Alan Duffy 1937 to 1952

Introduction
I was born on the 28th April 1937 at Springfield Maternity Home on Preston New Road, Blackburn. My parents were Jack and Edith Duffy. He was a stripper and grinder in a spinning mill and my mother was a weaver in a weaving mill. A few weeks later I was Christened in St Oswald’s Church at Knuzden with the name John Alan Duffy, a name which has proved confusing to other people throughout my life, since, at school or on legal documents I am referred to as John yet my parents and all my friends in fact anyone who knows me call me Alan. My parents told me that there had always been a John in my dad’s family, it was a tradition! But they liked the name Alan better? My first home was at number one Perone Crescent at Intack, then we moved to 13 Bicknell Street near the centre of Blackburn and then to 4 Bicknell Street. These moves were before my baby memories developed so all of this story will be starting from the age of four, in the year 1941 when World War 2 was raging and looking touch and go as to who might be the ultimate winner.

Sometimes people ask us “what is your earliest memory”? In my case, I used to say with confidence, “my first day at school aged four” But I was wrong, because when researching for my Autobiography “My Ladder of Life” I discovered my first memory was when a Nazi bomb dropped about three hundred yards away from our home on to a shop on Ainsworth Street during the last war, the blast killing two people and demolishing the shop. I was in a neighbour’s air raid shelter at the time with my mother, and my Auntie Lily who was visiting us. It is still oh so clear even now.

At that point in this history my father had been conscripted into the Royal Artillery Regiment at the out-break of World War 2 in 1939. By the time I was four he had been promoted to the rank of sergeant in that regiment, in charge of a Bofors anti-aircraft gun and its crew. He was missing from our family all through the war, only getting two or three days leave about three times a year. He was de-mobbed in 1946.

My mother was still weaving during the war, and we must have had very little money. I was put into the care of a lovely lady I learnt to call Auntie Nelly who lived three or four doors up our street whilst mum was at work. She later prepared me for school each day whilst my mum worked. Auntie Nellie was the most popular lady in the bottom section of our street. She will be mentioned many times later in my tale.

Location
I lived as mentioned previously, at number 4 Bicknell Street, there was no number two for Architectural reasons. The end house, on Lime Street, bordered our house thus, where number two should have been the builders had constructed a replica doorway and down stair and up stair windows frames but bricked them in. Our house and numbers 6, 8 and 10 were many years later, demolished to provide a children’s play area which in later years became defunct.
Bicknell Street connects Lime Street to Altom Street, where St. John’s School was situated, then upwards to London Road then further up to Wimberley Street. It was quite a climb from top to bottom. When our street was built it was one of several streets built parallel to it on the slopes of a very big hill. Standing right at the bottom of our street further up Lime Street to your left is Bold Street to your right is Oswald Street (where Bernard my best friend to be lived) The next streets to the right are connected through up to Wimberley Street from Randal Street and are named Balaclava Street, Charlotte Street then Inkerman Street. Incidentally all these streets were named after battles in the Crimean war. Randal Street was in those days the only street for miles around that had tarmac coating. It still runs from Shear Brow (Limbrick) right through to join Victoria Street This quite large area was our “Village” where we played, met friends and visited the many shops local to this area, most long gone. But more about this later. At this stage in my story, I am just trying to put my reader into a physical place to understand where my home was located in the town and how and who I grew up with.

Education
On this my first day at St John’s C. of E. school on Altom Street, my mother took me the short walk from the bottom of Bicknell Street to the school. I remember lots of other children, boys and girls, queuing up with their mothers to register for the infant’s class. Our teacher was to be Miss Rostron, who, I later found was a lovely, kind, and friendly lady who would help start up our education. Whilst me and my mum waited for our turn to be registered, she started talking to a neighbour – Mrs. Doris McNulty from the next street to ours (Oswald Street). I didn’t know who she was at the time. She was registering her son Bernard. From that moment of our first meeting playing on the floor whilst our mums became friends so did we! He and I were friends all through our childhood, teens to the time we both met the girls of our dreams and got married and beyond. Bernard’s dad was an iron founder, so like my uncles, he was not called to war. He was also called Bernard. He and Doris also had a younger son called John.

