Wilfrid Kershaw - the musician

 

David Hiley looks after some of Wilfrid's music mentioned above.

Wilfrid Kershaw - the chrysanthemum shows

Wilfrid Kershaw - the gardener

Derrick Kershaw continues his account of his father's life.

'Valley Garden' 1934

W.K.	Barbara - Overdale above

Chrysanthemums in greenhouse -1933

Barbara, Ada, Derrick - 1932

 

W.K.

 

Barbara - Overdale above

 

Chrysanthemums in greenhouse -1933

 

Barbara, Ada, Derrick - 1932

Wilfrid Kershaw - the sportsman

Littleborough Baptist Church Football team c1911
Wilfrid back row far left

Littleborough Baptist Church Cricket team c1911
Wilfrid (on the left) and Sam Holt opening batsmen.

Wilfrid Kershaw - the mill worker

Ealees Road in Littleborough, leading to Ealees Mill

Wilfrid Kershaw - early years

The next few posts look at the life of Wilfrid Kershaw.

Today's post covers the period  from his birth in 1886 up to the year 1914. Derrick Kershaw, Wilfrid's son, wrote the following about his father.

Wilfrid, aged 20

Littleborough Baptist Church, Durn, Blackstone Edge Road.
Closed 1953. Sold for use as an engineering workshop.
Destroyed by fire. Two houses built on site.

Wilfrid and Ada 13 April 1907

2 Pennine Villas, Limefield, Littleborough
(now 2 Halifax Road)
photo 2012

James Kershaw (1851-1887) - 'Jim Screw'

 Derrick Kershaw wrote this summary of the life of his grandfather James Kershaw:

The photo below shows Greenvale Mill in Littleborough where James worked as a Warper, and the adjoining Greenvale cottages where his son Wilfrid was born on 15th August 1886. James died a year later and his wife Mary Ann (nee Clough) died in 1893.

Greenvale mill and cottages

Grave of James and Mary Ann Kershaw at Cross Stone church in Todmorden

The Life of Henry Hiley Part 14 - Littleborough Central School

Today's post returns to the memoirs of Henry Hiley.

It’s time that I went back to school. That school, it had the baby class, that was called Class 3. Mrs Allerby looked after us there and then we went up to Class 2, Class 1 and then into, you might call it the big school, starting with Standard 1. And that went on, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 until Standard 6, maybe even Standard 7 and Standard 8.

I can’t remember an awful lot about the classroom work. I can remember my first reading lessons, I told you that, c in cat, d in dog and suchlike. But I do remember that we were given a little but not much homework, very seldom did we get homework, but once or twice we were expected to learn a psalm - Psalm 23, the first psalm of all. Well, when we got back to school the following morning the girls had usually learned them and I was about the only boy. I had great difficulty in getting them off by heart and I used to sit in the shop near to that big coke oven. I was at least warm and I struggled, I struggled, to commit anything to memory.

I was more interested in cricket. We used to play plenty of cricket on the street. We used to go on to the Rec. That was a big open space but there were great areas there where the grass was worn away. When we were playing amongst ourselves if any boy managed to score as many as 50 he was expected to declare. I very seldom did that. We didn’t play many outside schools. We played the Parish Church school in Littleborough. We played Dearnley Central School.

I stayed in that Elementary School as far as Standard 6. The school leaving age was 14. But the school also had a higher grade department. We called it the Science. My sister Mary went into the Science department. Agnes didn’t, she left school very early. She was poorly and what would have been her last school years were spent in a Sanatorium. Edith won the Junior Scholarship. She went off to Rochdale to the Secondary School in 1925 and about the time that I was being put in for the Junior Scholarship exam Barbara went into the Science department.

Henry - top row, furthest right

Henry - top row, 3rd from the right

Barbara Kershaw - 2nd row, 3rd from the right

Henry - 1st row, 3rd from the left

John and Mary Ann Bray Highley (Part 11 - John and Mary)

This is the final post in this series about John and Mary Highley and their family.

John died in 1929 at the age of 76. He had worked as a Cotton Weaver all his life. The last record we have of him is the 1921 Census where he is shown at age 68 working at Hollins Mill in Walsden for the Cotton Manufacturer Caleb Hoyle. 

Hollins Mill, Walsden in 2018

Mary carried on living at 106 Summit, Littleborough with Thomas Arthur and his family. The 1939 Register shows her occupation as ‘Retired. Unpaid Domestic Duties’. She died 2 years later at the age of 88. At the time, she was living with her daughter Mary Hannah in Todmorden. 

