By Fred Brandon, age 89

I was reading "Litton's Tannery in the Old Days' (Issue 38) and I feel convinced that the second man on the back row is Jack Sedgley. He worked there for years and was a young playmate of mine. He lived in Bamford Road near to the o1d football ground and his sister married my brother Andrew. I remember a lot about the Bamford Road area. I lived there from being a baby, for about 20 years. We had some happy times, always something going on.

I woke up one morning and, looking through the window, I was surprised to see a long procession of animals. Elephants pushing caravans, men on horseback like Americans; I think this must have been after the First World War. When I was dressed it didn't take me long to get down to the football ground where there was a big marquee. I couldn't remember how much it cost to go in, the children couldn't afford it, but we enjoyed watching the elephants being fed outside. It was called Lord John Sanger's Circus, I think.

Later on my family moved to Foundry Street, just across from Bamford Road. The back of the Palace Theatre (Cinema) came into Foundry Street, which was very useful for the actors during their breaks, because we got to know them very well. Just across Bamford Road was a pub called the White Hart, where they used to go for a quick drink during the intervals. The White Hart came on the corner of Bamford Road and Longford Street and, later on, I think it became the United Services Club. I remember the Palace being the Parochial Hall for St Joseph's.

I have forgotten to mention that the actors knew that my mother had four sons and I was the youngest one. They would ask her if they could borrow one of them to help them out with an act, such as boxing in a barrel, or being thrown off the stage onto something soft by the comedian. One of my older brothers would help them out.

I remember the first tarmacadam being done in the town - on Longford Street. It was a haven for the children to play 'whip and top', myself included.

I wonder if anyone remembers a little plump woman called Fanny Simms, who lived in Dawson Street opposite what is now United Services Club? She used to let rooms out.

I came to live in Heywood when I was about six months' old when my parents moved there from Blackburn with their seven children. My father worked for Pilkington's Shuttle Works in Blackburn and he moved with his job to Heywood. We lived in School Street for a short time and went into Bamford Road in a short row of houses, which they called "The Irish Channel". We didn't live there very long before we moved right opposite to another house in Bamford Road. There were four together and they were white pebble-dashed. Kirbys lived in one, Holts in another, and the Howarths and the Farrows in the others. Just lower down there was a chip shop and a little grocers called Valentine's and further down was the Outdoor License - Harvey Jackson's on the comer of Holland Street.

Bell's Mill was just a bit higher up by the Central Co-op and we lived there quite a while. The back came onto West Street and that was our playground, where we used to play every day or night. We moved from West Street, which I can remember very plainly, into Foundry Street opposite Isherwood's Mill. There was a great big wall at the front of the house and over the other side were two lodges belonging to the Mill and a water chute which the hot water ran down to cool off. It made such a noise!

When I was fourteen, I used to go to St. Joseph's School from leaving Bamford Road School. Just at the back of our house in Foundry Street was a big junction where about five streets all met. Longford Street, Top of Bamford Road (which led us to the Centre) and Moss Street, where the guildhall was. Dawson Street came after, where there was a chip shop, Andrews' Warehouse and the Palace Cinema. Bamford Road led to Ashworth Road and to get to the school we had to pass the Star Inn, which was opposite 'Boots the Chemists' going towards Taylor Street. By the side of the Star Inn there used to be George Braidwood's stall with big iron wheels. He used to bring the big stall up from the back of Garden Street along the front street - I think it only happened on a Friday. We used to pass that and go down Taylor Street, which then was Bath Lane. It was only a narrow lane that ran between two big sand hills. On one side it was boarded up, with houses behind and there used to be great big carthorses coming in with box carts. They only allowed you about 18 inches to get past them and I used to be frightened to death - they were almost running over your toes! All along there was where we used to play marbles.

The teachers at St Joseph's were a bit strict. They'd examine your clogs before you went in and if they weren't clean you'd get a good telling off. We used to have a stiff collar about 4 inches wide that had to be scrubbed before going to school. If it had set on fire God knows what would have happened - it was made of celluloid. Dirty hands - that was another thing they'd have you lined up for.