Our School
St. John’s C. of E. Primary School was housed in a large imposing two-storey Victorian building. The foundation stone was, I think, laid in 1844, this date was emblazoned in large Roman numerals across the top face of the front of the building which occupied a very large rectangular piece of land. The long side bordering Altom Street and the two shorter sides Bold Street and Bicknell Street.

There were two entrances, one for boys and one for girls, with cloakrooms at each entrance. The two large, flagged playgrounds, one for boys one for girls, were separated by a large stone wall.

The ground floor of the building was for the younger children while the upper floor for the older children. All floors were made from wooden planks and when we played on the floor, we regular got what we called “spells” in our hands. These were easily removed by the teacher with a sewing needle.

Classrooms on both floors of the school were divided by moveable screens. If we had a social event such as a concert, pantomime or presentations they could be pulled back to provide sufficient space for the audience attending. All toilets were outside in the yards. A large separate meeting room was built on the Bicknell Street side of the building, this was used for social gatherings, Sunday school, Cubs and Boy Scouts, Brownies and Girl Guides etc. It had cooking facilities and could be and was used for many events.

The school was affiliated to the wonderful, listed building of St. John’s the Evangelist Church in town, sadly damaged by fire a few years ago.

As we grew older some of us boys could join the church choir. Church choirs in those days were male voices only. St. John’s choir was second locally only to the Blackburn Cathedral Choir and once or twice sang on Northern Radio. All the main religious occasions like Christmas and Easter were well attended as were the annual Nativity Plays. I was once asked to play the young son of the inn keeper who showed Mary and Joseph to the stable. I felt really important and, to this day, I remember my line “this way master”, amazing isn’t it that, aged 87 that I can still remember that?

Our school had a unique feature (for schools in those days), which was a very large playing field. It was called the Cannon Nash playing field. It was about half a mile from the school, high up Shear Brow, above Wimberley Street. It was, in fact, a large sports ground where cricket, football and athletics took place before the war. It was tiered with a fine Pavilion, it had catering facilities, changing rooms and toilets. Once a year the church congregation, boy scouts, girl guides and the school children would solemnly walk up the steep hill, past the school, to the playing field carrying flags and huge Banners from the church. This was our field day, it was always memorable, with lots of events, such as three-legged races, sack race, egg and spoon etc., plus running throwing and jumping events for all the family. The playing field is a housing estate today. Cannon Nash was the vicar of St. John’s for many years before my time, I was told he made a generous donation for this field when he was vicar of the church. The Vicar of the church during my time was the Reverend Swan, he was a tall, impressive figure, he came regularly into school to talk to us. School and church were very much connected, and even when the war was raging “the powers that be” tried to maintain some normality between church and school. Despite everything that was going on and our fathers away fighting the war, everyone kept it together with the kind of spirit rarely found today. After the war a young curate whose name, unfortunately, I don’t remember was appointed to help the vicar. He was instantly popular with boys and girls alike; he had during the war been the rear gunner of a Lancaster bomber. He was handsome, athletic and heroic and if he stopped to talk a crowd soon gathered around him. He helped run the Sunday school on Sunday afternoons and made attendance there very popular. What a lovely character he was!

During my childhood there were Air Raid Shelters in the playgrounds and outside the school, on Bicknell Street and above Altom Street. Also, there was a huge tank of water I think they were called “Thomson Tanks” They were built with square interlocking iron sections which could be constructed quickly, and were covered to stop access to children, they were to be seen all over our town in case of Nazi bombing attacks. They were called Emergency Water Supplies, large signs were painted on nearby walls with a large Arrow painted on it with the letters EWS to direct the Fire Brigade to the nearest water supply. These signs were painted all over the town and all the other towns the only one remaining in Blackburn today I believe, is on a wall on Buncer Lane which someone maintains, possibly the council.

After the School was built, a garden was laid out with shrubs bordering the Altom Street side, there was iron railings and a huge ash tree at each end of the garden. I remember a ceremony taking place with the whole school including ex-pupils, brass band and council dignitaries celebrating the Centenary of the school, I think this was about 1946.

The iron railings had been removed in the early part of the war as part of the war effort, as were the railings from Corporation and Queens Parks, anyone who had railings round their gardens had these removed.