Entry in the Todmorden & District News 5th December 1941

John and Mary were buried at Calderbrook church in Littleborough.

Calderbrook church. View from John and Mary's grave

John and Mary's grave

Mary had lost 5 of her children in infancy and had lost 3 in the First World War. At the time of her death 4 of them were still living with their families. She had 20 grandchildren. She had survived her husband by 12 years.

John and Mary Ann Bray Highley (Part 10 - Thomas Arthur and Richard)

Thomas Arthur’s first wife Ann Selina died in 1923 and he remarried two years later Elizabeth Ann Threlfall. He worked as a Cotton Weaver for Fothergill & Harvey and lived at 106 Summit, just outside Littleborough. He died in 1952. 

106 Summit, Littleborough
(behind the maroon car)

Richard married Alice Hartley soon after the War ended. The couple had a daughter Phyllis who sadly died after only 2 days. In the 1939 Register Richard is shown as being divorced, working as a Cotton Weaver, and living with his sister Beatrice Annie and her family at 1 Sourhall Road in Todmorden. He died the year after Thomas Arthur.

1 Sourhall Road, Todmorden
(first house on left)

Edith Hiley - early years

The next few posts are devoted to Edith Hiley, a dear sister, aunt and great aunt. Edith was born in Littleborough on 9th December 1913 and died in Halifax on 30th October 2001. 

Today's post covers the time up to when she left school.

Henry wrote these notes about Edith a few days after her death:

Edith was always eager to tell us that, when I was born, she dashed into the street, excitedly telling everybody she met that she now had a baby brother. That was in January, 1919, when she was just turned five years old. We were a family of five children, the eldest was Sam, then Edith, Agnes, Mary, finally me.

The Hiley children
From L: Agnes, Henry, Sam, Mary, Edith

In the earliest times I can remember, Edith was first rate at making up stories and telling us them at bedtime, indeed at any time. I had a letter a few years ago from a lady who was a girl on our street in the 1920s, who mentioned particularly that Edith had made up stories for anybody who would listen.

Our mother died in 1923, Edith would be nine years old then. In a way, at that age, she became our surrogate mother, though probably not Sam's. We used to help out father in his pie making shop, I don't suppose I did much to help, but we were a close family, in and out of our neighbours' houses on the street. Three years later, our father married again. (How he managed to persuade any woman to agree to take on the work in the baking and selling of pies, looking after the house and becoming mother to five children I have never understood). Our stepmother loved us and cared for us all. Despite all the work, she likely preferred her new life to working in the weaving shed.

Mother had died of consumption at the age of forty. Sam died of the same disease at the age of twenty one. The rest of us were x-rayed, Agnes was found to be smitten as well. Edith was by this time at the Secondary School in Rochdale*. Now I am surmising. I believe that the sweatshop of our household, the deaths of Mother and Sam, the onset of the industrial depression of the late 1920s, all affected Edith's performance in school, though she did pass her School Certificate. Her History teacher called on my father, asking that Edith be allowed to continue at school, but he wanted her at home to help in the business. That time I think of as being the worst of Edith's life. She worked at home, making pies and such, and seemed to have lost heart.

* Edith won a County Minor Scholarship. She left school at age 16.

Agnes, Sam, Edith

The Life of Henry Hiley Part 11 - Victoria Street neighbours

Today we return to the memoirs of Henry Hiley and an account of the family's neighbours on Victoria Street, Littleborough in the 1920s.

The Hoyles were a great family. We called Mr Hoyle Mr Pip Pip. He worked for the council. He must have gone to school. School for him would finish when he was twelve, twelve and a half, yet on a Sunday afternoon when there used to be Shakespearean plays on the wireless he would sit and listen to them. Jim Hoyle worked as a secretary in one of the local mills, only a tiny mill. He wasn’t old enough to be called up into the Army until 1916 so that he had 2 years in the Army during the first War from 1916 until the Armistice in 1918. He’d served in the Royal Corps of Signals.

There was Maggie, we always called her Maggie. Later she didn’t like that name. She wanted to be called Margaret. She was a grand lass and she was a schoolteacher and I do believe that when Mother was very very ill and realised that she was shortly going to die that she wanted Father to marry Maggie. It never came off. She went and married Roy Godber and we liked him as well. We were often next door with the Hoyles, 74 Victoria Street. We used to play plenty of card games – Rummy and Snap and Casino, beggar my neighbour, lots of them. We used to play Ludo at home, and then we played Snakes and Ladders of course. Jim, I remember, used to like his egg fried in butter but ever he came across a blood spot in the egg he wouldn’t touch it.

