THE FLATLEY DRYER

[Stanley]

My mind is exercised of late with advertising, in particular the long campaign to persuade housewives that their white aren't white enough. As far back as I can remember the brightness of whites on the washing line in full view of the neighbours was seen as a measure of how good a woman was. Plenty of evidence in the LTP of this competition. It spilled over into donkey stoning at the front of the house. If one wife donkey stoned round the foot scraper or coal hole all the others would follow suit. My dad told me of one instance in I think it was Ashton under Lyne where one woman extended her efforts to black leading the tramlines outside her house. As this was on a slope it was not popular with the corporation who didn't appreciate the aesthetic value of coating the lines with a very efficient graphite lubricant! Not sure if this is true but it's a good story!

[Tizer]

I've been reading about Orkney in WW2 when the Royal Navy had a fleet at Scapa Flow and the RAF had squadrons there to provide protection and also to attack the enemy in Norway. I wondered why eggs kept being mentioned. If you visited someone's cottage for tea you took them some eggs. If you were in the services and went home on leave you took home a box of eggs. A bit of searching shows that Orkney had a booming egg industry in the 1940s and it became one of the top egg-producing areas in Britain. The size of the industry is apparent when you read that it all ended in 1952 when 86,000 hens were lost in a hurricane. I got the information on this interesting web site: Orkney

[Stanley]

There's a bit of a parallel their with the Craven District Tiz. In the 1950s we were a very large producer of day old chicks largely because a Japanese visitor introduced us to sexing day old chicks after the war. Funny thing is that one of my drinking mates who was as big as a barn door with fingers like a bunch of bananas was one of the best sexers in the district and did well out of it.

[Tizer]

In the first half of the 1900s two of my relatives based in Wilpshire, Blackburn, were major suppliers of chicken. It started with the brothers Willacy and George Barnes at Higher Slack Farm, Ramsgreave, in the 1890s, then they moved - George to Salesbury and Willacy to Parsonage Road, Wilpshire. Willacy had no children but George had two sons, Willacy and Herbert. They continued the chicken business, young Willacy from Wilpshire Bottoms and Herbert from Parsonage Road. Their company was said to be the supplier of chicken for much of northern England in WW2. Many people now don't realise that chicken wasn't eaten in any significant amount in Britain until the business came here from the US at the start of the 1900s.

[Stanley]

Many years ago the household pig was part of the staple diet of workers. In my youth rules on keeping pigs had hit this tradition but the practice a having a 'hen pen' was common. This too died out and many of the large hen-houses were converted into garages. You can still find some survivors on garage sites round the town. They are easily identified by the row of small window apertures at low level.

[Stanley]

I am reminded of Wilfred Spencer's short story 'The Decline of the Hen Pen'. Can't find it on the site so I'll post it again.

[David Whipp]

A couple of our hen huts when I was a lad - with Bank House in the background.

[PanBiker]

Looks a bit like the Bates Motel there David.

[Stanley]

Lovely David.... Best pic of Bank House I have ever seen. I've pinched it for the archive.....
I note your dad wasn't a big fan of tarring his huts.
When I had Hey Farm in the 1950s I found some old oil-soaked timbers in the boundary fence between me and Bancrofts land. Years later after they had been destroyed I realised that they were the remnants of a roving frame of about 1800. Probably from Gillians Mill.

[David Whipp]

Creosoting huts and tarring the felt on the roofs seemed to take up quite a few days from what I can remember of my youth Stanley. One of the huts is still in place below the two pictured - though the roof has some corrugated tin sheets added to it nowadays.

[Stanley]

Must have been thin coats David, I was going on the bleached appearance of the wood. Just right for garages! They were well built as well, not like today's B&Q rubbish.

[Tizer]

I've recently found out that an inscription in an old book that belonged to my father related to one of my 19th Century ancestors. The name hadn't meant anything until family history research showed the link. I'd thought it was simply a second-hand book from an unknown source, my dad never suggested there was a family link. I've copied the inscription here because it refers to the book as a prize from the P.S.A. Brotherhood, Chapel Street, Blackburn. Levi would have been in his 50s when he received the prize. I hadn't heard of this before and the most I could find on the Internet is in this link: PSA Brotherhood

[Stanley]

PSA rings a bell Tiz. I have an idea I came across that when I was a scholar at the Wycliffe Sunday School in Stockport. I wasn't old enough to be affected by PSA and I stopped going when I was nine years old and we moved to Napier Road on Heaton Moor. However, as I get older I realise how much my thinking was formed by the teaching there. I remember that they relied heavily on teaching by parables which they defined as 'earthly stories with a heavenly meaning'. I used to work closely with a bloke who I always said should have been a parson. He regarded me as a bit of a rough diamond but useful for getting things done and I know that I quietly pissed him off because I was always quoting the Bible at him! I once won a prize, a beautiful Collins Clear Type St James' bible with a soft leather cover for a 98% score in the annual Bible test. Unfortunately one of my daughters later used it for a crayoning book.....