The school was demolished to accommodate the building of a Mosque in the past twenty years.

Living at 4 Bicknell Street
Our home at number 4 Bicknell Street was virtually the same as the other houses on our street and most of the other terraced streets in our area, around the whole of Blackburn for that matter. Most comprised of a living room at the back of the building, with the front room, in many cases, just used for storage, most people then couldn’t afford to furnish them. At the end of the war these were carpeted and furnished with three-piece suites and sideboard. In most houses the kitchen and living room were one. In this case the front room might be fitted with chairs and a table. All the houses had two bedrooms and a tiny box room above the stairwell. Over the years many tenants (most of these properties were rented) had made minor alterations. Flush toilets were outside in the back yard. Our home had a kitchen in an out-building, a lean-to, a bit like a glass house (conservatory) very cold in winter! The toilet was in a very small building in the back yard with a pull chain operation.

At night most people used chamber pots which were in each bedroom. Typically, there were two bedrooms, a main larger double room and a small single room. Our house also had a small bathroom off the main bedroom with bath and hand wash basin but amazingly no toilet.

The council emptied the dustbins every week. The main residue in the bins were ashes from the coal fires which all houses had. Food packaging was non-existent and food leftovers were given to the dog or burnt on the fire along with anything else that would burn and help to heat the house. The dust man, wearing a huge leather cover complete with metal studs protecting is shoulders and back would pick up the bin, lift it on to his shoulder, carry it down the yard, empty it into the lorry then put the bin back where he had picked it up from. If the yard door was accidentally locked (usually by a sliding bar in a bracket attached to the door but pushed into a socket in the gate post) it was not unusual for a dust man to climb over and gain access to the bin this way. They never left a bin unemptied. At some houses where dogs were present this promise was difficult to full fill. In our case, when I was in my early teens, my parents bought me a dog. It was a Border collie she was given the inspirational name of Lassie (a very prominent film at cinemas just then!) She would let anyone come into the house or back yard but once in, she was not too keen on letting them back out again, on one occasion capturing three dust bin men who were delayed a while whilst another neighbour went across the road to the weaving mill to get my mother to let them out of the yard. She had come home at lunch time and let the dog into the yard but had been distracted and returned to work without letting her back in the house.

My Family

The Duffy side of my family was Grandma Duffy, my dad’s brother Jimmy and sister. My Irish Grandpa, John Duffy had been killed in a road accident before I was born. He had come over from Ireland in the times of the potato famine and met and fell in love with my grandma. He worked in a slaughterhouse using a pole axe to kill the animals, it must have been a gory business and story is it that he was, not surprisingly, a heavy drinker. I later in my life found out that my grandma had been married previously to a man called Willacy they had a son called Tom who found his way into our lives much later in my life which you will read about later in this story.

My mother’s maiden name was Lindow. That side of my family consisted of my grandma and grandpa, my mum and her nine siblings. Unfortunately, three of these children died in childhood long before I was born. I had Uncles Sam, Bill, and Charles, plus Aunties Annie, Hetty and Lily. Charles was the youngest and usually was called Charlie, my mother Edith was next in age. These two were a bit younger than the others and were close friends all their lives. It was lovely for me having so many Aunties and Uncles who were always there for me and my mother especially with my dad being away for over seven years due to the war. My mother’s brothers were all engineers and were not allowed to enlist in the armed services because they were needed to help in the war effort.

The Story Begins

I remember Auntie Nellie helping me to get dressed for my first day at school and her trying hard to get me excited about it. She was married to a man called Joe Walmesley he was a local hairdresser specialising in shaving businessmen and cutting their hair. His shop was on Richmond Terrace. In those day Solicitors and Accountants wore black suits white shirts with loose collars and usually a bowler hat, they didn’t usually shave at home so before going into the office they would come into Joe’s shop carrying a clean stiff white collar. The day’s news paper and a briefcase. Using a “cutthroat” razor and a hot cloth Joe would do the necessary then clip back any stray hairs, put on their collars and off they would go. It was a very demanding business, he had an assistant called Mya. The war had started and Joe had already been called up to serve in the RAF, since his job didn’t qualify him to stay at home. He amazingly was sent to Canada leaving Auntie Nellie and their young daughter Lilian behind. Lilian, about nine months younger than me, was to become my most treasured female friend, we were literally like brother and sister and my mother had made arrangement Lilian’s mother regarding looking after me. Auntie Nellie was able to keep the hairdressing shop open with Mya running the day-to-day business. She and Lilian and later her younger sister Pat, who was born after Joe returned from the war, were all very close.

