The Life of Henry Hiley Part 9 - life in Littleborough (Market Day, Easter, Bonfire time)

Henry continues his memories of life in Littleborough as a young boy - this time, events at different times of the year.

Market Day

We used to like Market Day. All the children liked the Market Day. When I go back to Littleborough now it’s such a tiny spot. I can’t imagine that there were so many stalls there. Every Friday evening I remember Charlie Bottle. He was the man who brought in the naphthalene flares, one for each market stall, to light the place up so that people could see what they were going to buy. There were grocery stalls, sweet stalls, patent medicines, all sorts.

I remember one of the patent medicine stalls where the man said that he had a specific that would cure anything in the world, any ailment except for cancer, consumption and sugar diabetes. He made no claim to be able to cure those three ailments. Another remedy he had for anybody with bronchitis. There was plenty of bronchitis in Lancashire, in Littleborough in those days, people with bad chests and bad coughs, and his remedy for that was for to go out into the field, locate and scoop up a convenient cowpat, bring it back, slap it on the child’s chest, and he claimed that that would cure bronchitis. I don’t know of anybody who tried it.

Easter

Everything happened in its season. At Easter time we might expect little troops of players to come and act out the pace egg play on the street, of St George slaying the dragon. I remember Saladin always used to get knocked down and call for a doctor. ‘A doctor, a doctor, £10 for a doctor’ and the doctor would stride up with a top hat and tell us that he could cure anything. He said he could cure ‘the itch, the pitch, the palsy and the gout. If you’ve got 19 devils in your skull, I’ll drive 20 of them out.’

In the pace egg play I don’t think it was Saladin because before the fight there strode into the arena – ‘Here come I the Turkish knight. Come from the Turkish lands to fight’. And then there was a set-to with Saint George. The Turkish knight of course was defeated, and then he had to call for the doctor. 

Bonfire time

Before bonfire time, we might ourselves go around the streets singing, just like carol singers go now, collecting money for a good cause but in our case it was ourselves. We would collect money in order to buy fireworks. The ones that the boys liked were little demons. They cost a ha’penny apiece and went off with a big bang. There was a thunderflash as well. That was a ha’penny firework. That made a big bang. We liked less noisy fireworks. Snowfire was a particular favourite. That made a splendid white light – beautiful. Chrysanthemum fountains, they were a bit more sparkly. The pinwheels were alright as long as you could get them to go round. The jumping jacks – they were favourites. We had sparklers as well – they were alright. We never went in for sky rockets. I don’t know why.

The Life of Henry Hiley Part 8 - life in Littleborough (games, Ealees, songs)

In the next few posts Henry talks about life in Littleborough as a youngster with his friends. In this post: street games, going up Ealees and singing songs.

Games

We played all sorts of games on the street. We used to play cricket wherever we could, a bit of spare ground however rough. We would chalk wickets on the gable end of a terrace. About 50 years later I went with Christopher to Victoria Street. There were no wickets chalked still on that gable end but when we went to the old school, the Central school, on the playground I was very pleased to see there were still one or two sets of wickets chalked on the school wall.

We used to chase around in the Wesleyan chapel grounds at the top of Victoria Street and Sam Mills who lived in the top house on the opposite side of the street, he would shout at us to clear off.

We played Tig, chased each other. We rolled bullies, those were iron hoops. The girls used to have wooden hoops. We played Relivo - I can’t remember what that game was. Hopscotch, that’s fairly obvious. We even did some skipping but skipping of course was more a game for the girls. We used to play games under the street lamps in winter. I used to like to see the lamplighter come round with his long stick. He had a naked light at the end of it. The pilot lights were left on in the street lamps and it was up to the lamplighter to turn on the gas and light the…… it couldn’t have been the pilot light because he lit it with his long stick.

 

Ealees

We used to like going up Ealees. That was country really. There was a stream up there and there were fields. We used to go to the Parish Church cricket ground. It was so tiny that when a game of cricket was played in the Sunday School league a hit to the boundary only counted 2 runs. There were no fours. And there was a river there. We used to play in it or close to it and one time we were playing up there, about 6 of us in our gang, and an aeroplane came down on a field on the opposite side of the river. And we climbed up, we went dashing up the slope to get to the field and the pilot leaned out. He was lost and he asked us where he was, so we told him that he was in Littleborough and he was able to find out exactly where he was on his map and he took off again. I don’t know where he went to.

