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.............................................

Earliest memories. 1950's East Street............. Coal men

Here I am outside the front door of number 12 East Street when I was about 4 years old. The tiny front garden was flanked by a low stone wall. On top of the walls in each street were regularly spaced circular iron knobbly remains of the railings which had all been sawn off and donated to the 1939-45 war effort.They were noticeable when you sat on one! We did have a small iron gate.

In the recent picture below, of number 12, which is now for sale, the walls are still the original ones, and retain their old character.

The old front door was a wooden one with a heavy iron door-knocker, and a circular doorknob.

In between the gate and the front door, as you will be able to picture here, there was a square manhole cover. This led directly to the cellar via a small chute, and was used for the coal men to tip in their delivery bags. If you happened to be standing in the passage between the front door and the back room when they began to pour in the coal it was a frightening experience when you were young! To me it sounded like the low rumbles of thunder under the floor!

Dad had to go down the cellar to shovel the coal along or else when he came home from work, the last few bags would sometimes not be able to shunt down the chute as it was all backed up. And before you could enter by the front door the pile of remaining black nuggets had to be shifted. It had a name.........................." Best nutty slack"

The coal men had leather backed jerkins, and used to shoulder the bags, and then have to carry them up the steep streets, having left their delivery flatbed truck at the bottom of the hill. They were always covered in coal dust. And looked as though their faces peered out of blackness, the whites of their eyes standing out. Of course this necessitated a thorough cleaning of the flags by the door afterwards, and then the usual bar of " donkey stone" came out to whiten the edges of the front step. It was like a small bar of hard biscuit coloured chalk, and the women folk got them from the rag and bone man, in exchange for the old clothes. As one of the old sayings goes, "Tha con allus afooard sooap!" Translated...................... "You can always afford soap"

Sunday June 11th 2011.Last of the Summer Wine................

Last of the Summer Wine............................ June 2011

At the beginning of this week, on Tuesday morning, I drove up to Rossendale once more, to stay for a few days, visiting several people, then meeting up with Ken Stott and Peter Fisher, (pictured.) We were to begin the initial filming of the dvd about our childhood spent in the community of streets known as "Woodcroft".  

Why? Some people have asked. Because we all want those early childhood years to be preserved. It was a different way of life. A time of close community, where we lived without  television, (me till I was about 11), enjoyed the radio, and had no telephones in our houses, no mobile phones, no i-pods, i-phones, computers, no inside toilets, our mothers had no washing machines, and no dryers, not many had a car, no central heating, and no fitted carpets............. 

In those days after the war in the early '50's, our parents lived with rationing.

 But we were happy.    

Oh we can look back through rose coloured  glasses, I am well aware of that, except, when we all meet up, those folk from the Woodcroft community, that sense of closeness and affection for those years we shared is very tangible and real...................

The last time I met Peter and Ken was at the "Woodcroft Reunion" in 2001, 10 years earlier! 

So here we are again, 10 years on!! 

And yes, sure the years have added grey hair, and the rest(!!) and as Peter commented on one of the photos we took how much we now look like our parents! 

So, Peter is busy collecting local history, and old postcards, not to mention his sets of superb photos at   http://peterfisher.smugmug.com/. All of this takes time and effort and well done to Peter and Ken, who himself, is taking the time to film and edit the dvd which is in High Definition.Meeting up with the various people, where they are able, who are taking the time to travel to Woodcroft to be included as a vox pops interview. I've just looked up the meaning of the phrase and it translates as "voice of the people"  which is exactly how it will be. 

 Sometimes when I hear myself talking about uploads and downloads, editing photos, and other such very basic terminology, I think what a long way we have come from those 

early days. 

Ken set up his camera equipment and microphone, in the garden which was once a part of Pickles' farm. Of course, like he said, put people in front of a camera and immediately you are very aware of it! But he asked Peter and myself to sit on one of the old stone slab "benches" and just talk about our memories of living there as children. 

He had brought with him the script which my sister has written for a "voice over". This will be read by young lady from "Radio Rossendale" who sounds like Jane Horrocks. So if we ran out of things to say we could refer back to various things which were included, of which there are many.

Well, like an episode from "Last of the Summer Wine" the two of us began............and all those precious moments came tumbling out. Oh how we laughed and as each delicious anecdote was told, it reminded us of more and more.................!! 

It really was a case of " Do you remember when...............?" And off we wandered again down that childhood track. 

How long did we talk? A good 30 minutes!! And, of course, being one of the Smith family, I can talk for England once I start! But Ken was pleased, and his wife, Lynne, who had accompanied him, though not being involved herself, said that she had thoroughly enjoyed it, as it mirrored her own childhood memories, being born in Burnley, which is over the moor from Rossendale. 

There are more people who are going to be filmed, and this is interspersed with old photos, and footage of the area. Ken is busy now editing the bit in which Peter and I are included. And listening to them talk about how to put it on the internet was a foreign language! The file will be very large! 

Then the dvd will be marketed and 

the proceeds go to the local hospice. So thanks Ken and Peter, and look forward to meeting up again.  

And here is the original farm garden, in the picture.

       

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. 

SUNDAY, 31 JULY 2011 Washing day in the 1950's

SUNDAY, 31 JULY 2011

Washing day in the 1950's

Washing Day 1950's. East Street. 

One of my abiding memories of the small out-kitchen in East Street was wash day. 

I would come home from school to either a line of washing strung outside.......sheets smelling of fresh air...........clothes stretched out and pinned on with the old fashioned dolly pegs. 

Inside, if it was a damp day, or a wet one, the clothes maiden, as we called it, (the old fashioned equivalent of the airer) stood in front of the fireplace, and if there was a cheerful blaze, the clothes which were hung on there to dry, steamed and gave off a soapy fresh smell.  It was the  preparation for the washing which mystified me. First of all mum would have the laundry in the sink, and scrub and rub with soap. This she did, even when, later on, we had an early type of washing machine,which was a top loader and lid, and an integral mangle.  The  whites were soaked in bleach, and rinsed out. There was an old fashioned boiler in the kitchen, rather like a large Burco boiler, into which the clothes placed with wash soap, and the water then heated. When the half lid was lifted the kitchen filled with a steamy cloud. After this process, the rinsing would take place. 

For this there was a "dolly tub" and a "posser". There is a dolly tub in this picture, (which is not of our actual kitchen, likewise the other one) and a posser with several legs. Our posser had a metal end like a bell, which had holes round the sides. As the clothes were rinsed a dolly blue bag was put in with them to aid the whitening process.  They  were used before we had modern laundry detergents with optical brighteners.   A factory-produced block was the "modern" (mid-19th century onwards), commercial version of older recipes for whitening clothes, with names like stone blue, fig blue, or thumb blue. It disguised any hint of yellow and helped the household linen look whiter than white. The posser was employed to help squeeze the water out of the laundry, by pushing it down and mashing it! I used to love doing this! The water all poured out of the holes as you lifted it back up again.  On to the mangle, where the clothes were passed through and the handle turned manually. Sheets needed a lot of muscle! After all of that, they were pegged out to dry. On extremely wet days I can remember the humidity in the living room, as the clothes were drying.
The water from the dolly tub would be poured out in a soapy froth down the yard from the back door, and made it's way in a small bubbly stream down the steep back street. We always had clean bed linen and clothes. But wash day was hard work. And as today we can forget about clothes as they are washed and dried, it's good to remember that it wasn't always so easy. 

It will be 21 years next Sunday since mum died, and she was a mum in a million.