In Bicknell Street, as I am sure was the case all over the country, most ladies with children, whose husbands were away in the war were what today we would call single parents. We hadn’t heard that expression, but the war brought everyone together. Most ladies with children saw themselves as helpers for those women like my mother an auntie Nellie, who couldn’t afford not to work. Everyone who saw someone struggling would offer to help. Other mothers in our street seeing another’s child in difficulty would stop what they were doing just to help. Looking back, I often think of all the “mothers” I had in my street.

Being a child in those early years was nothing at all like a child’s experiences today. Just consider what it was like with no parked cars, just a wide strip of cobbles with flag pavements either side all (incidentally) cleaned by the people who lived in each house. Our street was immaculate, has indeed were most of the others. Windows were regularly cleaned, the stone windowsills and doorsteps were scrubbed and then rubbed over with a “Dolly stone” which produced a nice clean finish where ever it was applied. The street in every child’s imagination could be a river, a football pitch or playing field for all the simple games we played as taught to us by history and auntie Nellie’s usually good suggestions. We spent most of our time outside in the street, whatever the weather, playing games boys and girls together, using the cobbled street to amuse ourselves. Games like “Statues” for example, when one of us would go across the street and face the wall on the other side, then the rest of us would creep slowly and quietly towards the person who had his or her back to us. That person would suddenly turn around and anybody moving, even slightly was out of the game. This went on till everyone was caught and the game restarted. Another game was called “Farmer, farmer, can we cross your golden river?” The person who was watching on the other side of the street. Would say something like “not unless you have brown shoes on” etc. We had a long washing line which could stretch across the street. Two or three kids would hold each end and then started to turn it. It became a huge skipping rope. Then those on the outside would run and jump into the whirling rope and started to skip. Sometimes half a dozen would soon be jumping in unison until someone missed the rope and spoilt it for the rest. The girls were much better at this for some reason. One special May Day Auntie Nellie made us a decorated May Pole. I remember all of us holding onto ribbons and dancing round the pole and singing for ages, I remember it well. Then there were marbles, hopscotch and a game called buttons. At home my mum seemed to have plenty of spare buttons and give me some so I could play. You flicked a button across a short distance from a wall and try to get nearest the wall. He who did, won the remaining buttons. Swinging round gas lamps on a rope was a pleasure and so on and on. The boys loved playing football with a small ball, usually a tatty old tennis ball. The pitch was our sloping cobbled street and amazingly many got really good at it. A popular but strange thing that only the girls did was to take two quick steps towards a wall stop suddenly then with a kind of forward roll, they finished with their feet flat against the wall hands on the pavement and in an up- side down position, their skirts hanging over their heads. Showing their knickers! Young boys like we were at the time just thought it to be a bit strange. The girls called it cockling up.

There were seasonal games like conkers, and when it snowed we all went round the corner to Oswald Street tugging our home-made sledges we would slip and slide up to London Road, then when we got our breath back we would lie or sit on our sledge and race down. Some good sledges would take you down to and across Randal Street up the rise to the Richmond Hill Paper Mill. Then it was a long slippery walk back up to the top again. There were of course injuries but we kids in those days simply just got on with it. We had freedom to roam just about where we chose. From where we lived it was an easy ten-minute walk to Corporation Park which was a magical place, climbing trees and scaling cliffs, playing in the water. When I was about six or seven I was tempted by an older boy to go to this park instead of going to school. I was paddling in the little stream that feeds the Remembrance Garden in a world of my own when my mother appeared. She was very upset and angry at the same time and had been called out of work (a very serious thing in those days. I remember being smacked and returned to school very sorry for the stupid thing I had done, it taught me a good lesson.

