Monday 2 May 2011

Delivering the milk.

Some of the Dawson family out for a stroll on a cold day!
These fields are now built upon, and the old farm in the background a heap of rubble.
As children we knew every inch of this walk. The streets of our small community being to the left of the photo, back down the hill.
The farm belonged to the Pickles family, and they and another farmer, who also had a dairy herd, called Mr Clarke, provided us with milk.
Mr Clarke had a horse and cart, which he loaded with two large milk churns and he would clatter along the cobbles at the bottom of the streets, and leave the horse waiting whilst he filled a smaller churn which he would then carry to each house, where he poured out the fresh milk into the jugs, or small metal cans, waiting sometimes on the yard steps or walls. Each jug had a cover. Some of these were of material which was beaded around the edges, to stop it from slipping off or being blown about. Also good to keep out the flies! I do remember him coming up our back street with his larger "billycan".
Then if we were not at school we would ask him if we could have a ride in the small cart back to his farm.
It was situated in the distance, as the crow flies, of this photo.
I liked the feel of the pull of the cart, as the old cart horse wound his way back up the farm lane. There was a rhythm to the movement.
The old lane is long gone but I did manage to find the entrance on my trip there 2 years ago. All overgrown and only the impressions remain. The old stone walls which lined the route are able to be seen if you look carefully enough. The lane is called Reeds Lane, and in the 1940's my mum's brother and his wife and baby daughter lived in a cottage at the top, next to the
farm. It was called Reeds Cottage, and adjoined the barn where the horse was stabled.
If the horse got restless, they could hear him. His great hooves shifting on the stone floor.
And Auntie Lily would say, so the story goes,
" Not to worry, it's only t'orse"
Once the horse and cart reached the farm we would get down and then wend our way home down the lane and on through the fields.
Happy times.

Earliest memories. 1950's East Street............. Coal men


Here I am outside the front door of number 12 East Street when I was about 4 years old. The tiny front garden was flanked by a low stone wall. On top of the walls in each street were regularly spaced circular iron knobbly remains of the railings which had all been sawn off and donated to the 1939-45 war effort.They were noticeable when you sat on one! We did have a small iron gate.

In the recent picture below, of number 14, which is now for sale, the walls are still the original ones, and retain their old character.
The old front door was a wooden one with a heavy iron door-knocker, and a circular doorknob.
In between the gate and the front door, as you will be able to picture here, there was a square manhole cover. This led directly to the cellar via a small chute, and was used for the coal men to tip in their delivery bags. If you happened to be standing in the passage between the front door and the back room when they began to pour in the coal it was a frightening experience when you were young! To me it sounded like the low rumbles of thunder under the floor!
Dad had to go down the cellar to shovel the coal along or else when he came home from work, the last few bags would sometimes not be able to shunt down the chute as it was all backed up. And before you could enter by the front door the pile of remaining black nuggets had to be shifted. It had a name.........................." Best nutty slack"
The coal men had leather backed jerkins, and used to shoulder the bags, and then have to carry them up the steep streets, having left their delivery flatbed truck at the bottom of the hill. They were always covered in coal dust. And looked as though their faces peered out of blackness, the whites of their eyes standing out. Of course this necessitated a thorough cleaning of the flags by the door afterwards, and then the usual bar of " donkey stone" came out to whiten the edges of the front step. It was like a small bar of hard biscuit coloured chalk, and the women folk got them from the rag and bone man, in exchange for the old clothes. As one of the old sayings goes, "Tha con allus afooard sooap!" Translated...................... "You can always afford soap"

Thursday 21 April 2011

" I have often walked down this street before"!!



