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.

The Life of Henry Hiley Part 10 - life in Littleborough (Slaughterhouse, Tripe Shop, Peg Factory)

Today is the last post in Henry's description of life in Littleborough as he was growing up.

United Gathering on the Square, Littleborough
Whit Friday 1909 

The Slaughterhouse

At the top of Victoria Street there was a slaughterhouse. Milner Eastwood was the pork butcher and he would buy little pork pigs, keep them for a day or two, perhaps a week or two, I don’t know what, and that was in a place down at the very bottom of Victoria Street. Then when the time came for the pigs to be killed he would drive them up, a couple at a time. There would be Herbert, as I think of him now he was a weedy sort of chap, but there was Charlie, he was much stronger, and he was much better at actually killing the pig. We used to look through a crack in the wall, and with a poleaxe Charlie would stun the pig and then he’d cut its throat. Then he had Herbert to help him put the pig into a big bath of very very hot water. That allowed him to shave it. He took off all the bristles and then he went through the process of taking out the inside and all the rest of it.

The Tripe Shop

There was a tripe shop in the village as well. I can’t remember if that belonged to Milner Eastwood as well or whether it was a different man but he boiled his tripe in a little place, I would say in our back yard . It was a good 50 or 60 yards away from our back door, but he would boil up the tripe and then he’d take it to his tripe shop to sell. I never had a great fondness for tripe but of course there was a lot of waste and that was put on a little midden and that attracted the mice, and often enough I would take a mouse trap across there, catch a mouse and feed it to our cat.

The Peg Factory

There was a little shuttle peg factory across there as well. That was a noisy business but the metal was hotted up just like in a blacksmith’s smithy, for shoeing the horses. I won’t try to describe that process but it was interesting to watch, and it was pretty noisy – bang bang bang all the time as the hammer came down to shape the metal to make the shuttle peg for the weaving, for the cotton industry.

Views of Littleborough c 1930

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.

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.

The life of Henry Hiley Part 4 - the Pie Shop

In today's post Henry talks about the making of pies at 72 Victoria Street. 

I remember, I suppose what had been the sitting-room of a terraced house had been turned into a shop and on the big front window was painted in green paint on the glass ‘Hiley’s noted pies, peas and chips’. And that was what happened when I first took notice. I suppose Father would make about a couple of dozen pies, no more, perhaps as many as three dozen when it came towards the weekend and there was a bigger demand, and he sold them all at tuppence ha’penny apiece. There was a discount if any customer came in wanting to buy a quantity. Five pies at tuppence ha’penny they could have for a shilling, saving themselves one ha’penny on the deal.

When the business became more prosperous then there was no room for the chip range. That had to go out. We’d had a chip range for the chips and there was a little gas oven alongside it in the shop where the pies were baked and where the peas were boiled. But when business became better then the chip range went out and Father installed a beautiful big coke oven – wonderful. Later on I used to go and sit in there and do my homework where it was so nice and warm. The shop kept open until bedtime. Not a lot of customers came in the evening but some did and they would perhaps get a warmed up pie for their supper.

We children were all expected to help with the piemaking - not with the making of the dough. There was a big flour bin in the shop and that held 10 stone of flour. I don’t know why wheat and cereals were always sold in bags containing 140 pounds weight of flour or meal or whatever. You could get a half bag, a small bag of 70 pounds, that was 5 stone. But however, Father did himself a mischief by lifting those bags, 140 pounds. He ended up with a rupture but of course was always a strong man when I remember him at that early age. Anyway, it was not self-raising flour, it was just ordinary flour, that went into a big kneading mug, and the lard went into the kneading mug. There would be a little salt added to it and Father would rub in the fat and the flour and the salt, and for the meat pies he would pour in a kettleful, well as much as was needed. I thought it was boiling water. I can’t think that it was boiling now, but anyway it was hot, it had come out of the kettle that was on the fire. And a wonderful smell.

That was for the meat pies. That made a harder pastry when the pie was made. For the fruit pies and for the custards he made his pastry with cold water and of course that gave nothing like the lovely smell of the hot dough being made ready for the meat pies, the meat and potato pies and the cheese and onion pies.

We did occasionally get a fresh one but it would normally be that if we got a pie for dinner it had been one that had been left over from the day before. We would eat it up rather than see it wasted.

The life of Henry Hiley Part 3 - living arrangements at 72 Victoria Street

In today's post Henry talks about some of the living arrangements at 72 Victoria Street.

There were three cellars in the house. There was a coal cellar where the coal was tipped and the coke. There was a wash cellar and there was a big cellar under the shop. And it was in the big cellar under the shop that we normally had a bath once a week. It was a long zinc portable bath. It had to be filled with hot water from the boiler and there was a drain down there. We didn’t have to carry the water upstairs and tip it outside. And whilst we still had the chip shop, whilst we still sold chips, there was a potato peeler there. It was like a drum, a big drum. The inside of it was like a nutmeg crater. There was plenty of water sloshing about in there, and it was turned by hand, either by Sam or by Father, and then, when all the skin had been rubbed off, then the eyes had to be picked out manually. I never liked that contraption at all.

The plumbing in the house was primitive. There were just two cold taps, one in the kitchen over the big slop-stone, and one down in the cellar. Any hot water had to be got either from a kettle on the fire or from the gas boiler. Well that was it.