Auntie Nellie was the centre of everything. We had fancy dress parties which always went down well and picnics were popular in the summer. Aunt Nellies aim in life was to keep us all happy during the awful war time. I remember one day going on a tram for a picnic to Sunny Hurst Woods, Darwen. There with four or five girls including Lilian, I was the only boy. Aunty Nellie set us up on blankets with sandwiches and bottles of “pop”. We were by the side of a small waterfall, with small rocks buried in the smooth concrete surface. I couldn’t resist the temptation to go into the water, showing off a little I stepped and into it, in an instant I was flat on my back in the stream. Under the water the surface was very slippery so trying to get back out was difficult. Auntie Nellie tried to grab me and pull me out, but all the girls did was laugh. Eventually I was back on the grass wearing only my wet underpants with my other wet clothes spread over a nearby bush in the sun. It was a very embarrassing afternoon never to be forgotten by those who were there! To this day I might add.

In Class

Back at school our first classroom was a fairy land of toys with lots of things to do, drawing, chalk, crayons and painting. Most of us didn’t have real toys at home in those days but it didn’t bother us to much, seeing and being able to play with all manner of unaffordable toys, tricycles, even a pedal car, dolls, a cradle and a pram etc., made going to school very enjoyable. There were small metal framed beds with green canvas to lie on during the afternoon to have a little nap and a free small bottle of milk to drink. Then our teacher, slowly but very surely, started getting us interested in all manner of things which taught us so much. Year after year we moved to other classrooms with a different teacher (all ladies) some nicer than others. In those days it was quite acceptable to punish naughty children, with a telling off, and being sent into the corner facing the wall for a few minutes. Or, if really naughty, hitting the child with a ruler on the palm of the hand, never hard enough to make them cry. All our teachers were women and usually a bit severe. I remember a Miss Cooper who liked us to sit with our hands behind our backs and a Miss Hodson who preferred is to keep our hands clasped resting on our desks. I remember the later lady was the daughter of the man who owned Hodson’s Boat Builders on the Canal side at Whitebirk. The company was well known locally for making canal barges.

At this time of our lives the war was still raging the Government had decided that every citizen must have a gas mask and to take it with us everywhere they went. When delivered they were in square cardboard boxes with a string attached to go on the shoulder. The boxes didn’t last too long and were soon replaced by a black cylindrical metal box instead. When we first tried the mask on, we looked like people from outer space. They were made of rubber with a window to see through, in front of your mouth and nose was a sticky out bit of metal which contained the air filter. We amused ourselves wearing them for a joke, but they were, thankfully, never ever needed and eventually most people stopped carrying them around.

As the years went on we moved up to the top floor, and into the more serious side of our education. We were growing up fast, we became more sensible and eager to learn for the most part. There were always one or two who were naughty and for them punishment was more severe they were getting older and presumably should know what was acceptable and what was not. For instance, a pupil might stand up against a teacher, or be cheeky, this was regarded as serious, that pupil would be sent to the headmasters office (Mr Bradley) where he would probably cane the pupil on the hand or bottom, with a bamboo rod then lecture them about their future conduct.

If the matter was more serious it might involve bringing the pupils parents in. This was extreme as it got, and served to warn all of us that we must respect our teachers and everyone else for that matter. Mr Bradley was a really nice and kindly man, in reality, he just did his job as dictated by others in his profession. One really nice thing I remember was throughout my time at St. Johns when we were older and on the top floor, every morning we had assembly. Mr Bradley would always be there he would give us a pep talk, then read out a passage from the Bible. We would sing a hymn and then sang the National Anthem. (Always!) We celebrated Commonwealth Day at the appropriate time and we all had that feeling of being secure we were encouraged to be patriotic and have pride in our country. The two weeks or so before every Christmas we would all sit on the floor and Pa Bradley (as us seniors called him behind his back), would read Charles Dickens “A Christmas Carol” to the whole school. We all sat there wrapped up in this scary tale which he told beautifully and looked forward to his continued reading the day after. The thing was, he never actually read the complete book to us, he simply ran out of days. It was many years later that I read and finished reading this excellent book.