[Stanley]

One of the things that puzzled me as a child was my father's reaction when he found that I was taking a pack of playing cards to church so I could play patience during the sermon when I was in the choir. I was surprised because he wasn't a church goer, he reckoned he was a Hindu as he had once been rescued from the gutter in Fiji by a Hindu priest who nursed him back to health. He was livid whilst my mother, who was the church goer in the family wasn't bothered at all. Later when he died in Airedale hospital the authorities went to a lot of trouble to find a Hindu priest to visit him. I'll bet that was an interesting conversation......

[Stanley]

I've been reminded on another topic of the three examinations I had to take in 1947 for Manchester, Hulme and Stockport Grammar Schools. They were all at the respective schools and it was a big load for a young lad!

[Tripps]

Have another go at the modern equivalent if you wish.


Manchester Grammar entrance test

[Stanley]

No thanks David.... Funny how things pop into your head. They gave us a short tour of the school and being a chapel Sunday School lad I was horrified when they showed us the baths, they were all swimming naked...... I think that worried me more than the exam!

[Tizer]

I was horrified when they showed us the baths, they were all swimming naked...... I think that worried me more than the exam!

As a lad at a mixed Technical School I always thought there was something funny about Grammar School lads!

[chinatyke]

I was horrified when they showed us the baths, they were all swimming naked...... I think that worried me more than the exam!

As a lad at a mixed Technical School I always thought there was something funny about Grammar School lads!

That should be "something funny about Boys Grammar Schools", we had girls at Colne G S and naked swimming was definitely not part of the curriculum.

[Stanley]

At MGS they always seemed to be trying to upstage the other independent schools. They had a 'High master' not a headmaster.... Good school but in those days definitely a touch of Tom Brown's School Days.

[chinatyke]

As a result of my post above I've just been sent a private message from my old school friend from Colne GS days. He lives in Perth, Australia but is in Thailand at the moment. How's that for an indication of the power of OGFB?

[Stanley]

Great China! Send him this pic, he will remember the Clencher! It grabbed me because I can't think of a worse name for a lavatory pan. I visited CGS after closure in 1981 and loved the lavatory pans.

[Stanley]

When I first went to SGS we were all told how lucky we were to be attending one of the oldest schools in England, founded by Sir Edmund Shaa in 1487.....Funny how that has always stuck in my head, they must have made a good job of inducting us! On reflection I was very lucky because, due to the war, many of the masters (they were all men of course!) were long past retirement and definitely out of the 'Mr Chips' mould. Looking at modern teaching I think that may have been an advantage. Mind you I was always puzzled by the fact we had a full-blown German, Willy Herman, who taught German.

[Tizer]

In the late 1950s my schoolteachers were a very mixed bunch, some great, some we could have done without. The history teacher never did any teaching, he came into the classroom for every lesson with a stack of Roneo'd sheets, told one of us to hand them out then we all had to remain silent while copying the sheets into our exercise books. He sat and read a novel. At the end we collected up the sheets and he left. I failed GCE history. The maths teacher was a strange baby-faced man who was probably excellent at maths but had no social skills and zero tolerance for any child who didn't understand maths. I failed GCE maths (but passed it some years later when I returned to education taught myself maths). For the first few years of secondary level I came top or close to top in Geography until one day the teacher threw me out. He claimed I hadn't handed in my homework book but I knew I'd put it on the pile with everyone else's books. When I insisted I'd handed it in he sent me out and told me never to come back. So I didn't even have a chance to take GCE geography. At the time I was doing well at chemistry and we had a young and very enthusiastic chemistry teacher who had suggested that I aim for being a geologist but being ejected from geography put an end to that. Thank goodness all that wouldn't happen now!

[Stanley]

Like to bet Tiz? I suspect there's a touch of irony in there.