Everybody needs good neighbours

York street at least it's alive and thriving

WHEN Ray and Ronnie Topham moved into their neat council flat in Dale Street, York, four years ago they were surprised by the reception they received.

They had scarcely begun to move their belongings in when a friendly neighbour popped around offering to clean their sitting room carpet first.

Soon, another neighbour arrived bearing a tray with cups, saucers and a steaming pot of tea.

It was, as the couple were soon to learn, typical of a York street which has become a byword for good neighbourliness.

"If you go out into the front garden," says 61-year-old Ronnie - real name Veronica - "within five minutes someone will come and talk to you. It's such a friendly little street."

"It's lovely on a summer evening," agrees Ray, 76. "If you go out the front everybody who passes says 'are you all right, then?'"

What Ronnie particularly likes is the way social barriers seem not to exist here. At one end of the street are neat council flats, mainly for the elderly. At the other end, Victorian terraces, occupied mostly by younger families.

"But there's nothing hoity toity, where people think 'I've got my own house, I don't want to know the council'," says Ronnie. "People aren't like that here. They're great."

They were not the only ones overwhelmed by the friendliness of the street when they first moved in. When Ann and Andrew Oates bought their Victorian terrace in 1989, it was intended as just the first step on the property ladder. They expected to move on fairly quickly.

But Ann, now a 36-year-old student social worker, and her solicitor husband Andrew, quickly fell in love with the street. "The people are just so lovely," says Ann. "People help each other, people stand out in their gardens chatting, when you go away neighbours look after your cats - you give them the keys, because there is that kind of trust. You can't pay money for that kind of support and friendship."

Now, the couple have no intention of leaving. "We're not going anywhere," Ann says firmly. "I really do feel that this is the place I want to be."

What happened on Millennium Eve sums up everything that is special about Dale Street.

"We had planned to go to friends, but my husband wasn't well, so it looked like being a damp squib. Then at midnight people just appeared out on the street with bubbly, singing Auld Lang Syne. Then we all went around to Hugh and Isobel's house for a display of fireworks. It just happened."

Hugh is 51-year-old Hugh Bernays, who has lived in Dale Street since 1970. Talk to anybody in the street and his name is bound to crop up before long..

It does when I'm talking to Mary Alexander, at 89 one of the street's older residents.

One of the things she appreciates about Dale Street is the way the younger, fitter people look after their older neighbours.

"I'm not at the point yet when I need an awful lot of help," she says firmly. "But during Christmas I had a nasty cough and a neighbour came round wanting to do a bit of shopping for me."

There are people in the street that will do anything if you ask them, she adds. "Hugh has already been in the house today to change a lightbulb for me. I can't reach."

Hugh Bernays himself is another who, like Ann and Andrew Oates, never dreamed when he first moved into the street that he would stay so long. Originally from Sussex, he only came to York because his then girlfriend was a student at the university.

Thirty years later, the street has in many ways become his life. "Some people have a vocation," he says. "I've got a location. I had no idea I was going to stay, but it's such a wonderful place to be. It's worth living here and then finding a way to get by, because a life here is a proper life."

In many ways he has become the life and soul of Dale Street in the years since - though he probably wouldn't see it that way. He has lived in more than one house here. The latest has an old stable/cowshed attached which he has converted into a pottery and arts studio for local people to use. On one wall is a giant wallhanging - a copy of Gustav Klimt's The Kiss - on which more than 40 people in the street worked for the 1992 York Festival.

Here, people meet for everything from an ancient world study group to a drawing group. "There's some people here this evening doing meditation," Hugh says proudly, when I visit.

He - along with his neighbour, the street's 'handyman' Steve Burnell - is the person on whose door people knock when they need a hand doing something. And he and Steve are often to be seen walking up and down the street with a wheelbarrow on regular 'skip days', ferrying heavy rubbish for less active neighbours.

Hughs says the street's unique community spirit dates back to long before he arrived on the scene. It was one of the things that convinced him Dale Street was where he wanted to spend his life.

"It was the kind of street where if anybody died, there would be a collection for a wreath," he says. "They had this old-time culture where it wasn't unusual for people to look after others, and we got caught up in it.

"Many people in a lot of streets live like hermits. They don't talk to their neighbours and keep themselves to themselves. Nobody here has become a hermit."

Quite why that is he's not sure. It's not, he insists, because he or any of the other people in the street are better than anyone else. He thinks it may have something to do with the layout of the street itself. It has a villagey feel, he says, with its mix of pretty Victorian terraces and neat council homes with communal gardens; its primary school at one end and pub and a club at the other.

It is the legendary Guppy's Enterprise Club and community centre run by Neal Guppy who, though strictly speaking lives in Nunnery Lane, is an honorary member of Dale Street. "The environment and everybody around brings the best out in us," he says.

Paula Cooper agrees. She and her husband Dale moved in three years ago. "It was different from anywhere else we had lived," says Paula, a 28-year-old nurse at York District Hospital. "I've never lived anywhere so neighbourly, and it has made me more neighbourly, more chatty and welcoming when new people come to the street."

Good neighbourliness appears to be infectious. We all ought to try it...

Has your street got spirit?

Tired of hearing about how community spirit is a thing of the past? Now is your chance to put the record straight.

The Evening Press would like to find the region's most neighbourly street - one where the old wartime sense of community and mutual help and support is still strong.

If you think your street - whether it's in York or any of the towns and villages in North or East Yorkshire - has a community spirit to beat the rest, we want to know about it. Tell us about the people, the places and the simple acts of kindness and good neighbourliness that make it special.

In not more than 300 words, including your address and daytime telephone number, write to Stephen Lewis, Features Department, Evening Press, 76-86 Walmgate, York YO1 9YN.

Updated: 10:19 Tuesday, January 15, 2002