set of people and it’s fun getting out and singing. I am now the father of the choir. I did 50 years on the committee, 43 years as treasurer which I gave up in 2015 as my signature was going to pot and increasingly illegible.”

He recalls competing in many festivals with the choir during his younger years, saying: "Sometimes we won, sometimes we made a very respectable showing.”

Ruth and David spent their first four years in Chesterfield living in an artisan villa with an indoor bathroom on Springbank Road, even though the council had erected a new estate at Loundsley Green for the hundreds of new workers at the AGD.

David said: "There was an Irish family who lived across the road who had eight children. They were the nicest set of children we'd come across - two of the sons visited us when we were in complete turmoil so we told them to go away and come back in a week. They kept on coming back - the four years that we were there the children were in and out of the house all the time, they were thoroughly delightful.

"We had an Italian couple next door who were marvellous. The husband had come over as a prisoner of war, liked it and stayed; he used to work in the furnace at the coke works in Bolsover. His wife was originally from Naples; her English was pretty good but her husband's was faulty."

David and Ruth then moved to Hady, where widower David still lives. He said: "It was the views that sold this house to my wife. You look out of the back windows straight across to Froggatt Edge and Curbar Edge."

During his working life at the AGD David was involved in auditing sub postmasters. He said: "It was a manual job, not a computer affair. On the occasions we nailed a dishonest sub postmaster it would finish up with an audit which uncovered a whacking great hole in the cash and you can't argue with that.

"Eventually the post office and I parted company after 35 years. I retired with many expressions of goodwill and mutual relief on both sides.

"My wife thought I wasn't going to make it to age 60. I retired at 57, gave myself six months rest and recuperation and then settled down to a job I was good at, editing a poetry magazine."

David produced 57 issues of the magazine Iota, featuring contributed poems. The magazine was posted to subscribers and sold in Peak Books in Chesterfield.

Iota was the second poetry magazine that David had produced, his first entitled Scrip was launched while he was working at the AGD and he published 43 issues. David said: "I decided that I couldn't run a job I was good at and a job that was paid so having a wife and family I concentrated on the job that was paid."

His wife, who was a graduate in languages, taught at Deincourt School in North Wingfield and at a girl's school in Retford.

https://www.derbyshiretimes.co.uk/heritage-and-retro/retro/archive-photos-show-people-and-life-in-clay-cross-down-the-years-3370547

https://www.derbyshiretimes.co.uk/news/opinion/columnists/column-proud-to-be-born-and-bred-in-chesterfield-and-love-to-be-a-part-of-the-local-community-3370854