Delivering the milk. 1950'S

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MONDAY, 2 MAY 2011

Farmer Pickles returning from his milk round 

Some of the Dawson family out for a stroll on a cold day!

These fields are now built upon, and the old farm in the background a heap of rubble.

As children we knew every inch of this walk. The streets of our small community being to the left of the photo, back down the hill.

The farm belonged to the Pickles family, and they and another farmer, who also had a dairy herd, called Mr Clarke, provided us with milk.

Mr Clarke had a horse and cart, which he loaded with two large milk churns and he would clatter along the cobbles at the bottom of the streets, and leave the horse waiting whilst he filled a smaller churn which he would then carry to each house, where he poured out the fresh milk into the jugs, or small metal cans, waiting sometimes on the yard steps or walls. Each jug had a cover. Some of these were of material which was beaded around the edges, to stop it from slipping off or being blown about. Also good to keep out the flies! I do remember him coming up our back street with his larger "billycan".

Then if we were not at school we would ask him if we could have a ride in the small cart back to his farm.

It was situated in the distance, as the crow flies, of this photo.

I liked the feel of the pull of the cart, as the old cart horse wound his way back up the farm lane. There was a rhythm to the movement.

The old lane is long gone but I did manage to find the entrance on my trip there 2 years ago. All overgrown and only the impressions remain. The old stone walls which lined the route are able to be seen if you look carefully enough. The lane is called Reeds Lane, and in the 1940's my mum's brother and his wife and baby daughter lived in a cottage at the top, next to the

farm. It was called Reeds Cottage, and adjoined the barn where the horse was stabled.

If the horse got restless, they could hear him. His great hooves shifting on the stone floor.

And Auntie Lily would say, so the story goes,

" Not to worry, it's only t'orse"

Once the horse and cart reached the farm we would get down and then wend our way home down the lane and on through the fields.

Happy times.

Childhood games we used to play in the 50's.

MONDAY, 30 MAY 2011

I

Maytime

Here I am on the right-hand side, at the top of my street, wearing one of my mother's old dresses.

It is 1st May. We used to borrow an old broom or brush handle, sometimes with the brush head still attached and go through the surrounding neighbourhood, where we would stop at each location, and sing..................as we

twirled around the pole, making a pattern with the ribbons.

"Dancing round the maypole 

Merrily we go

Hip-a hip-a cherry, to and fro.

All the lovely maidens on the village green

Dancing in the sunshine,

Hurrah for the Queen"

Our games followed a seasonal track.

In spring, when the evenings grew lighter, we could play out at after tea for longer during the week. We had tops and whips, with coloured chalks, and drew patterns on the tops, before using the tiny whips to set them spinning along the pavements. The original pavement I used is here, in this picture, on the left. As the paving slabs were so uneven, it was a work of art to keep the tops going. As they whirled around we could see each different "design" emerge.     

    

The bottom of my street is just visible on the right a little way along.These streets were our playgrounds, along with the fields at the top.

  

Skipping games

We had skipping ropes and used different rhymes as we skipped to the rhythm. 

Sometimes we used an old washing line.Two people stood at each end and turned the rope, saying various chants, such as: 

"All in together girls,

The cows are in the meadow girls,

When you hear your birthday

Please jump in"

Then as we each heard our own month, we would jump into the rope and there could be as many as 5 all at once skipping. Counting would begin, until the one by one we would "jump out" when we      

couldn't stand the pace anymore!    

If we skipped alone we had other rhymes, such as: 

"Blue  bells,

Cockle shells,

Eevy, Ivy, Over" 

Ball games

Individual games were always played either using the backyard wall, or the brick walls out in the street. I used to play "two ball" when you threw one ball at the wall and as it returned, you caught it as you threw the second one, and so on, in a regular beat.   

 I used to say

"Nebuchadnezzar, the king of the Jews

Bought his wife 

A pair of shoes, 

When  the shoes began to wear 

Nebuchadnezzar began to swear

When the swearing began to stop

Nebuchadnezzar bought a shop

When the shop began to sell

Nebuchadnezzar rang a bell

When the bell began to ring

Nebuchadnezzar began to sing,

One, two, three, four, five.............................."    

These rhymes must have been handed down as I really hadn't a clue then who he was!!    

