Hilary's page
on the Jackson Family Web site

Updated 19 August 2008 

Following my retirement from Dearne Valley College I have been able to spend more time pursuing other interests, and also I had time to finish and keep this web site more or less up to date.

My Interests

Football - my daughter Wendy and I are season ticket holders at Sheffield Wednesday FC.  Wendy decided to start going to matches again after watching the home playoff game with Brentford and going to Cardiff in 2005.  (Pictures below).  The first two seasons in the Championship hasn't all been easy-watching but last season did keep us on the edge of our seats especially when we climbed the table and then towards the end of the season I thought we might still make the play-offs.  This season we have had to move our seats yet again, this time for a good reason as we have an extra season ticket holder in Wendy's friend, Clare.

The link to Sheffield Wednesday's web site is - http://www.swfc.premiumtv.co.uk/page/Home/

2008-9 Season: Well it looks as if something is going to change at Hillsborough (fingers crossed!) - an unknown consortium brought together by Geoff Sheard is poised to take over control of Sheffield Wednesday.  But like everything else associated with the club its not straight-forward.  I attended the Wednesdayite meeting and voted along with the majority of other members, to enable the executive to sell our shares.  Geoff Sheard didn't come to the meeting and we didn't learn very much about the people interested in buying the shares of Wednesdayite, Dave Allen, Geoff Hulley and Keith Addy; bu we still produced a massive majority of votes to pass the resolution to sell the shares.  Geoff Sheard has been seen with his family at all three of the Sheffield Wednesday matches, so surely there's hope that this time we will witness a change of fortune for our Club. 

The opening game of the season was at home against Burnley. I was not looking forward to the first home match as this usually is a terrible disappointing affair which invariably leads to a loss - but we scored in the first minute! and then there was another - unbelievable!! We won 4-1!! Everyone went home with the joy a good win  provides and expectations that this just might be the turning point.  Then we lost to Rotherham - they came to S6 though to frustrate!  They played most of the time with 9 men behind the ball and our team doesn't seem to know how to handle that.  Etienne Esajas scored two excellent goals but Rotherham came out of their blocks straight away and scored back after both goals.  That led to penalties and of course, Etienne, bless him, missed his.  Well, as they say, we can now concentrate on the league!  Our next match was away to Wolverhampton and we have been known to do OK there, but unfortunately not this time and as we lost 4-1. Our bad luck with injuries strikes again - we lose Sodje very early in the first match and then at Wolves, Richard Hines fractured his leg; and Frannie Jeffers has had another setback which happens when players have had a long lay-off.

2007-8 Season: I was really angry and disappointed that Dave Allen had again acted impulsively in sacking Paul Sturrock.  What a Chairman to have - I really thought he would be the saviour of our team when he initially appeared at an AGM held at Ponds Forge some years ago.  Subsequent AGMs though have made me realise that he is a volatile individual who bears grudges.  He has, I admit, stabilized the club's finances and coupled with a few years of marvellous support through the turnstiles he has halted the losses although the club still has a serious debt to the bank and to some members of the board.

We don't seem to be able to attract a 'philanthropist', anyone with enough money to help the club.  Dave Allen is apparently quite a rich man, but he did not risk large amounts of money for the club, he has along with other board members made loans to the club, received interests from those loans in the past.  Last year they waived the interest for the loans but might well insist on receiving it again until they are repaid. 

Dave Allen this season said there were three parties interested in taking over the club.  He called a press conference on Friday, 20 July 2007 when we all thought they were going to announce a successful hand-over.  What a farce!  He didn't let us down, ranting and raving about Wednesdayite, the Fans Trust.  He wouldn't talk to Wednesdayite but he expected them to sell him the shares that were gifted to them!  He blames Wednesdayite for all these take-overs collapsing due to the possible buyers wanting more than 30% of the shares.  The Chinese consortium went away and bought into Birmingham City for 29%!  One of the other contenders was a personal friend of his, a Sheffield business man who used to be on the board at Everton.  You can't tell me he didn't know about the shareholding situation at Sheffield Wednesday.

I am a member of Wednesdayite and a shareholder, and I strongly object to being called a 'cretin' and 'scum', Mr Allan.  And the lady supporter who he abused must be mortified! 