No 76 Victoria Street – that’s where the Dixons lived. There was Johnny Dixon, he was the postman, and he used to like to take our dog with him on his rounds. The dog was called Paddy, a little wire-haired fox terrier, that was the guardian of us children. In fact it was so loyal to us children that if it thought anybody was threatening, particularly me, it would bite. And in fact it had to go away. I remember it going to a place in Todmorden. The Dixons had Doris, she was not very bright, and Freda, she was a buxom wench. They might both have worked in the silk mill at the bottom of the street. I don’t know.

The Parkers, they were in no 78, they were a nice family. I can’t remember Mr Parker but I remember Mrs quite well. And then there was Fred Parker. He was a postman. There was Harry Parker. He worked in an office I think. There was Emily. She was a weaver and there was Sarah. She worked in the Co-op café. She used to bake tea-cakes and cakes and suchlike.

And then the bottom house of the 5 houses in the terrace, that’s where George Henry Howarth lived. He had something wrong with his arm. I don’t know what it was. We were quite friendly and often if they had plenty of people in the house George Henry would come up and borrow a form, a bench, which if there were plenty of customers waiting their turn in the shop they would sit on this bench. George Henry would borrow it and take it down to his house so that the people who came could be seated.

It used to happen in our family particularly, there was a routine to the week, a sort of set routine to life then. Often on a Sunday we would go to Walsden for dinner. Probably take a tramcar up to Summit and then perhaps walk along the canal bank until we got to Uncle Frank’s. We might even go on the railway train. That was an excitement going through Summit Tunnel.

There weren’t always enough seats for us all to sit to our dinner so one or other of us had to stand up to eat. I of course being the youngest always had to stand up. It didn’t seem to matter all that much.

(I remember now that Freda Dixon worked as a scivy, she was a housemaid of some sort with one of the big families, one of the millowners’ families, the Harveys.) 

The photo below is of Victoria Street in 1970. The end house no. 72 (no longer a pie shop!) is where Henry and his family lived. Then, moving down the street, the inhabitants of the houses in the early 1920s were: no. 74 (the Hoyles), no. 76 (the Dixons), no. 78 (the Parkers) and no. 80 (the Howarths), all mentioned above.

The next photo was taken on 2nd September 1945. It shows, from the left) Harold Hiley (Henry's father), Roy Godber, Mary Hiley, ?, Edith Hiley, Agnes Hiley, Margaret Godber, Alec Fletcher.

Margaret (Hoyle) lived next door at no. 74 and married Roy Godber. Mary, Edith and Agnes were Henry's sisters. Alec was a friend. 

Mary and Miriam

This is the final post of 2024 and completes the 6th year of this Blog.

The Blog has already featured articles about Charles William Highley from Walsden who was killed in WW1. Type 'Charles William Highley and Mary Carr' in the 'Search This Blog' box to read more about him.

Charles and Mary were married on 20th March 1915, their daughter Miriam was born on 23rd May 1916, and Charles was killed on 22nd June 1917.

The photograph below shows Mary and Miriam. It was obtained by Simon Last and featured in his website 'Charnwood Genealogy'. Simon collects and researches old photographs and postcards and tries to reunite them with a family member if possible.

Mary and Miriam Highley

Written on the back of the postcard
Mary Highley & Miriam
Friend of Grandma's
Great War widow

At the time of the census of 1921 Mary and Miriam were living at 33 Rock Nook, Littleborough. Mary is described as a Cotton Weaver at Sladen Wood Mills, employed by Fothergill & Harvey, Cotton Spinners & Manufacturers, although 'not working' is written alongside her entry in the census.

In the 1939 Register the couple were living at 57 Kinross Street, Burnley. The entry for Miriam's occupation is 'Incapacitated. Unpaid Domestic Duties'.

Miriam died in 1942 aged 26 and was buried in the graveyard at St James's Church in Calderbrook, Littleborough. The site of her grave is shown below but there is no stone to commemorate her.

Mary died in 1972 aged 81. Her death was registered in Littleborough but there is no record of a burial with Miriam at Calderbrook. Charles William's parents John and Mary Ann Bray are buried in the same graveyard.