I had three favourite teachers at St Joseph's: Miss Houghton, Mr. Doran and Miss Simcock. They were really nice teachers, but the others were a bit too strict. I left in Class 9 and Peter Cash was the teacher. He was very strict; he always had the cane out.

I can still remember nearly all the class names that I was with all the time at school. Harry Bradley, Harry Mortimer, Sam Guiver, Harry Butterworth, Frank Bure, John Powell, Gerard Walker, Jack Collins, Mary Gaynard, Mary Walsh, Marian McIntyre, Maggie Cafferty and a lot more. I can't just think of them at the moment, but I know them all - we used to have some good times. We used to be a bit rough at playtime, knocking each other about in the old flagstone yard and we had to play in the street outside where the mortuary used to be. It had two gates and every time our football went over we had to climb over them and get it back. I only did it once - I never went again.

Going back to my younger days, there used to be unemployment jobs. Everybody was out of work and they used to find big projects for them. One was making Heywood Lake and another the Cricket Ground. I remember the Bridge being built there and it being opened by Lord Derby. Everybody will know the old saying, which is true, "I declare this Bazaar now open". I was there myself and I used to take dinners down to my father and brother who were working on the lake and it was a bit of a rush getting off school to go down and get back to school. Before the lake was finished there used to be a few inches of water in the bottom when it rained and it used to freeze over. We had some really enjoyable times skating on there with our clogs on.

I used to enjoy going on Heywood Market, the old one on Church Street. There was the 'Golden Pan' and that was well known. And Toffee Ted's - I wonder how many will know about that now? He had a shop at the Brook as well - 'The Penny Bazaar'. There used to be a woman behind a wide counter there with a long stick with a ladle on the end. We had to put pennies in there if we wanted anything - there was nothing over a penny.

When I was a lad I used to enjoy going down Ashworth [valley] more than anything. We'd go down with a bit of sacking and make a tent. We stayed out many a night there and if it rained it was just too bad. We'd get wet through.

When they had acting on the stage at the Palace, the comedians used to come down our street during the intervals to the White Hart Inn for a drink. Many a time we'd be sitting on the three steps in front of the door, the length of the road. They always used to be after my brother and one or two others round there to go and do a bit of a turn on the stage with them, to be their stooges. They always picked on my older brother and many a time he had to be thrown off the stage by the comedian. They never used to get anything for it except about fourpence on a Sunday morning when they were packing up to go to another town. They had huge baskets to put all their things in and if you got fourpence you were lucky.

When I was sixteen my next to the oldest brother, Andrew, was in the Territorials and he said to me one night, "If you come to join the Territorials I'll get half-a-crown. Are you coming?" so I went. He jumped at this half-a-crown; it was a lot of money. I was a bit underweight but they took me in. My first camp was at Trout Beck up in the Lake District. It was a very hard-going, rough camp. But after that I did seven years with them until I had to pack it in through an illness. Then during the War (WW II) I volunteered for the RAF and did five years with them.

Everybody seemed to be out of work in those days. I was out of work myself and I went to the Council and asked if I could go on a Training Course so they sent me to Croydon for six months. After that they sent me on a job at Romford in Essex, and when the job was finished on a big housing estate I had to come home because we weren't getting as much money as we should have been doing for the job. We were classed as "diluteetes" - it was no use trying to get into the Union, they wouldn't accept you, so I come home. I've worked all over Heywood - Roe Acre, Isherwood's, Foundry Street, Railway Street, James Wild's Foundry, and one or two more. Things were getting really desperate so I went to Birmingham. There were quite a few Heywood chaps that went to Birmingham for work, so many that they called the place 'Little Heywood'. I got work there in a big motor works and from there I got married in Bury in 1936, to Marion Walmsley, a Bury girl I had been going out with. She left her job at Heap Bridge and we lived in Birmingham another twelve months before coming back to Bury, where we lived for nearly 50 years. But due to a bad accident at work (as Yates Duxbury's) I had to retire at 62 years of age. Things got worse with old age so we came to live near our eldest son Derek, in Chester, and have been here now for 14 years. But to me there's no place like Heywood. Oh no, I wouldn't swap it for a gold clock!

Fred Brandon, Chester,

February 2000

Heywood Memories is published by the Heywood Memories Society

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