Clothing

We had no school uniform and we must have looked a motley crew, dressed in hand me downs and very basic clothing even in the coldest weather. We boys typically wore short pants a vest and jumper with long socks and in most cases wooden clogs with a shaped metal piece nailed onto the soles we called irons. This protected the wood and created an interesting noise when we walked on the stone flag pavement at each side of the cobbled street, better still when we scuffed our feet across the pavement it produced sparks. A big downside was when it snowed the gap between the iron and the underside of each clog got clogged up and we started to rock a bit like the imitation bird in a bird cage which rocked to and fro when the budgie pecked at it. (As an aside) many people had (cheap to run) pet Budgerigars or yellow Canaries in decorative cages in those days. My Grandpa Lindow had a clever Canary he called Peter which he trained to do lots of little tricks.

Girls in the main wore leather sandals or shoes those who wore clogs had leather strips nailed on to the soles and didn’t make as much noise when they were walking. The girls dressed in frocks usually with a cardigan and wore ankle socks. In rare cases some kids were lucky to have a hand me down coat.

Clothing wasn’t replaced very often because most people couldn’t afford it. Most children had evidence of stitching where repairs had been carried out or been adjusted etc. We didn’t have many clothes for the changes in seasons, but we were out there in the street come rain or shine. When the war was almost over most people had a bit more money with husbands coming home to get a job. It became customary (at least in my street) to buy their children some new clothes, pants, jacket, shirt and shoes in my case, for Easter weekend. Incidentally the only time of the year when my family attended church, yet my mother sent me to church and Sunday school every weekend, when she thought I was old enough. Then later she encouraged me join the choir. I had to put my new clothes on then visit some of the neighbours like Auntie Nellie and Uncle Joe, they would look me up and down say how smart I was and put a three-penny coin in my pocket.

Snowbound

It was, I think, in 1947 just after the war Blackburn, and much of the country was buried in huge snowstorms that stayed around for weeks. I was fast asleep one morning and was wakened by my dad (it was always he who came to wake me every morning when he had returned to normal life after the war which he had survived safely) he seemed excited and told me to get dressed he had something to show me. We went into the front bedroom where he and my mum slept. The curtains were open, but the room was darker than it should have been, close to the glass I could see that snow was covering the window. We rushed downstairs, dad opened the front door and all we could see was just a wall of snow. It wasn’t there long since the open door was not now supporting the snow this caused a huge gush of snow which swept into and down our lobby bringing with it lots of freezing cold air. We could just about see a bit of daylight. We quickly found what little warm clothing we had and, in our wellies, (a new luxury) with a couple of shovels we started the journey from in our house out into the street. We soon realised we were not on our own. Mr Wilson next door was digging away but in a sense it was a waste of time the drifts engulfed most of the houses on our side of the street, the other side had done better but even there, snow was five or six feet deep. There was a strange silence and stillness in our usually busy street.

In those days salt wasn’t used on the roads instead ashes from our fires were dropped over the snowed-up roads from the dust carts I referred to earlier. In our street no one owned a car. Lots of goods i.e. Milk, coal etc. was delivered by horse and cart. All districts such as ours had little groups of shops each selling what we needed to exist and live our lives. Because coke could not be delivered to heat our school just a hundred yards away it was closed down till further notice. My mum and Dad couldn’t get to work because all the roads were blocked and no trams or buses were running. Somehow the grownups started to make a plan to enable us to get to the places we needed to be like the local shops. The shop owners on main roads were coming up with their own plans to make their shops accessible for customers and suppliers mostly local bakers, butchers and green grocers who needed to sell what they produced. It was several days before something close to normality occurred. In the meantime, we children went wild. Here was something we had never seen or experienced before. The sledges were out, we built lots of snow men then someone suggested that building an Igloo might be a good idea. Along Lime Street stretched Widdops sawmill, where big tree trunks were brought in by huge articulated Lorries, into the mills huge yard where they were stacked by overhead crane (driven by Mr Wilson) for a few weeks till they were just right for sawing down into different sizes of planks. The yard was protected from trespassing by a sturdy stone wall with a flag pavement along its length. The ideal Igloo spot according to our “experts!” Our Igloo was unique because it was rectangular with a flat roof but no matter! Several of us got stuck into the project. Using our dads spades we found we could cut quite large cubes of compressed snow with ease and the building quickly took shape about seven feet long by five feet wide and four feet high. We left a doorway high and wide enough to get inside without injuring ourselves or our Igloo. The main difficulty was the flat roof. We foraged around the district and came up with the materials we needed to finish the job. Within a week we had our Igloo the girls had found some curtaining to cover the doorway and with some easily located old bricks and old pieces of planking which made us somewhere for us to sit. We “discretely” obtained candles and matches for the lighting. We boys in the cold of winter would make winter warmers. All we needed was and small empty tin box (lots about in those days) using a small hammer and a biggish nail we punched several holes in the flat parts of the lid and box base. Every house had some cotton waste (brought home from the mills) which was used for home cleaning very effectively, but we used it as fuel for our winter warmers. Having created a dense clump of cotton waste about the size of our boxes we very carefully set it alight then let it burn for a moment then blew out the flame which left it smouldering then it was placed into the box. The lid was put on and in no time at all you had a nice warm box to hold between your hands to keep them warm. Then we got an old blankets from our mums who were really impressed with our efforts. When everyone was sat down, we told each other jokes and scary stories! It was amazing how warm it became inside. Our Igloo was there for about two months!!

