Bathpool Park

Bathpool really was a lovely place to get away from it all when I was living in Packmoor.

One morning I called to see a fox chasing a rabbit I don’t really know the outcome; I just know the rabbit miraculously managed to escape.

Bands often played near the shaft where Lesley Whittle was murdered, it really was a pleasure listening to them play on a sunny day while looking across the field up towards the dam. 

Bathpool 

Sadly Lesley Whittle (a British teenager) was kidnapped from her home on the 14th January 1975 and her body was discovered in a drainage shaft in Bathpoool Park on the 7th March of the same year.  

Lesley Whittle was just 17 when she was kidnapped by Donald Neilson, the killer known as the Black Panther

The kidnap put the wealthy Whittle family through hell. A series of police bungles and other mistakes meant that Lesley's brother, Ronald Whittle was unable to deliver the £50,000 ransom money to the actual place and time demanded by the kidnapper. These circumstances proved fatal for young Lesley.

I really feel for Ronald Whittle how must he have felt at the time even though it was out of his control.

Donald Neilson was jailed in 1976 following Britain's biggest manhunt, he died (while serving a life sentence) in 2011.
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BEE-JAYS DISCOUNTS CLOSING DOWN 2020

This shop was a little gem in Kidsgrove  I will miss it as much as Woolworth's. I often made special trips from Crewe just to browse around and every time I would need call Barclays to get some cash. I bet the locals are gutted because it covered loads of goods at unbeatable prices...