In another team game, someone would be chosen to stand with their back to the rest of us, and then would throw the ball over their shoulder.

 Whilst we would ask "Queenio, queenio, who's got the ballio?"

                      The person who had thrown the ball had then to guess which of us was holding it behind our backs. A process of elimination! The one holding the ball then stood at the front, and we would begin again.    

There was far less traffic then, and close communities "kept an eye " on their children. So we were ringfenced.

Group pastimes included "Hide and Seek", and "Tig" as we called it. 

Playtime at St Paul's Constable Lee C of E Primary School

This is the school at which the majority of us began our education. 

 We could use the wooden PE hoops in the play yard,at break time, until the advent of the Hula Hoop which swept the country like wild fire. And is still in use today.

We badgered our parents for one of the coloured plastic hoops,and proceeded to master the art of twirling it round and round our waists, and even necks, until the latter was pronounced "dangerous"

So we had to stick to waists and ankles!      

There are so many more games that we played, that I will save that for another time. 

But I think we were extremely healthy children, who had lots of fresh air and loads of exercise without even realising it!

   http://anymoreteainthatpot.blogspot.com/  

Return to Rossendale................9 days and counting!

I just absolutely adore this picture.
In the course of looking for old photos for the proposed dvd of our old neighbourhood, Woodcroft, this  picture has emerged. The girl in the lane lived at the farm which was situated to the rear of the person taking the shot.
Locally always referred to as "Pickles'" farm.
This is Dorothy Pickles, the farmer's daughter. She has sent several old snapshots to Ken Stott, to be included.
I must admit to simply staring at it for ages, and being transported once more back to my early years.
Here is the very lane along which I used to walk, whether with family, or friends, or simply alone.
Turning left at the five-barred gate and following the track back down between the bordering fields, to our streets and houses, and home.    

Walking straight on along the path brought us to a small wooden bridge, which crossed the stream running off the hillside. Here we would spend hours, once we had negotiated the barbed wire when clambering  down to play on the banks.
It was in a hollow and so unseen from civilisation it seemed to us........
Our own world.
I loved it.
That stream had such clear running water, and in it were minnows and sticklebacks.

We fished with jamjars and on one occasion, I had the fiercest looking water creature in mine. It was fighting with a minnow, and round and round they went in my jar. I very excitedly took it home to show my dad. He pronounced it to be a dytiscus beetle, or diving beetle, which apparently have voracious appetites, and eat tadpoles and small fish!
So, I took them both back and released them..............

I also loved caddis fly larvae.
Here in this photo the larva is crawling out of his home made shell, constructed of old bits of gravel and sometimes broken twig stems which have fallen into the stream. I used to watch them for ages, meandering their way along the underwater stems of grass, or on the stream bed.
Dad told me when he was at school, they would put the shell-less larvae into a fish tank, and then drop in all kinds of bits of beads and twigs, of small coloured gravel, and marvel how painstakingly the larva constructed their shell-homes.These were then veritable works of art having multicoloured additions!

The big woods, in the background, amongst which you can just glimpse Crawshaw Hall, was where the land owner, Cicely Brooks, resided.
We would play in amongst those trees.
One day when galloping along under the tree canopy, with my friend to whom I was tied with a skipping rope, having become, magically, "Flicka the Horse", a tv series in the 1950's,and my friend holding my "reins" we suddenly came face to face with Madame Cicely.........................who was not best pleased!
Normally we kept well away from the immediate environs of the Hall and gardens, but had strayed a bit too far this time!
All my friend could think of to say was "I'm a Girl Guide" and showed her the Company belt around her waist.
Cicely, supposedly, having something to do with the Guides.
Well, if she did or not, we had a real ear wigging!

The spire of the church in the distance, St John's Crawshawbooth, was just a short distance from the main entrance to the hall itself.
Did it put us off playing in the woods again? What do you think? ;-)
But most of all I can smell the fresh air of the fields, now covered in houses, and feel the icy coolness of the water in the stream on my bare feet.
 The sound of the wind in those trees in the woods, and remembering the ever changing colours of the leaves. In spring the whitebeam was always out first, and the tapestry of all the many shades of green as others followed, before the dirt and grime from the factory chimneys and myriad coal fires, dulled their transluscence.
And in a little over 9 days time, I am going back once again, to rediscover old haunts and history.    

