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.

 

72 Victoria Street, Littleborough

This is the last post of 2023 and completes 5 years of this Blog with 175 posts in total so far.

It has been suggested that I should include more about Hileys of more recent generations, so a theme of 2024 will be to do just that.

Starting next month will be an occasional series of posts about the life of Henry Hiley, illustrated with some of the many photos which he left. In his later years Henry recorded his life story on to cassette tapes, later copied on to 24 CDs. This wonderful collection of memoirs, 'HH remembers', covers Henry's entire life.

As a foretaste of this project, here is a photo of 72 Victoria Street, Littleborough, the house where Henry was born.

72 Victoria Street, Littleborough c 1938

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. 

Note the writing in the shop window - 'Hiley's Noted Pies'. The gentleman by the car may have been Henry's father, Harold Hiley. The car was a Morris Cowley 'Bullnose' 4 seater Tourer.

Next post: more about 72 Victoria Street

The Welsh Hileys

There has always been a concentration of Hileys and Highleys  living in south Wales. 

Stephen Archer's Surname Atlas shows the historical distribution of surnames in Great Britain in the 1881 census. Approximately 10% of all the Hileys/Highleys recorded in the census lived in Monmouthshire. 

The Atlas shows 74 Hileys living in Monmouthshire out of a total of 758 Hileys in England and Wales, second only to Yorkshire West Riding with 261 Hileys. But in a calculation of population density Hiley comes out first in Monmouthshire with a figure of 35 Hileys per 100000 population.

For the surname Highley there were 59 Highleys living in Monmouthshire out of a total of 479 Highleys living in England and Wales, in third place behind Yorkshire West Riding and Lancashire. Again Highley came out first in the population density calculation with a figure of 28 Highleys per 100000 population.

Francis Hiley, the Baptist minister who featured in the last post, was a member of a long-established family in Monmouthshire. Members of his family worship in the Chapel in Llanwenarth to this day. 

The Dictionary of Welsh Biography states that Francis's father was of German extraction and there is a strong oral history passed down that there is German ancestry in the family. This Hiley family tree has been traced back before Francis Hiley the minister to Francis Hyla who was buried locally in 1704. He was a 'Refiner' in a forge and other family members worked in iron industries, some known as 'Forgemen'. 

Not far from where the Hileys were living at this time was the village of Tintern. The first forges in Tintern date from the 1560s and Tintern became known for producing the best wire in the country. By 1600 the wireworks were the largest industrial enterprise in Wales, employing hundreds of people. Skilled workers were brought from Germany to Tintern. Known in the village as ‘strangers’, they took five years to train up local men and perfect the art of ‘wire drawing’. (From 'Wye valley - the Angidy Trail')

Iron Forge at Tintern, c. 1794
Drawn by T. Hearne. (Monmouth Museum)

There is further related family history that the Hylas were originally involved in ironworking, and may have been recruited from Germany because of their skills, particularly in 'wire drawing'. The original forge closed in 1678 and workers went to other iron industries in Shropshire, Lancashire and Yorkshire.

A descendant of Francis Hiley is a member of the Hiley Y-DNA Project, already mentioned in this Blog. Currently there are 5 other members in the same genetic group, but it has not been possible so far to connect these members and find a common ancestor.

Francis Hiley, Baptist minister

For 50 years Reverend Francis Hiley was Pastor at the Baptist Chapel in Llanwenarth in Monmouthshire, South Wales. He was born in the village in 1780 and died there in 1860. 

Francis studied in Abergevenny and was appointed by Llanwenarth in 1811. Along with a co-pastor, James Lewis, Francis baptised over 1400 people. Membership of the chapel grew rapidly and many independent 'daughter' churches were founded throughout the area.

Francis Hiley was a renowned preacher in both Welsh and English. He was known as the 'Silver Trumpet of Gwent' and was reported to have preached outdoors to great crowds of over 1000 people, standing on top of a wall so that he could be seen by all.

Christmas Evans, a great Welsh non-conformist preacher, said that he would never preach after him.

 

Portraits of Francis Hiley from the Welsh Portrait Collection at the National Library of Wales (in the Public Domain).

More on Francis Hiley's family and the 'Welsh Hileys' in the next post