Lad’s Entertainment

When it was normal weather, sometimes we boys would find a place to get into the wood yard when the workers had left. At the time we never thought about what danger we might be in, climbing over the piles of huge tree trunks and getting deep inside and hiding from our friends, it was a really fun thing to do. A lad kind of thing!! Just thinking about the Sawmill during and for some time after the war, my mother, and others too, were always trying to save a little money when and where possible. The offcuts of the sawn up trees made good kindling for local fires and saved on coal. Mr Widdop sold these offcuts for a few pennies for filling a sack with as many wood cut offs as we could manage to drag home. Typically, my mum would send me across with a few coppers in my pocket to the sawmill section accessed at the bottom of Bold Street. It was less than twenty-five yards away. We queued up inside waiting for the saw man to cut up the discarded pieces of the tree trunk complete with bark, whilst we put the small fire sized pieces into our sacks as he worked. This cutting was done by a large circular saw which ran at a very high speed and as the man pushed the long strips of wood through the saw it made a deafening scream. He worked very quickly and the firewood quickly mounted up and saw dust was in the air and piled up everywhere. It was exciting place to be for us young boys and the man doing the sawing obviously enjoyed us watching him, the job wasn’t all plane sailing for him he only had three fingers on each hand.!!!

I have an unpleasant memory of this Sawmill. One morning I was with Bernard and a few other local boys, just messing about. I noticed outside the yard gate was a shiny black car. In those days car ownership was only for the rich and important and as young lads we were just interested, there were not that many about. (A horse and cart was the most seen mode of transport in my early life in Bicknell Street delivering milk every day or coal. We were walking around the car, and I noticed a small dusty patch on the huge front mud guard. For some reason I remembered that in my pants pocket I hand a small felt pad. (In those days young boys had lots of stuff in their pants pocket, that might come in handy, waste not want not! Incidentally we all carried a pen knife as did our dads in those days, yet no one got stabbed or ever thought of doing such a thing) Anyway back to the felt pad. I pulled it out of my pocket and proceeded to gently wipe the dust off the car it wouldn’t have damaged it. Almost instantly someone kicked me very hard in my back side then, spun me round to tell me I was a worthless brat who needed to be taught a lesson for trying to damage his car. It hurt so much but I tried not to cry when he shoved me away then drove off. I could barely walk, and the pain was awful, but I didn’t tell my mum the truth about what had happened when she saw the bruises. I said I had fallen off a wall. In those days if I had told the truth she would have believed the car driver because he was obviously a boss of some kind and workers were expected to treat them with respect. Then she would have told me off!

