HER face is well known around Worsbrough Common and now community champion Vera Mawby has her name in lights at the local community centre in honour of her good work. Katia Harston reports.
IT is probably an underestimation to say 81-year-old Vera Mawby is a bit of a legend around Worsbrough Common, but ask anyone at the community centre on Warren Quarry Lane and that’s what they will tell you - she’s a woman of the people.
Former shopkeeper Vera is very highly thought of, having fought for years to bring about a better quality of life for people who live in that part of town.
She’s helped bring about change through the Worsbrough Common Community Association which she founded with the aim of providing children and young people with activities and equipment in an attempt to keep them off the streets and to motivate families to have pride in the area and get involved in their community.
When the association was launched in 2000 there was much work to do as Worsbrough Common was seen as one of the worst areas in Barnsley.
Crime was rampant, homes were run down, drug dealers thrived, the school was struggling and no-one wanted to live there.
Today it is a very different place with a massive regeneration of the area resulting in better homes, an outstanding primary school, low crime rates and a thriving community spirit.
The community association played a major part in that improvement and Vera, whose family has run the local shop for almost 100 years, is happy to see the changing face of Worsbrough Common.
“It is a completely different place now to what it was when we first started. You have to wipe your feet now before you come up the Common.”
It is that defiant spirit and hard work which has seen her recognised by the community she fights so hard for - naming the local community centre ‘The Vera Mawby Centre’.
It is particularly poignant because if it wasn’t for Vera that centre would very likely have shut.
In May the community association stepped in to save the building because the council could no longer afford to keep it on, a project Vera took on with gusto.
She was instrumental in getting the lease transferred over from the council to the association and with the help of trustees a business plan was drawn up to make it a sustainable success.
Vera said: “This is the only place in Worsbrough Common you can socialise in. It’s very important to this area. This is why we fought to get it.”
Vera’s allegiance to Worsbrough Common has a long history.
Her mother-in-law ran the local shop on Highstone Road before she took it over and it is now run by her daughter Michelle Roscoe.
She says it is getting to know everyone in Worsbrough Common through the shop that drove her to get involved in the fight for a better future for what was once referred to as ‘the forgotten village’
“Almost 100 years the shop has been in the family and that’s why I support Worsbrough Common. It deserves better,” she said.
“I have always been involved in the community because I have always worked in the shop.
“But it was when the miners’ strike happened and Worsbrough Common went downhill that I started working to turn it around and then the council helped and we got the regeneration done.
“It was bleak back then and not a nice place to be.
“It’s completely different to what it was.”
Since then Vera hasn’t stopped working to better the area.
Under her watch, homes have been improved, empty and boarded up flats and shops demolished and replaced with green spaces and bungalows. It is also home to a school rated outstanding by inspectors.
Vera, who says her home in Pogmoor is ‘just somewhere to sleep’ as she’s always in Worsbrough Common, made a promise to her late husband that she would continue and carry on her good work.
“I shall carry on while ever I can,” she said. “That’s what keeps you going.”
