SUNDAY, 12 JUNE 2011 Sheila's story of her childhood in Woodcroft, in her own words.

Sheila's story of her childhood in Woodcroft, in her own words.

 Sheila Scott, née Hewitt. 

(This picture is Sheila holding a ball out for a walk with the Stott's.)    

"I was born in Rossendale General Hospital.  It was a very quick birth and made Mum ill.  When she went into the main ward the nurses handed my Mum the wrong baby.  Luckily even though she had only seen a quick glimpse of me at birth she knew this was the wrong baby.  Once seen never forgotten. LOL.

I don’t remember the Coronation celebrations as I was only about 18 months old.

My Mum got a job before I started school.  So Marian Waller looked after me.  She lived at 22  Thorn Street.  She started my liking of embroidery.  Her father lived with her and Harry, as well as daughter Margaret and son David.  If I was quiet I was allowed to play in the hall and stairs.  May sound odd for a kid to want to do that, but at home there was no hall and the stairs were narrow and dark.  At Marians it was big and light with a vestibule.  Up stairs they had a bathroom with a green suite.

My home 13 East Street, had a kitchen come living room.  I remember coconut matting and rag rugs, coal fire with a large guard round it with a brass top,  and two fireside chairs.  A pot sink.  A store cupboard under the stairs.  A kitchenette cupboard where Mum did all her baking.  A large brown wireless playing Sing Something Simple on Sunday night which made me feel sick because it was school the next day.  I did enjoy listening to The Navy Lark and Jimmy Clitheroe on Sunday afternoons.  I remember getting our first fridge.  We had a fish tank.  The story goes that I was mad at my brother Craig and threw my teddy at him.  He ducked and the teddy knocked the fish tank off.  Water and fish all over the floor.

We had a front room where there was a television.  My Dad was a TV repair man till he hurt his back carrying one.  When you see the size of the old ones no wonder that happened.  There was also a green suite with an American rocker chair.  A utility sideboard and a small display cabinet in the corner.  We had a vestibule built round the front door.  The front door wasn’t used much because our front street was unadopted.  Which meant it was a dirt road with grass growing in it.  It was also quite steep and the sun didn’t shine on our side so the flags soon became slippy.

We had 2 bedrooms upstairs, Mum & Dad  had the front one while I shared the back one with my brother Craig until my Dad converted the attic for Craig.  My Dad missed his attic as that was where he would make bits of furniture and toys for us.  I still have the dolls cot he made me.

We had no bathroom.  There were 2 tin baths hung on nails in the back yard.  A small one and a large one for Mum & Dad.  The toilet was outside.  It was a tippler toilet with a wood surround, and the toilet paper made from squares of newspaper threaded on string and hung behind the door.  It was dark in there even though my Dad painted the walls white.  When I was about 2, I would get one of my shoes and say, “shoes on, splash.” And throw it down the toilet and wait to hear the splash.  It became a race for my Mum to get there before me to stop me.  No spare money meant fishing the shoe out and cleaning it.  When I was about 8, Dad took a large cupboard out of the kitchen and plumbed in a bath.  He made a top to slide over and a box to cover the taps.  This made it into a seating area.  When it was bath time the top would be slid off and put against the back door window, for more privacy.  A few years later Dad changed it all again into a shower and changing cubicle.  Now that was good.

We had a communal bonfire in Pickles’ field.  All the kids collected wood.  Some of the older boys sneaked over the river into Brooks Woods for old tree branches.  The week before Reedsholme big boys would come and try to steal our wood.  The slipper shop would give us off cuts on bonfire day.  Goodness knows what toxic fumes we breathed in.   We had a Guy Fawkes and would sit with him outside the factories and on the form outside the Co-op.  Made quite a bit of money, which went for toffees to be handed out at the bonfire.  The fire could only be lit by Martin Hoare.  The kids would meet him after work on the day and walk him home, hoping he would be quick and eat his tea.  A few Mums would have made potato pie for us all to eat around the fire.

  

(Sheila, in the middle, with friends on her birthday.)    

The back street for East St. & Thorn St. was ideal for sledging down.  Not too steep, but steep enough for a decent speed.  There was a street running along the bottom but luckily not many cars around, and then there were railings before Holmes Terrace houses. 

I believe Peter Fisher went down head first on his sledge and his head got stuck in the railings.  It needed the firemen to get him free.  The street became very slippy and was hard work for our parents to walk up and down.  They used to put ashes down to give them grip, but that would spoil our sledging.  My Dad made a sledge for my brother and I.  He made it from a dining chair back and an ironing board.  It could easily fit 3 on.  Worked well but was heavy to pull back up to the top.

When Marian was looking after me she would sometimes go to Pickles farm.  There was one door which I was told there was a bull behind it.  I never saw the bull but it scared me going past.  At the end of the yard was the pig sty with lots of baby pigs.

In the summer we would fill an old medicine bottle with water and a stick of hard liquorice.  Then a few of us would walk past Pickles' farm and up the lanes.  The liquorice flavoured the water and was for our ‘pic nic’.   It never lasted very long.Mondays was washing day.  The streets would have the lines strung across and hung with sheets.  Woe betides any coal man who came on Mondays to deliver coal.   These same washing lines would sometimes become big skipping ropes turned by a couple of Mums for all the kids to skip into.

The milk was delivered by horse and cart.  The farmer Irvin Nuttall sometimes had a ginger bread which he would share with the kids.  Irvin and his 2 sisters, Nelly and Hilda, came to live next door at number 15 East Street.  Nelly and Hilda taught me to crochet.

The rag and bone cart would come and in exchange for rags Mum would get a donkey stone to edge her clean steps. 

Little Blackpool was a stream that ran into the factory lodge.  It was a magical place.  We built dams which were not appreciated they the men from the factory, caught sticklebacks and had a wonderful time.  Our wet and dirty socks would be hung on the bushes to dry hoping Mum wouldn’t notice.

Once we found a snake on the path to the stream.  Some factory men were near by at the lodge.  They said it was a grass snake. We would pick flowers for our Mums.  In the middle of the field were the 5 trees. My brother Craig, (front left in photo) knew how to climb them, so he showed us.  It was good having a big brother.  Farmer Pickles didn’t mind us going in his field as long as at mowing time, when the grass was growing and ready to cut, we kept to the same paths.  At mowing time some of the men who lived in the streets would help cut the grass."

The last photo is those very same fields, filled with wild flowers.