Sydney Richard Hayes, born on the 29th of august 1932 in Crumpsall hospital to parents Richard Hayes and Lydia Beatrice Hayes at the time they were living in a rented room in Collyhurst which was quite normal at the time as nobody had money to rent houses of their own or to buy property which was unheard of unless you came from a wealthy family.

Dads Mum & Dad

The first school that Syd went to was St Oswald’s in Collyhurst which was just before his mother and father secured a rented council flat on Woodlands Rd in Crumpsall where Syds  brother Melvyn was born in 1938 and then much later Christine in 1950. Syd used tell stories about the prisoner of war camp opposite where he lived and how the soldiers used to pass sweets to him and his friends through the barb wire fencing.  Syd was a small boy during World War II and told of how he and his friends used go around collecting pieces of shrapnel left over from the previous nights bombing raids and of the many nights spent in air raid shelters listening to red bank in Cheetham Hill which was a mile or 2 away being blitzed with incendiary bombs’. There are fond memories of going to Nana Hayes’s flat for a Sunday visit as there was always a jigsaw puzzle under way under the table cloth which was underneath the window looking out onto Woodlands Rd this kept his children quiet for hours. 

On the right Woodlands Rd Flats

Syd used to tell stories about his Dad being a bit of a no nonsense type of bloke who had quite a few scrapes and fights with various men who thought they could handle him. One funny story was when either a cat or a dog did its mess in the flat at which point Granddad Hayes swiftly opened the front door and launched the poor animal across the passageway and down to the ground 2 floors below you certainly wouldn’t have messed with Granddad Hayes. Syd then moved schools first St Thomas’s in Crumpsall then Smedley Rd school and finally till he left school at the age of 13 Christchurch school in Harpurhey. At the age of 14 Syd quickly found employment at West Gas Improvement Company but lasted just a couple of weeks with his sights set much higher. Syd then found employment at S&J watts a local warehousing company where he worked for around 2 years. But Syd’s sights continued to be set much higher than working in a warehouse and he knew even at the tender age of 15 that an apprenticeship was the way to earn a decent wage and standard of living as he was growing up so he then signed on for 5 years as an apprentice plasterer with a Salford company called James Ferguson of Gore Street in Salford. National service was being implemented at this time and because Syd was indentured as an apprentice till the age of twenty it wasn’t until then that he began his national service (2 years later than normal) in the Royal Army Service Core(RASC) where he reached the rank of Corporal doing a variety of driving jobs including ambulances till eventually his job was to drive the top brass of the army around to their various locations.

Syd was already a competent singer and used to regularly sing in the army barracks where impromptu concerts would regularly strike up, Syd also spent some of his time in the army posted to Northern Ireland where the troubles were already abound at that time. Syd finally left the army around 1955 having passed his driving test in the army and also he was now a time served plasterer. Syd had no problem finding suitable employment and quickly found work at a company called Wallace’s on Ten Acre Lane in Newton Heath as a plasterer. It was at this time that Syd began getting a reputation as a singer and used be asked to get up and sing in all the local pubs, unpaid, where everyone new Syd as the man with golden voice so much so that if people were not quiet whilst Syd was singing one of the pianists called Walter would slam the piano lid till everyone was quite at which point Syd would carry on singing.

The Lord Lovat where Syd used to sing

As to how Betty and Syd met it goes along these lines. Betty’s best friend set my Syd and Betty up on a blind date which Betty refused to go out on even though she had already seen Syd up on stage singing so much so that Betty’s Mum and Dad Nana Violet and Granddad Albert also knew of Syd due to his singing prowess. Anyway she did eventually meet Syd on a local street corner where Syd apparently asked Betty where she wanted to go on the date but said you can go anywhere but I am not taking you dancing, Betty says that was just in case somebody else asked to dance with her, Syd wanted her all to himself. The rest is history so they say and in 1957 Betty and Syd were married at Christchurch, Rochdale Road, Harpurhey. Later that year Gary came along followed by Russell in 1960 and then Darren in 1962.

The street Syd and Betty lived in with Betty's parents

Betty and Syd lived with Betty’s parents the first six months of Gary’s life but then moved to a new housing estate in Langley, Middleton to start their married life there. To the best of knowledge Syd was never out of work the whole of his life and left the building trade from time to time taking jobs at the Manchester evening news, Class 1 HGV driving for British rail a taxi driver for a Middleton private hire company a stone renovator for clean walls Manchester and then in the later part of his life working for Manchester city council as a plasterer. When Gary was a small boy Syd used to come home from his daytime job only to go out again to work overtime plastering the then up and coming food chain of restaurants “the Wimpey bars”. Betty and Syd both used to work hard often passing each other as my Syd came in from work and Betty left for work to go to her job working nights in the cotton mills. Throughout all this time Syd also used to go out singing at the weekends which was extra money but was obviously his passion. Again Syd excelled in this area winning many trophies for his singing abilities where he would regularly be told that his voice was identical to one of the stars of the era” Billy Exstein”so alike was his voice that one day Betty and Syd were playing a Billy Exstein record on the radiogram when Nana Lilly arrived home and said to Betty “ I didn’t know Syd had made a record?”.

At the time of writing this story Syd & Betty have three sons, 10 grandchildren and 4 great grandchildren with many more to come.

Written By Gary Hayes.