We used to catch newts in a mill lodge up there. A lodge would be the water supply for the local mill at Ealees. That was where Grandpa Kershaw used to work. There were newts there. Once I fell into the river. I was frightened to go home so I went next door instead to Mrs Hoyle and I dried out as best I could in front of her fire.

Songs

We’d go round singing and these were the songs. ‘Here we come a copper coaling for the bonfire time. With a pickaxe and shovel we want to provide. For the day, for the day, for the diddle i do day’. ‘My mother sent me for some water, for some water for my tea. My foot slipped and down I stumbled. De diddle iddle iddle diddle iddle dee.’ ‘All around the house. Try to catch a mouse. When you’ve caught it by the tail. Hang it on a rusty nail. Give it to the cook. To make pea soup. Hurrah boys, hurrah boys. How do you like the soup?’

The photo below was taken in about 1922, most likely in Victoria Street in Littleborough.

On the front row, 3rd from the right is Henry Hiley. Next to the back row are Henry's sisters Edith (5th from the right) and Agnes (7th from the right). Henry's other sister Mary may be on the far right on the front row. Their older brother Sam is not in the photo.

Joseph Hiley

About a 15 minute drive from Thiepval is the town of Albert which played a major part in WW1 and was the main town behind the lines for the Allies on the 1916 Somme battlefields.

Joseph Hiley is buried at the Albert Communal Cemetery Extension in the town.

Joseph was from Yardley, Birmingham, historically in the county of Worcestershire. He had 4 brothers and 2 sisters and in 1911, aged 16, his occupation was a Wire Worker.

He joined the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, B Company, 10th Battalion. The Battalion was involved in the attacks on High Wood and the Battle of Pozieres Ridge. Joseph died of wounds received in battle on 31st July 1916, aged 21. His effects were sent to his father, also called Joseph.

A visit to Thiepval (4 - Leonard Hiley)

The post today returns to my trip to Thiepval in July and the last of the 4 names on the Memorial to the Missing of the Somme battlefields.

Leonard Hiley was born in Eccles, Lancashire in about 1885. He was educated at the Eccles British Schools. In 1905 he married Ethel May Whitehead in Weaste and they lived at 59 Knight Street, Eccles. Leonard and his father Beaumont Hiley were both Tripe Dressers. Leonard and Ethel May had 4 children - Dora (b 1906), Winston Beaumont (b 1910), Leonard (b 1912) and Gwyneth (b 1916).

Leonard was employed at the Ship Canal Sand Box Works at Weaste and enlisted in Salford in 1915 with the Lancashire Fusiliers 19th Battalion, the 3rd Salford Pals. He attained the rank of Lance Corporal. The Fusiliers' first taste of action was at Thiepval Ridge in the Battle of the Somme on 1st July 1916, the Salford Pals being almost wiped out. Leonard was one of those killed in action on that day.

An online 'Database of the Missing' can be viewed on the computers in the Visitor Centre at Thiepval. Leonard is among the soldiers shown and the images below are taken from this database.

The life of Henry Hiley Part 7 - Starting at School, January 1924

Now it’s time I told you how I started at school. That would be when I was 5 years old in January 1924. I was well aware of what went on at that school because of course I’d had a brother and 3 sisters who had either been there or were still there, and the routine that was drilled into my mind was that the children would be larking round in the playground, chasing each other, playing their games, and making any amount of noise, when the schoolteacher on duty, whether a man or a woman – it could be Mr Beasant, it could be Mr Forrest, it could be Bob Butterworth, it could be Alice Holden, it could be Clara Rubberneck as we called her, Mrs Riley, Mrs Allerby, Miss Wilson - whoever was on duty would come out with a bell, like a town-crier’s bell. And, clang!, whatever was going on in the playground had to stop, and if any child failed to stop what he was doing in whatever attitude, he or she was sent in to receive the cane. At the second ring of the bell the children would line up in their classes and they would be marched in, in the morning to a full assembly where we sang a hymn and said a prayer, or after playtime directly to the classrooms, and in the afternoon of course directly to the classrooms.

The photo below, taken in 1986, shows the playground at Littleborough Central School. Henry wrote:
This is exactly as it was when I first went to school in January 1924, except for the grey looking vestibule. 

Now then, on my very first day I was in the playground and decided that I needed to go across for a pee. The bell went. I was halfway across the yard. If I were to move I would be sent in to get the cane. If I didn’t go sharp I would wet my trousers. So what did I do? I had a pee there and then in the middle of the playground, and what the lady thought of me, if it was a lady, or a man, whatever the teacher thought of me, well that was it. In the first week or so I remember being sent home because I had dirty trousers but as far as I can remember there was no further such incident.