I do think that its appalling that people were disrespectful to Mr Allan at the stadium and there's no excuse for behaviour like that.  But Mr Allan has dealt with this badly - where's the public relations network at Hillsborough?  Is there no one to advise on how these situations should be handled?

When we received our season ticket renewal forms we also received a questionnaire - on this, one of the questions was "Are you a member of Wednesdayite".  I just threw the questionnaire away - why do they want to know anyway?  The Club knows who holds all the shares so why wasn't there an attempt to buy the shares off us. 

Dave Allen last year was insisting that anyone taking over the club needs 28 million!  Not what he paid when he became Chairman!

The Ground was recently flooded during that terrible spell of torrential rain which South Yorkshire experienced this summer.  The ground staff have had to work hard to get the pitch ready for the start of the season; the store and ticket office were also affected and had to remain closed.  The photograph on the left, was sent to me by my friend Jane, who lives at Hillsborough. 

WISE OLD OWLS - with my friends, Eileen and Elaine, we have joined the "Wise Old Owls" luncheon club.  They meet on the  3rd Wednesday of every month and this Wednesday (November 2007) our speaker was our club captain, Lee Bullen - he was superb; he told us about his life in football from a youngster in Scotland, his footballing career in Australia; Hong Kong, where he met his English-born wife; about his time in Greece; and then back to Scotland at Dunfermline before he came on to play for us at Sheffield Wednesday.  These photographs above, right, were taken at the Wise Old Owls lunch.  Picture 1-2 Lee Bullen with me; with Eileen; Picture 3: Eileen with Alan Smith, Ex Sheffield Wednesday physio who was also at the lunch.

Its never a dull moment supporting Sheffield Wednesday and November 2007 was no exception, David Allen took his bat away after a tiff with the board.  Now what's next?  I was uncertain as to whether I was going to the AGM the following week, but that made me make the effort to go.  I'm glad I went - there were a lot of shareholders attending despite the fact that it was held in the morning rather than at night.  I was really pleased when Mr Hulley and Mr Addy personally apologised to the lady supporter who had been the target for Dave Allen in that horrendous press conference.  The board assured us that there was no fear of the club going bankrupt due to Dave Allen's resignation. 

Latest news though is that the Board are talking to a potential buyer.  I wondered if this might be anything to do with Denis Hobson?  But it wasn't.  Denis wanted to give the board a large sum of money to fund a new player in exchange for a seat on the board.  However whilst this potential takeover is going on, that was not possible.  One of the possibilities is being put together by a business man Geoff Sheard; he has spoken to Wendesdayite and Dave Allen has said he's willing to sell his shares if Wednesdayite sells their holding.  The consortium connected to Geoff Sheard is rumoured to include people from Russia - apparently at the moment its in the hands of the lawyers; so that could take a while!

It seems ages ago that we played United in the Steel City Derby.  I was not very confident, hoping that we might manage a draw.  Football Heaven had been full of United supporters promising us a thrashing.  What happened?  United  were terrible, except for about 20 minutes in the second half.   Our team were superb!  And we won!! Two Nil!!  I took  these two pictures on the left - the first photo is just after kick-off and the second picture is Paddy Kenny's goal in the second half when we were winning 1-0 and there's a shot going towards him, not the clincher though, that was five minutes or so later, from an excellent Leon Clarke pass to Marcus Tudgay to give us a 2 goal lead. Since that game we have had mixed fortunes; our last home game was Queens Park Rangers which I thought we'd be lucky to get a draw - the bulk of the first half was awful, they scored and we were terrible.  Brian Laws then made a vital substitution which made the team pull together and we won 2-1. 

    PLAY OFF FINAL 2005

On Sunday, 29 May, we set off from Kilnhurst at 4.45 am to meet and board the Inter-City Owls Coach for Cardiff.  We arrived at Owlerton with time to spare and joined a small crowd of people in the Owlerton Casino Car Park to await the arrival of the coaches.  There were eight of us from Rawmarsh, Kilnhurst and Swinton and we managed to get on the first coach which set off as soon as enough supporters were on board.