Peter Fisher has a superb set of old photos which you can see on the web. As I browse through them, all my early childhood comes alive.
Our world was in these streets, which you can see here on the Land registry plan. (click on the photo to see the larger version).
East Street, where I was born, and in the first picture, (the house on the left with the wooden fence and small conifer),Thorn Street, Woodcroft Street, Rosedale Street and Terrace, Burnley Road, and Westwood Terrace were bounded by the main road running along the valley, and in the east by fields and beyond the fields the hills.
On the map the plans for the first new houses can be seen, to be built on the fields in which we played. The factory lodge is visible at the top, with the stream which fed it with water from the hillsides.
As you look down each street from the top, you look out over to the hillside opposite and the woods which belonged to Cicely Brooks, and always known as Brooks' Woods.
Of course we used to go and play in there, keeping well away from the big Hall and its owner! It was a magical place then, in the days when we used to make our own fantasy world.
Each street aside from those by the main road, was very steep, but the gradient became less challenging as you progress towards Woodcroft Street from East Street.
Brilliant for sledging in the winter, but as you can see, extremely challenging when sledging down our back!! Olympic Bob sleigh teams had nothing on us!!
We had to make a hair-raising stop at the bottom, or cannon into the brick walls of the yards of the houses on Westwood terrace.
But I digress..................how can you condense so much history into a small space!!
As I had my trip down memory lane in June 2008, I wondered how on earth the dustbin men ever managed to collect the bins from our street! Let alone the wheelie ones which now have taken over............I lived at No 12, but we couldn't see a bin with that number on to have the statutory photo!
And after all these years from the early '5o's when my childhood began, to this day, those of us who lived there still talk about it with great affection, and still share our history together. I'm looking forward to seeing the finished DVD being made by Ken Stott.

Wednesday 20 April 2011

Childhood friends of the 50's and 60's

In June 2008 I spent several days staying with my dad in Rawtenstall, and managed to arrange to see 3 of my old childhood friends.
We all used to live in the area called Woodcroft, a community of several streets bordered by a factory to the north and a playing field to the south. It was situated in a narrow valley on the the main road between
Rawtenstall and Burnley. Bounded by fields and hills.
The old streets are still there.
And every time I have been there to visit I usually pay it a sentimental call.
We had a childhood that most children couldn't even dream of today. Such freedom to roam the hills, catch sticklebacks in the stream, climb trees, play out in the streets, or in one another's homes.
My sister, Shirley is writing her own blog about the special times we all spent as children in that neighbourhood. http://woodcroftfolk.blogspot.com/2011/03/letter-to-free-press.html
It was such a close community that a reunion was mooted in 2001 September and around 130+ people came along.
Lots of laughter, meeting up with folk we hadn't seen for years, or those with whom we had kept in touch.
In the photos I took, are the 4 of us. Left to right:
Susan, (née Bartlett), me, Maureen (née Fisher) and Val (née Hollows).
The picture was taken in front of the same window where the Coronation group was assembled in 1953.


See if you can possibly spot us all in the picture above!
We all went for a walk tracing our favourite haunts, trying to pinpoint their locations, and some of them have not changed. The first picture is more or less as it was then. The view is timeless. Cribden and Little Cribden hills in the background. We knew every inch. I loved climbing to the top, looking out over the valley of Rossendale. The feel of the spiky grass when you sat down for a break.

The sound of the skylark in spring. There was always a cuckoo, and I knew that summer was on its way. Spring carpeted the fields and hills in buttercups, daisies, mayflowers, kingcups by the streams, bluebells in the woods across the road, sweet smelling purple and white clover.......... the rhythm of the seasons had a pattern we followed. Our games matched the time of year, sledging in the winter down the steep streets and hillsides, "swealing" grass in spring.
The farmers sometimes burned off the old pasture, to let the new grass grow. In that area it was known as swealing. It had a very distinctive smell. And we from time to time helped the process along! Then had fun stamping it out!! Health and Safety eat your hearts out!! Paddling in the nearby stream everyone knew as Little Blackpool, community bonfire, courtesy of Mr Pickles the farmer. Church "Walking Days" very much a feature of the North I always felt. These were at Whitsuntide and were known also as "Whit Walks". The church congregation adults at the back, and the Sunday School girls' classes wearing special dresses and the lads in white shirts and dark trousers, usually with white pumps on their feet, at the front. Some of them designated to carry the church banners. It was quite a sight when the brass bands processing in front of each church converged on the town centre for a united service on the spare ground. Other churches had "Rose Queens" who rode on a decorated float with whitewashed tyres, garlanded with flowers.

The next photo is an old friend of mine Janet, in the lane to Pickles farm. I used to go with my dad at times to get some more milk if we had run out. If we went at night he took a torch and it made a pool of light around our feet when it was particularly dark. In moonlight everything was bathed in silver. The trees looked so different. Sound seemed to be
magnified...................the swish of the wind through the grass and the leaves rustling, as we crunched along the stony lane. Lights twinkling behind us from the houses we had left behind.
So many, many memories, so many stories! And now it is proposed to make a kind of Living History DVD, with Vox Pop's interviews and old photos, interspersed with a commentary.
So, I hope that it does our childhood proud. It is absolutely worth the effort.



The picture below is of the Sunnyside Baptist Church Rose Queen float in 1960.