The lavatory arrangements were even more primitive than you can imagine. We had to go across the back yard to the lavatory, there was a little house there and there were five houses in the terrace but there were only four lavatories. We shared with the Hoyles who lived next door to us. Now there were two pail closets, two facing east and two facing west, and in between there was an ashpit. All the rubbish was put into a great big tub and that was taken away once a week. About the worst job in all the world that I can imagine was the man who came once a week with the muck-cart and emptied the pales and then drove his horse and muck-cart I don’t know where. Whether it went to a sewage farm or not, I don’t know. We always believed that it was tipped up Calderbrook in a field up there, but it was awful. When Father went across he used to take his pipe with him. He was alright. He could smoke his pipe but the rest of us were much too young even to try a cigarette.

The life of Henry Hiley Part 1 - the death of Henry's mother Ethel

A little late in coming, but as promised at the end of last year, today's post is the first in a series which will describe the life of Henry Hiley. These posts will be illustrated with some of the many photos which Henry left, and be accompanied with excerpts from his life story, 'HH remembers'. These were first recorded on to cassette tapes and then copied on to 24 CDs, and represent a wonderful collection of memoirs which cover Henry's entire life.

Henry was born on 10th January 1919 at 72 Victoria Street, Littleborough. His parents were Harold and Ethel (nee Heap). 

Harold and Ethel Hiley - possibly on their wedding day in 1903.
This is the only photo we have of Ethel

Henry as a baby

Henry at 72 Victoria Street

I can scarcely remember my mother who died of consumption in the spring of 1923. I was four years old. What memories I have are two, only two. One was of Dr Gorst, the family doctor, who used to let himself in at the back door, nip up the stairs to Mother’s bedroom. That was the room where I was born on January 10th 1919. He would leave his bowler hat on the chair at the bottom of the stairs, go up to examine her and then come down and go.

Another recollection I have is that when the weather was good, summer time, then Daddy would lift her, carry her downstairs and let her sit in a deckchair in the back yard.

The last, well there are now three recollections, because I remember the day that she was buried at Mankinholes. The coffin was standing in our tiny living room and the relatives were standing round. I noticed grown men and women crying and I wondered how it could be that adults could cry. I thought crying was only for children. However I now realise why they were crying. It had been a bad, bad blow for the family.

Ethel's grave at Mankinholes

Henry's Tour of Littleborough in 1986 (Part 5)

 This post concludes Henry's tour of Littleborough in 1986.

The same field, looking towards Hollingworth Lake. The ‘pavilion’ stood just behind where I am here. The valley down from the lake embankment became a site for the council tip. As the refuse crept nearer and nearer to our cricket field, I suppose the air became less fresh.

On one occasion we were playing Littleborough Baptists. Robert Holt, an ill-natured youth, fancied himself as a fast bowler. Aided by his brother, Raymond, more by the Baptists’ umpire, diminutive Joe Howard, he ‘dismissed’ me after a monstrous series of false appeals. Joe’s patience did not hold.

 

 

 

Durn Baptist cricket field, as it is in 1986, little better than it was in 1935. Rochdale Canal in the distance.

This picture was taken from the site of the Baptist Chapel. We used to play billiards on a small table, darts, and table tennis, in the cellar. Derrick was scorer before he started to play. Barbara was organist. She and I were married there in 1944. The chapel closed soon after the end of the war. It was used for light industry until it was destroyed by fire in 1985. One or two very elegant dwelling houses now occupy the site.

Look out for more excerpts from Henry's memoirs in forthcoming posts in this Blog

Henry's Tour of Littleborough in 1986 (Part 4)

 

The first building housed the offices of E.K.Taylor & Sons, builders, Ebor Street, Littleborough. Beyond them were the joiner’s shop and builder’s yard. Barbara worked here after a short period unemployed. Her first job from school had been in a furniture retailer’s shop in Rochdale. Derrick went here straight from school. Taylor’s became an important firm, setting up shop in the Treforest Estate in SouthWales during the depression. They were Methodists on Sundays. The most colourful character was Herbert Hurst, the foreman joiner. He kept wicket for Littleborough from 1904 to 1932, standing well back for Fred Webster.

We have now gone under the arches, past Ebor Street, a short stretch along Blackstone Edge Road, then right over the canal towards EALEES.

Further up Ealees, past the mill where Grandpa (Wilfrid K.) used to work. What you see here is the cricket field of Littleborough Parish Church, who played in the Sunday School League. We called the wooden building the Institute. It had gym equipment – parallel bars and rings.

The ground was so small that a boundary only counted two. To score four you had to hit the ball out of the ground. The boundary on two sides was a stream. 

Our gang was playing in the water one day in the mid 1920s when an aeroplane landed on the field at the top of the hill on the left of this picture. We all dashed up there, and were able to tell the pilot, who was lost, where he was. He then taxied away and flew off.

These sheep are grazing what was the ‘square’, actually just one wicket used either by the 1st XI or 2nd XI of Littleborough Methodist Cricket Club in the Sunday School League. If only I had collected 1d for every ball lost, and searched for, on practice nights. At the end of the 1939 season, members took various pieces of tackle home for the winter, as always had been done. The club played no more games. I had the set of wickets, and still set them up on the Grammar School field, or on Queens Park in Windermere. The bat I had from those days was a Gunn & Moore ‘Cannon’.

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.