By Roger Chadwick
The school week at
William Hulme’s G.S. was six whole days, there being lesons on Wednesday
and Saturday mornings and compulsory sport until 4.00.p.m. on both afternoons.
Drama and School Cadets added yet more hours to the schoolday and at busy times
I would do homework in Manchester
Central Library getting home around 9.30.p.m. only to be off again at 7.30.a.m.
in the morning. Half term consisted of a Friday and a Monday tacked onto a
weekend but the school holidays were longer. These factors meant that my time
in and around Hyde was becoming increasingly sparse! In those days, Sunday
truly was a day of rest with shops closed, bus services curtailed and nowt to
do unless you were involved in a church.
Just after my 15th
birthday, with the expenses of adolescence rising, some money had to be raised.
In the summer of 1954, I started labouring at Ashton Brothers Bayleyfield
Mill, hauling tubs of cotton bobbins to Italian lasses, (many of whom had
already done 8 hrs in the Pan Yan Pickle factory in Glossop) in what was then
called the Pirning room and then sorting boxes of cotton in the cavernous damp
cellars. Weekday work began at 7.30.a.m. and finished at 5.30.p.m with 20 minutes
for breakfast and 60 minutes for lunch. Saturdays began at the same time and
work finished at 12.30.p.m. I was not allowed in the weaving shed because that
was for skilled workers and overlookers only and I was very glad not to be
in that infernal noisy place: nor was I allowed in cotton waste where men worked
in cotton overalls and “plimsolls”. One spark in that department
and the whole mill would have gone up like bomb! My first wage amounted to
£6.8.10d (£6.44p) – a phenomenal wage at that time for labouring when
teachers and other professions were getting much less. It was hard work with
long hours but good money and I loved the smell and atmosphere, the views of
Werneth Low from five floors up, the coarse cackle and vulgarity of the women
in the cop cellar, the hot juice of lunchtime meat pies and endless tea from
the steel urns provided. We have an old cotton bobbin in the kitchen which is converted
to an egg timer. It still stinks of the mills….lovely!
Redferns Rubberworks
Sadly, the days of Lancashire cotton were numbered and I had to find other work in the summers that followed. I biked to Harden’s Engineering, North’s Atomic Clothing, Redfern’s Rubber Works, Oldham Batteries, Daniel Adamson’s and a host of other industrial concerns but the message was always the same , “no vacancies for unskilled work…nothing part time….etc.” 1955 saw me cutting malt loaves and sorting hot white loaves and milk buns in the Bread Factory on the road from Denton to Brinnington. The following year I was clipping and weeding graves for six weeks in Denton cemetery. There I was a dab hand with the weedkiller and did untold damage through ignorance rather than malice. I started learning the art of gravedigging! But the money was poor compared with Ashton Brothers.
Whenever I see pictures of St Stephen’s Church, Floweryfield,
I am reminded of an intensely sad time.
Coming home from
holiday work in July 1956, I was told of the sudden death of a school friend,
David Oldham. He had died of an unsuspected brain tumour. His father was the
Organist of St Stephen’s and the family were closely connected with that
church. It was my first experience of death and along with Pete Broughton and
Barry Broadhurst(the son of George Broadhurst the painter and decorator), we
bore David into church for the funeral service. His parents were much
comforted by what we did but I am sure it was a case of “put a brave face
on…”. David was an only one, like most of us in those years.
Some three weeks
after this sad event I came home from work and found the family gathered in the
back room. Straightaway I knew there was something up. “Where’s mi
father….” I asked… only to be told that he had died on the
125 bus coming home from work. I had to attend Platt Lane Police Station in Manchester that night so
we were glad of evening buses! My father had to be identified and my mother
couldn’t do it. “Are you Roger Chadwick, the son of Harry Chadwick?....is
this your Father? Having answered the questions, the paperwork had to be done
and I could not say that the police sergeant was sympathetic. But then, he had
to do his job and cards and sympathy and teddy bears were light years away. This
was the first time I had seen a dead body. But my Vicar was brilliant and
gave my atheist father a wonderful funeral!
I would like to thank Roger once again for sharing his wonderful memories with us !
They are a pleasure to read. :)
Oh Roger, how dreadful to lose your friend and your dad in those circumstances. I wonder how all that affected you through life. I identify somewhat with the early loss of a parent as my dad died when I was 17. He was in hospital at Stockport and apparently had advanced lung cancer but no-one had told us. I remember walking up Stockport Road towards our house on the day he died on my way home from Astley, where I was in the 6th Form, and Mr Hulme from the shop opposite (where the green triangle is opposite Tesco Express) was coming out of our house. The hospital had rung him to say my dad had died and would he tell my mum as we had no phone. That day, 19 November 1962, was the most traumatic of my whole life, from which, to some extent, I have never recovered.
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