Links to old blogs

http://anymoreteainthatpot.blogspot.com/

http://musingsofateadrinker.blogspot.com/  

THURSDAY, 21 APRIL 2011

" I have often walked down this street before"!!

Peter Fisher has a superb set of old photos which you can see on the web. As I browse through them, all my early childhood comes alive.

Our world was in these streets, which you can see here on the Land registry plan.

East Street,in the first picture,where I was born,  (The house on the left with the wooden fence and small conifer),Thorn Street, Woodcroft Street, Rosedale Street and Terrace, Burnley Road, and Westwood Terrace were bounded by the main road running along the valley, and in the east by fields and beyond the fields the hills.

On the map the plans for the first new houses can be seen, to be built on the fields in which we played. The factory lodge is visible at the top, with the stream which fed it with water from the hillsides.

As you look down each street from the top, you look out over to the hillside opposite and the woods which belonged to Cicely Brooks, and always known as Brooks' Woods.

Of course we used to go and play in there, keeping well away from the big Hall and its owner! It was a magical place then, in the days when we used to make our own fantasy world.

Each street aside from those by the main road, was very steep, but the gradient became less challenging as you progress towards Woodcroft Street from East Street.

Brilliant for sledging in the winter, but as you can see, extremely challenging when sledging down our back!! Olympic Bob sleigh teams had nothing on us!!

We had to make a hair-raising stop at the bottom, or cannon into the brick walls of the yards of the houses on Westwood terrace.

But I digress..................how can you condense so much history into a small space!!

As I had my trip down memory lane in June 2008, I wondered how on earth the dustbin men ever managed to collect the bins from our street! Let alone the wheelie ones which now have taken over............I lived at No 12, but we couldn't see a bin with that number on to have the statutory photo!

And after all these years from the early '5o's when my childhood began, to this day, those of us who lived there still talk about it with great affection, and still share our history together. I'm looking forward to seeing the finished DVD being made by Ken Stott.

http://peterfisher.smugmumg.com/History/Woodocroft-Photos/88975_Cfujt#310e8785_i7YJT

Childhood friends of the 50's and 60's

WEDNESDAY, 20 APRIL 2011

Childhood friends of the 50's and 60's

In June 2008 I spent several days staying with my dad in Rawtenstall, and managed to arrange to see 3 of my old childhood friends.

We all used to live in the area called Woodcroft, a community of several streets bordered by a factory to the north and a playing field to the south. It was situated in a narrow valley on the the main road between

Rawtenstall and Burnley. Bounded by fields and hills.

The old streets are still there.

And every time I have been there to visit I usually pay it a sentimental call.

We had a childhood that most children couldn't even dream of today. Such freedom to roam the hills, catch sticklebacks in the stream, climb trees, play out in the streets, or in one another's homes.

My sister, Shirley is writing her own blog about the special times we all spent as children in that neighbourhood. http://woodcroftfolk.blogspot.com/2011/03/letter-to-free-press.html

It was such a close community that a reunion was mooted in 2001 September and around 130+ people came along.

Lots of laughter, meeting up with folk we hadn't seen for years, or those with whom we had kept in touch.

In the photos I took, are the 4 of us. Left to right:

Susan, me, Maureen (née Fisher) and Val. 

The picture was taken in front of the same window where the Coronation group was assembled in 1953.

See if you can possibly spot us all in the picture above!

We all went for a walk tracing our favourite haunts, trying to pinpoint their locations, and some of them have not changed. The first picture is more or less as it was then. The view is timeless. Cribden and Little Cribden hills in the background. We knew every inch. I loved climbing to the top, looking out over the valley of Rossendale. The feel of the spiky grass when you sat down for a break.

The sound of the skylark in spring. There was always a cuckoo, and I knew that summer was on its way. Spring carpeted the fields and hills in buttercups, daisies, mayflowers, kingcups by the streams, bluebells in the woods across the road, sweet smelling purple and white clover.......... the rhythm of the seasons had a pattern we followed. Our games matched the time of year, sledging in the winter down the steep streets and hillsides, "swealing" grass in spring.

