More Childhood memories.

St Paul's C of E Church, Constable Lee, Rawtenstall, Rossendale, Lancashire.

After I was born in 1948, I was taken to this church to be christened. There are old photos of my parents standing on the church drive, holding me in their arms. It was my first introduction to St Paul's. I grew to love the church, as it stands on a steep bank, leading up to the fields and hillsides behind.
It was just behind the C of E Primary school, where eventually I would begin my education. The church and school being linked.
My memories of the church are coloured by the seasons of the year.

At Christmas time, I would step inside and feel the warmth and musty smell generated by the old coke-burning boilers. It came up through vents in the tiled floor.
The large Christmas tree at the front sent out a wonderful pine scent, and with the organ softly playing before the beginning of the service, it was an oasis of tranquility. The lights on the tree twinkling and reflecting in the few delicate glass ornaments with which it was decorated.

The timelessness of singing carols,

The sense of excitement that Christmas Day was approaching

And even now, for me, Christmas always begins with the Children's service in the morning, and the Carol service at night.
The Sunday School which I attended there when I was older, rehearsed in time honoured fashion, unitl we all found ourselves in the front pews, (in my case a bit nervous!), ready to say or sing our pieces.
Eventually, I graduated to singing in the choir when I was 8 years old, until I was 15 years old. It was then began to learn how to sing the traditional anthems, and the Christmas oratorios. We only sang parts of them, but it introduced me to a love of singing in four part harmony.
We were very fortunate to have a wonderful choir master, called George Allen, who was well known in our area, for his sonorous bass baritone voice.He sang solos for productions of Handel's "Messiah" and listening to him sing was a delight.

The Stained Glass Window.

One thing I did love very much was the stained glass window. It seemed to me to evoke a distant land, one which was far away, and the depiction of the shepherd and the sheep was not a wishy washy sentimental thing but something which stirred in me a feeling that there was a bigger story to be told.

Each week I would walk up the curving drive as it wound it's way up to the top of the small hill where the church was situated.

And each season was different.

In the spring the budding trees were just beginning to get ready to burst open and unfurl their new leaves. In the picture of the drive you can see the gatepost at the bottom and the end of the row of houses which bordered the schoolyard. I find myself remembering the scent of the early flowering redcurrant, or "ribes" to give it its name. It had a distinctive pungent scent and to this day when I smell it, it takes me back down memory lane. There are one or two small bushes in the picture, with the daffodils. A pinky red splash by the path. On warm summer days we could walk home by going through a small gate at the back of the church into the field paths and I absolutely adored the view of the hills opposite. Cribden and Little Cribden as they are called. They had and still do have, a distinctive shape.

The sun went down just behind them and in November it sometimes looked like a huge, flaming, deep red ball, resting for a while at the summit before slipping out of sight.

There was a richness in my childhood, which surfaces in images and impressions like tapping into a huge underground vein of valuable ore. Those of us who lived as children in that neighbourhood still talk about it and some of us are still in touch, 50 or so years on. We tramped the hills, played out in the streets, and fields, and made up our own entertainment, indoors and out. We were very privileged.

A lasting legacy of parents, teachers, church, and a more simple way of life.

(In the last picture the shape of Cribden Hill can just about be seen through the foliage of the trees and bushes.)

More Childhood memories!!

Childhood memories

This is my mum, Ethel Smith. I have been writing a lot about my dad, now 91, and as he has now moved it has stirred a lot of memories.

My mum died aged just 70 in 1990, so dad has been a widower for 20 years in 2010.

The photo was taken at Rawtenstall market, when the local paper was doing a shopper's survey.
It's how I remember my mum, smiling.
Last night was so cold that I thought of one of her sayings " It's cold when you move."
We had no central heating in the house where I was born, and dad stoked up the coal fire ready to be lit each morning downstairs.
















Here is a photo of the back of the street in which I lived until I was 13 years old.
Once we were all snugly ensconsed in front of the blazing coals in the grate, in the winter months, in the evening, or indeed anytime, when you moved into the small out-kitchen you did feel the drop in temperature!!
Going to bed in the winter was challenging in our two up two down small terraced home.
There were no carpets upstairs, just what we called oilcloth on the floor. It was a forerunner of linoleum or vinyl covering.
If you did not wear your slippers, your feet hit the icy cold of its smooth surface.
My sister and I shared a room at the back, looking over the factory roof, towards the big woods on the hillside opposite.
Commonly known as "Brook's Woods" as a landowner named Cicely Brooks lived in Crawshaw Hall, and the grounds
included the wood.
In the mornings of the depths of winter time,the bedroom window could be covered on the inside with a beautiful frost pattern. A whole world of filigree and fronds, a veritable forest of ice. I would make a hole in the pattern with the end of one of my fingers, and the ice would melt slowly around it, slipping downwards making a trail as it moved.
My mum would make breakfast porridge to stoke me up before I walked to school a half mile or so away.
I watched it bubbling in the pan making miniature volcanoes! Then she poured it into our bowls and laced it with milk and syrup!! And out I went in the cold.My sister being 5 years younger than myself did not begin school until I was 10 years old. We moved house when I was 13 and she was 8 years old to the home which has now been sold.

I realised that I have a very visual memory, which is probably why from an early age I loved to draw and paint. I used to paint pictures using poster paint on the plaster of the attic walls at the first house where I was born, in February 1848.
At school I loved the art lessons. At Primary school in the 1950's these consisted of little more than painting using powered paint mixed in old jam jars, on fairly cheap paper.


Or making papier maché plates which we then painted and took home.
I also remember basket making using supple canes, and weaving.
I guess just after the war years it was difficult to find funding for more exotic pastimes!! But we didn't know any difference.
But it is the winter of which I now write.
It always seemed to snow..........but there again maybe that's how I remember it. We had two yards at the school in the picture, one for the girls and one for the boys. When it was particulary cold and snowy, and the frost had frozen the snow, we were allowed to play outside at breaktimes, and more often than not constructed what we called "bottle ice" slides. These were such fun and exhilarating to use.
We made them by charging at a terrific pace and then began to slide along the top of the frozen snow, and as we continually repeated this action the result was a long shiny slide of ice along the playground flags, which were covered by freezing cold whiteness!!
Health and Safety would have banned them completely now!! Spoil sports!!
We did not come to any harm save for the occasional tumble if we overbalanced and it was great exercise outdoors making our feet and fingers tingle and our cheeks glow.
And the subzero temperatures here last night brought these memories to mind.
More to come.............................................