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.