The farmers sometimes burned off the old pasture, to let the new grass grow. In that area it was known as swealing. It had a very distinctive smell. And we from time to time helped the process along! Then had fun stamping it out!! Health and Safety eat your hearts out!! Paddling in the nearby stream everyone knew as Little Blackpool, community bonfire, courtesy of Mr Pickles the farmer. Church "Walking Days" very much a feature of the North I always felt. These were at Whitsuntide and were known also as "Whit Walks". The church congregation adults at the back, and the Sunday School girls' classes wearing special dresses and the lads in white shirts and dark trousers, usually with white pumps on their feet, at the front. Some of them designated to carry the church banners. It was quite a sight when the brass bands processing in front of each church converged on the town centre for a united service on the spare ground. Other churches had "Rose Queens" who rode on a decorated float with whitewashed tyres, garlanded with flowers.

The next photo is an old friend of mine Janet, in the lane to Pickles farm. I used to go with my dad at times to get some more milk if we had run out. If we went at night he took a torch and it made a pool of light around our feet when it was particularly dark. In moonlight everything was bathed in silver. The trees looked so different. Sound seemed to be

magnified...................the swish of the wind through the grass and the leaves rustling, as we crunched along the stony lane. Lights twinkling behind us from the houses we had left behind.

So many, many memories, so many stories! And now it is proposed to make a kind of Living History DVD, with Vox Pop's interviews and old photos, interspersed with a commentary.

So, I hope that it does our childhood proud. It is absolutely worth the effort.

The picture below is of the Sunnyside Baptist Church Rose Queen float in 1960.

WEDNESDAY, 23 DECEMBER 2009 Capturing history for the next generation.....

More Childhood memories.

St Paul's C of E Church, Constable Lee, Rawtenstall, Rossendale, Lancashire. 

After I was born in 1948, I was taken to this church to be christened. There are old photos of my parents standing on the church drive, holding me in their arms. It was my first introduction to St Paul's. I grew to love the church, as it stands on a steep bank, leading up to the fields and hillsides behind.
It was just behind the C of E Primary school, where eventually I would begin my education. The church and school being linked. 
My memories of the church are coloured by the seasons of the year. 

At Christmas time, I would step inside and feel the warmth and musty smell generated by the old coke-burning boilers. It came up through vents in the tiled floor.
The large Christmas tree at the front sent out a wonderful pine scent, and with the organ softly playing before the beginning of the service, it was an oasis of tranquility. The lights on the tree twinkling and reflecting in the few delicate glass ornaments with which it was decorated. 

The timelessness of singing carols,

The sense of excitement that Christmas Day was approaching

And even now, for me, Christmas always begins with the Children's service in the morning, and the Carol service at night. 
The Sunday School which I attended there when I was older, rehearsed in time honoured fashion, unitl we all found ourselves in the front pews, (in my case a bit nervous!), ready to say or sing our pieces. 
Eventually, I graduated to singing in the choir when I was 8 years old, until I was 15 years old. It was then began to learn how to sing the traditional anthems, and the Christmas oratorios. We only sang parts of them, but it introduced me to a love of singing in four part harmony. 
We were very fortunate to have a wonderful choir master, called George Allen, who was well known in our area, for his sonorous bass baritone voice.He sang solos for productions of Handel's "Messiah" and listening to him sing was a delight. 

The Stained Glass Window.

One thing I did love very much was the stained glass window. It seemed to me to evoke a distant land, one which was far away, and the depiction of the shepherd and the sheep was not a wishy washy sentimental thing but something which stirred in me a feeling that there was a bigger story to be told.

Each week I would walk up the curving drive as it wound it's way up to the top of the small hill where the church was situated.

And each season was different.

In the spring the budding trees were just beginning to get ready to burst open and unfurl their new leaves. In the picture of the drive you can see the gatepost at the bottom and the end of the row of houses which bordered the schoolyard. I find myself remembering the scent of the early flowering redcurrant, or "ribes" to give it its name. It had a distinctive pungent scent and to this day when I smell it, it takes me back down memory lane. There are one or two small bushes in the picture, with the daffodils. A pinky red splash by the path. On warm summer days we could walk home by going through a small gate at the back of the church into the field paths and I absolutely adored the view of the hills opposite. Cribden and Little Cribden as they are called. They had and still do have, a distinctive shape.