In the same class were, both boys and girls of course, all of us about 5 years old, no more, but in that same class was Barbara Kershaw. I remember one or two of the other girls as well – Alice Harrison, she was a cheeky thing, there was Matty Hacking, she was rough, and of course I remember a lot more of the boys. Especially on the street, we used to go out and play on the street, there was Geoffrey Collins who’s still alive, Edgar Chadwick, he’s dead now, Leslie and Albert Smith, Lesley’s still alive, Albert was killed in a street accident only a few years ago. I’m speaking now in the year 2002. The Smiths’ father was a butcher. Geoffrey Collins's father was a painter.

I liked school. I can remember my first reading lessons – c in cat, d in dog, and so on. I can remember some of the decorations on the classroom walls. They were pretty basic and I was surprised when I went into that school some twenty or more years later to find that some of the classrooms had still the same decoration as they had had in the 1920s.

The photo below shows Henry's class of 42 pupils at Littleborough Central School in the mid 1920s. Henry is 6th from the left on the back row and Barbara Kershaw is 4th from the left on the row in front. Henry and Barbara married in 1944.

Samuel

This is the 200th post in the Hiley Blog.

To celebrate this landmark, here are photos of one of the newest members to join a Hiley family.

Samuel Jonathan Hiley de Jesus Born in Madrid, Spain 20th June 2024

Samuel with his older brother Gabriel

The life of Henry Hiley Part 6 - Henry's Grandparents' house in Walsden

In this post Henry talks about his grandparents' house in Walsden.

Sunny View, that's where the grandparents lived, they had an interesting house. Grandad had bought a property about 1923. The deeds - I'm sorry that we don't have a copy of the deeds – but they went back to the year of Trafalgar, 1805, and in 1805 there had been built into the hillside at Walsden this block of nine rooms, three by three. They just went back the depth of one room into the hillside. The shop had five of the rooms on the low road. There was the bakehouse built into the hillside. In the middle was the living room, very tiny, and then there was the shop. Above that two bedrooms belonging to that complex, over the bakehouse and the shop. They were still into the hillside – there was no way out at the back, quite solid, and then on the room over the shop, that was free-standing. That came out on to a steep back lane and that was the Grandparents' living room and above it they had the bedroom. Theirs was a two-room dwelling. That left two rooms still on the top floor and they were single room dwellings.

Henry's plan of the property:

The property in Walsden 
(155, 157 & 159 Hollins Road)

The first person I remember living in one of those was Aunt Clara, that was Father's Aunt Clara, and later Grandad went to live in that particular one and later again Mary took the other one, the third on the way up. She lived there for a short time after she’d come out of the convent at Burghwallis.

Mary's apartment
(One room dwelling no. 3 on Henry's map)

The property had been bought by Grandfather round about 1923/4. When he died it was left to his three children, that was Uncle Frank, Father and Aunt Annie. Eventually it came to belong to Father. It was let out. The shop was rented by Bert Hird. He was the uncle of Thora Hird, the actress. He had the five rooms. When Grandad died then of course no member of the family lived in any of the apartments but my father did eventually go back there and lived in the first, going up the hill, of the one-room dwellings. Mark you, my grandfather had moved up there before then, and he lived the rest of his life there after Grandmother died except for a day or two at the very very end when he went to Burnley and died at Aunt Annie's.

Sunny View on Top o' th' Hill Road
(The Grandparents' house)

My father would go there, into the property, after he gave up Glaisby Cottage and Barbara and I took over the tenancy of it. When Father was very ill he came to live with us in Windermere. Agnes took over the ownership of the whole property. She lived in the shop and worked the shop. She didn't do any baking. She just had John Kenneth with her and managed to make both ends meet by looking after the shop. All in good time she took in Mary. Mary lived in the top floor in the last of the one-room dwellings. I think that was it. Eventually Agnes sold the whole property and we, as a family, had no further financial interest in the complex.

I can't remember that any of those houses of Grandfather's had a water supply actually to the house. There would be a supply, a cold water tap, to Bert Hird for his baking and for the shop, but unusually at that time and in that part of Lancashire, or the West Riding of Yorkshire, (we were very close to the boundary between those two counties) in working class homes, Grandfather had a water lavatory. There was a little washhouse outside, very close of course, where there was a cold water tap and where Grandmother used to do her washing, and alongside it was a water lavatory and directly below it was a water lavatory for Bert Hird and his family, for the shopkeepers.

The property's flag roof seen from Top o' th' Hill Road
(Henry mentions this above)