We arrived at Cardiff quite early to find that the place was already buzzing with Owls and Hartlepool supporters walking around the town.  Click on any of the thumbnails to view a larger image:

What a day - it was marvellous, walking round the town soaking up the atmohphere.  We sat for a while in the bar shown in the above photographs and just before 1 pm started walking towards the stadium, I have some great short videos to help recall the visit to the bar, the walk through the town and several within the stadium showing the team going through their paces before the match, the beach ball sessions, the teams coming on the pitch and the scenes after the final whistle.  I have tried to download the best one on to here, but it took too long to download, I'll have to study how best to download it.  I have sent the video to Dale Hurman who runs the Anzowls website - follow the link - go to "Gallery 2004-5 Season" and in the pictures for the month of May, Dale has included my photographs and the video - although it takes time to download, its well worth it if you're an OWLS fan.

We went through ecstasy, turmoil and finally nailbiting, finger-crossing anxiety to jubilation at the end.  I felt sick after Hartlepool scored their second goal; my daughter Wendy made me sit down as she thought I was really ill!  However, I ought to have known they would recover thanks to Paul Sturrock's 3-man substitution!  What a Manager!  I hope nobody tempts him away from Hillsborough! 

The above were my thoughts after going to Cardiff, but as everyone knows, Paul Sturrock left! - sacked by Dave Allan. 

Our Manager now is Brian Laws and I have to admit he has succeeded because he inherited a team who were steadily improving as players were returning from injuries.  The 2006-7 season was a comparative success.  Our first match of the 2007-8 season is on 11 August, away to Ipswich.  The team has changed, Steve MacLean has not agreed a new contract and gone to Cardiff City; we have 2 new goalkeepers, but no one as yet to replace Steve MacLean.  Steve Watson has been signed from West Bromwich Albion - he played on loan for us until WBA recalled him when they realised we might make the play-offs.  I'm pleased he's signed, as I've always liked Steve Watson. 

Sheffield United are back in the Championship which should be interesting!  Charlton are also back and I look forward to seeing Madjid Bougherra when they come to Hillsborough. These two paragraphs were written at the start of the season and it has been interesting in respect to United.  Brian Robson became their manager, replacing Neil Warnock and the fans crucified him.  He was in charge when we beat them at Hillsborough but left a few weeks later and Kevin Blackwell their former assistant manager replaced him.  We lost to Charlton at their place early in the season although we were winning quite comfortably at 2-0 but lost 2-3.  They came to Hillsborough recently when we drew 0-0 and Madjid Bougherra wasn't in the squad so may be he's out of favour or injured.

Go to Sheffield Wednesday's web site on http://www.swfc.co.uk for up to date information.

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I retired from Dearne Valley College in June 2002 but was able to go back and work a few part time hours.  This had turned out quite well for a while but in December 2005 I had an operation on my right foot and was off work for 2 months.  I decided not to return to work and I'm really enjoying the freedom which retirement provides.   

Please click on the college photo on the left to visit the DVC website.

Family History: Please visit my Genealogy page  for how I got started researching the family's history.  I followed up this interest by joining the Rotherham Family History Society in the Spring of 2004.  They meet on the first Thursday of every month at Eastwood Mission, St Ann's Road, Rotherham.    I became a member of the Rotherham FHS committee, as Member's Interests Coordinator.  For more information please visit their website  -  http://www.rotherhamfhs.co.uk/ 

I have transcribed Kilnhurst C of E School Log Book - this dates from 1888 to 1921 and there's now a CD available from Rotherham FHS.  This book is a wonderful historical record of those years, the Correspondent recording the events of the period and how it affected the school, naming pupils, visitors and staff.  I would be keen to hear from anyone with Parents, Grandparents or Great Grandparents who may have attended this school during the years 1888 to 1921.  My husband, Barry has now finished a book based on the logbook, and it is now available to purchase, the proceeds going for the present school funds.

I am also a member of the Doncaster and District FHS.  Barry's family are from Doncaster and part of my own family's research information is held by Doncaster Archives.  The Family History Society have a very well equipped research room within the same building as Doncaster Archives and the membership are allowed access to the substantial information which the FHS possess.  Their website address is - http://www.doncasterfhs.co.uk/

If you are particularly interested in the Rawmarsh and Parkgate area there is a Rawmarsh and Parkgate Local History Group which meets bi-monthly at Ryecroft Methodist Church (in the School Room, around the back) on Kilnhurst Road, Rawmarsh. 

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If anyone wants to get in touch with me regarding anything on this site please contact me at -

hilary.jcksn "followed by" @googlemail.com and if anyone objects to anything being included on any page, or if you spot any errors/assumptions made, please also let me know.

Updated 19 August 2008