The sun went down just behind them and in November it sometimes looked like a huge, flaming, deep red ball, resting for a while at the summit before slipping out of sight.

There was a richness in my childhood, which surfaces in images and impressions like tapping into a huge underground vein of valuable ore. Those of us who lived as children in that neighbourhood still talk about it and some of us are still in touch, 50 or so years on. We tramped the hills, played out in the streets, and fields, and made up our own entertainment, indoors and out. We were very privileged.

A lasting legacy of parents, teachers, church, and a more simple way of life.

(In the last picture the shape of Cribden Hill can just about be seen through the foliage of the trees and bushes.)

SATURDAY, 19 DECEMBER 2009 Bonfire night letter to Free Press

SATURDAY, 19 DECEMBER 2009 Winter!

Childhood memories

This is my mum, Ethel Smith. I have been writing a lot about my dad, now 91, and as he has now moved it has stirred a lot of memories. 

My mum died aged just 70 in 1990, so dad has been a widower for 20 years in 2010.

The photo was taken at Rawtenstall market, when the local paper was doing a shopper's survey. 
It's how I remember my mum, smiling. 
Last night was so cold that I thought of one of her sayings " It's cold when you move." 
We had no central heating in the house where I was born, and dad stoked up the coal fire ready to be lit each morning downstairs. 
















Here is a photo of the back of the street in which I lived until I was 13 years old. 
Once we were all snugly ensconsed in front of the blazing coals in the grate, in the winter months, in the evening, or indeed anytime, when you moved into the small out-kitchen you did feel the drop in temperature!!
Going to bed in the winter was challenging in our two up two down small terraced home. 
There were no carpets upstairs, just what we called oilcloth on the floor. It was a forerunner of linoleum or vinyl covering. 
If you did not wear your slippers, your feet hit the icy cold of its smooth surface. 
My sister and I shared a room at the back, looking over the factory roof, towards the big woods on the hillside opposite.
Commonly known as "Brook's Woods" as a landowner named Cicely Brooks lived in Crawshaw Hall, and the grounds 
included the wood. 
In the mornings of the depths of winter time,the bedroom window could be covered on the inside with a beautiful frost pattern. A whole world of filigree and fronds, a veritable forest of ice. I would make a hole in the pattern with the end of one of my fingers, and the ice would melt slowly around it, slipping downwards making a trail as it moved.
My mum would make breakfast porridge to stoke me up before I walked to school a half mile or so away. 
I watched it bubbling in the pan making miniature volcanoes! Then she poured it into our bowls and laced it with milk and syrup!! And out I went in the cold.My sister being 5 years younger than myself did not begin school until I was 10 years old. We moved house when I was 13 and she was 8 years old to the home which has now been sold. 

I realised that I have a very visual memory, which is probably why from an early age I loved to draw and paint. I used to paint pictures using poster paint on the plaster of the attic walls at the first house where I was born, in February 1948. 
At school I loved the art lessons. At Primary school in the 1950's these consisted of little more than painting using powered paint mixed in old jam jars, on fairly cheap paper. 


Or making papier maché plates which we then painted and took home. 
I also remember basket making using supple canes, and weaving.
I guess just after the war years it was difficult to find funding for more exotic pastimes!! But we didn't know any difference. 
But it is the winter of which I now write. 
It always seemed to snow..........but there again maybe that's how I remember it. We had two yards at the school in the picture, one for the girls and one for the boys. When it was particulary cold and snowy, and the frost had frozen the snow, we were allowed to play outside at breaktimes, and more often than not constructed what we called "bottle ice" slides. These were such fun and exhilarating to use. 
We made them by charging at a terrific pace and then began to slide along the top of the frozen snow, and as we continually repeated this action the result was a long shiny slide of ice along the playground flags, which were covered by freezing cold whiteness!!
Health and Safety would have banned them completely now!! Spoil sports!!
We did not come to any harm save for the occasional tumble if we overbalanced and it was great exercise outdoors making our feet and fingers tingle and our cheeks glow. 
And the subzero temperatures here last night brought these memories to mind.
More to come.............................................