Henry's Tour of Littleborough in 1986 (Part 3)

Looking across the Park from the Council Offices is the Littleborough Central School, built after the 1902 Balfour Act. What you see is the Higher Grade or ‘Science’ Department. The Infant department where I first went to school at the age of five, and the Elementary School, are in the same building, but at the back. Blackstone Edge is to the left, in the background.

Mummy went into the Science, but I went at the age of 11 to Rochdale Secondary School, as did Derrick shortly after me.

This is exactly as it was when I first went to school in January 1924, except for the grey looking vestibule. Cloakrooms to the left, the ‘Science’ or Higher Grade Department on the far left, upper floor, the elementary school classes opening out from the assembly hall.

The teacher on duty would come out before school, or at the end of playtime, and ring his bell. Everybody ‘froze’. Any movement spotted meant that the culprit was sent into the hall to wait for ‘the stick’. On the second ring of the bell we lined up in our classes. Then we marched into school to our classrooms.

We liked to dip our tennis balls in puddles, so that when we hit the wicket, there was a wet mark on the wall to prove positive. But notice the ‘hop scotch’ grid chalked near the cloakroom.

I was something of a ‘clever dick’ and went on to Rochdale Secondary School in 1930. We used to catch the 8.17 train from Littleborough, but I always seemed to have to run for it. If I reached the ‘top of Littleborough’ before, or just as, the train came over the arches (if you know what you are looking for, they are just visible at the far end of Church Street) I could catch the train, but only just. If I missed it, I had to go by tram (for 2d), later by bus (for 2½d) to Rochdale. Trams, later buses, left every five minutes for Rochdale.

The Royal Oak is a very old inn. The barber’s shop on the corner has been there all my lifetime. I guess the Howarth who cut my hair was the father (or grandfather) of the present practitioner.

This plaque, just outside the Booking Office, was not put up until after Hitler’s war. Often, as young children, we would walk along the canal bank to Uncle Frank’s at Walsden, or to our grandparents,but sometimes we would take the train, and enjoy the mixture of smoke and steam when we were inside Summit Tunnel.

Then again, we might go by tramcar to Summit and change onto a Todmorden bus for the rest of the journey. 

This must have been what George Stephenson built, and what I knew as I came home from Rochdale. If it was late I caught the 4.27, maybe the 5.05 p.m., or the 5.32, another express. If I were very late it had to be the 6.07. The timetable didn’t alter in the seven years of my secondary schooling. We boys might spend time playing shove-ha’penny in the waiting room on Rochdale Station. We cut ‘goal posts’ into each end of the long table, used a halfpenny for a ball and a penny each as a ‘man’. The ‘man’ was propelled by a ruler to cannon into the ‘ball’. Normal soccer rules.

Henry's Tour of Littleborough in 1986 (Part 2)

This is the gable end of the top house in Victoria Street opposite the chapel. I was almost surprised not to see a set of wickets chalked on this wall.

We played cricket incessantly in the summer, on any unoccupied surface. (Not with a ‘corkie’ ball on this pitch though).

Sam Mills lived in this top house. He kept a keen eye on the churchyard opposite, although I never knew him go to church. He used to come out and shout at us if we were playing in the churchyard. All the church buildings have gone, thanks to dry rot.

 

The posh end of Brown Street.

The houses were faced with Accrington brick, the end ones had bay windows, and all of them had ‘tippler’ closets. I never quite understood the mechanism, but understood that a bucket received the human waste, but stood also to receive all waste water from the kitchen and bathroom of the houses. Every time it filled, it ‘tippled’ and emptied itself into the sewer pipe. The closets were behind the houses. This row of houses obscured the gas holders behind.

Turn right at the end of Brown Street on to ‘Gas Lane’. We used to play cricket here as well, but in the 1920s and 1930s it was a cinder track. Hitting the ball into the gasworks counted ‘six and out’. To retrieve the ball meant risking being shouted at by the workmen.

It was fascinating to see the red hot coke being barrowed out. Then a hose pipe would be played on the coke to cool it. My father liked his coke to be delivered during a dry spell. He didn’t like paying for rain water!

The waste ground in the background used to be in good order for hen pens, gardens etc. The fair used to come here as well. But in the late 1920s the Python Mill, which had stood empty for years, was bought by a Dutch firm, Breda Visada, to produce artificial silk. That ground became a massive tip for the tons of horrible waste from the mill.

Agnes and Mary both worked in the mill and came home stinking. Any silver coins in the pockets of workpeople calling in the shop for their Woodbines or for a pie, were quite black, I suppose from the H2S, a by-product of the manufacture.

Henry's Tour of Littleborough in 1986 (Part 1)

The last post of 2023 promised more about Hileys of more recent generations. 

One of the features this year will be some excerpts from the memoirs of Henry Hiley (1919-2007), starting with his earliest recollections of his childhood in Littleborough.

The first series of posts will be a description of a tour of Littleborough which Henry undertook in the summer of 1986. He wanted to revisit some of his childhood haunts and show me the places where he spent his time and played as a boy. He is looking back at Littleborough after a period of about 60 years.

The photographs shown were all taken on that trip. Henry's descriptions are shown in italics.

72 Victoria Street, Littleborough

I was born in the ‘front’ bedroom, above the shop on 10th January 1919. The shop was also the bakehouse, the warmest room in the house after the old black gas stove was replaced by a magnificent coke fired, double-tiered oven.

I slept in the garret, the room with a skylight, reached by a wooden ladder from the ‘back’ bedroom. The ‘far back’ bedroom got its daylight through the window on the right. It was over the kitchen. We used to bathe on most Fridays in a tin bath in the cellar under the shop. 

The back door and living room

The front of the house was stone but the back was a poor brick. Here is the living room, where all the work was done, and all the daytime family activities. The back door led straight into the kitchen. All through the 1920s we had to go across the yard to the pail closets. We shared with the Hoyles next door. In the 1930s, water lavatories, one for each house, were built. This red brick is not the original.

The rent used to be 14/10d a fortnight, collected by the milkman, who worked for Tommy Clough, the landlord. To pay for the new lavatory our rent was put up to 15/10d a fortnight. (74p to 79p, just under 40p a week).

The back yard was an open space, common for all five houses in the row (Reheboth Place).

The garages

Business must have been good, so my father bought a 12 h.p. Morris Cowley tourer, with a bullnose radiator and a hood which folded back. That was in 1926. He started selling pies wholesale, and my brother, Sam, would take them out. 

The wooden garage, with an asbestos roof, stood until the mid 1980s but had been replaced in September 1986 by the garage on the right. The other two went up soon after ours.

Just visible above the grey painted garage is the window of the back bedroom where Edith and Mary usually slept. Agnes had the front back bedroom. The rooms are all unimaginably small. Brown Street is on the left.

Henry outside the old slaughterhouse

At the top of Victoria Street, opposite the Wesleyan Methodist Chapel, was an open space where the street lads collected to play their games. A great attraction was the slaughterhouse where Milner Eastwood’s pigs were killed. We used to watch through a crack in the door as they were poleaxed, their throats cut, then scalded, scraped, eviscerated and hung. 

We were keenly aware of the relative skills of the slaughtermen, and were delighted to be given the pig’s bladder to blow up and use as a football. It used to last a game or two.