As a group, we lads would cover a relatively large area since Bicknell and the neighbouring streets were only five minutes from the centre of our town and fifteen-minutes from the huge Corporation Park. We had a few different routes to the park some much more exciting than others. The park I believe is about sixty-four acres and was built on the site of an old quarry. It is constructed on many levels with many slopes and steps to climb. It has cliff face, hundreds of trees and lots of grass to run about and play on. Popular attractions were the two lakes (historically the town’s water supply.) Then The Conservatory, a magnificent white painted building made of iron and glass with sloping roof and with a clock tower on top of it. This we were told came from India. The clock chimed on the hour. The door to the building was usually open all day and inside it was an amazing jungle of palms and other trees from all over the world. There were always lots of pretty flowers to look at. The building has three sections and a pathway to follow to get within touching distance of the exotic trees and plants. The middle section was taller than the side sections. This was where the bigger trees were planted. In this section there were gravel paths so visitors could walk under the trees. Tarzan was very popular at the cinema in those days so we could pretend that this was the jungle and make yodelling noises to pretend we were him. He had a Chimpanzee called Cheetah too. Some of us tried to make monkey noises to add to the jungle atmosphere. This park was a heaven to us children none of us ever did anything at all to damage the beautiful surroundings. Today this famous building is in a terrible state mainly due to vandalism when I walk through this park nowadays, I sometimes wonder why some people get pleasure in destroying such popular attractions.

As we became older and after the war we started to look farther afield for our entertainment.

There were three other public parks in Blackburn at this time and they are still there. They were Queens Park a bus ride away, then Roe Lee Park another bus ride away at Brown Hill and Witton Park. The latter was more of country walking kind of place with few attractions for us children. We used to go to this park with the scouts practicing putting up tents and setting up camp and learning about nature. Bird spotting etc. This appealed to our rapidly growing need for adventure.

Roe Lee Park is very small compared to the others but is pretty, none-the-less but for more adult activities such as Bowls and Tennis. At the time of my writing here, I have fond memories of visiting a section of this park that no longer exists. This was a stream which entered the park from under the Arterial Road down to an area containing a small concrete paddling pool where we could sail toy yachts etc. There was a nice lawn area up a short slope from the pool where we could play games. Bernard’s mum sometimes took us there for a picnic.

Queens Park has a large boating lake and is more open and not so many trees. It has a continuous lake split into two sections by a bridge which allows walkers to take a short cut to the other side of the lake. The boating section had an island and a dock where different types of boat could be hired. There were motorboats, very small rowing boats called “tubs” then elegant longer boats called skiffs. All great fun and if someone “accidentally” managed to fall out into the water it was just over knee deep.The other section of the lake was almost rectangular which at one end had a decent size paddling pool with a concrete path across it with a small handrail. From that point back to the bridge was a stretch of water which was used for fishing for “tiddlers” stickle backs and tadpoles (in season).

There was a Band Stand for Sunday concerts in the summer and in another section was a large field with huge swings and children’s play equipment. Looking back, it was a great park to visit. In a hard winter the lakes were popular for skating and sliding about.

When I was about eight my life took a darker turn after I contracted Rheumatic Fever. It was a deadly and very debilitating disease, which laid me low for a long time. My bed was moved into my mother’s room, and she kept a fire burning in the hearth to keep me warm. It kept me off school for months and I was in awful pain and at times delirious. I was told later that my mother feared for my life and my father was given compassionate leave to visit me. His return must have bucked me up because slowly but surely, I started to recover. At first, I couldn’t walk because my legs were so weak but gradually I began to get better. But when he had to return to his regiment I went down with pneumonia. There was the view then that my new illness was a reaction to ‘losing’ my dad again and he did come back. But the War was still raging and he obviously had to go back again soon. The doctor told my mother that I needed a complete change of environment. Blackburn had more than 70 mills and with loads of other industry there were lots of noxious fumes. But my mother was already spending heavily on doctor’s fees. There was no National Health Service in those days.

Amazingly, she somehow managed to arrange to take me down south and we were going to live with dad in his billet with a local couple in Sherborne in Dorset. My dad had medical trouble of his own with serious foot problems that made army boots impossible to wear. He had been transferred to a branch of the War Office there and given a job thanks to his skills at typing and bookkeeping. The journey was an adventure in itself. In those days before the railways were regionalised we had to change trains many times to get there. The trains were very busy with soldiers, sailors and airmen trying to get to destinations and sometimes there were no seats, but somehow we made it and it was great to arrive. The house dad was staying in, was surrounded by beautiful countryside and the couple who owned it were so kind and welcoming. They soon became my Auntie Peg and Uncle Ted. The latter was a foreman at the local brewery, and he had been bringing little bottles of pop home for weeks. They were presented to me in a large wicker laundry basket in my little bedroom. Strangely the terraced house where we lived opened at the back to a communal back yard with a row of toilets grouped several yards away it was quite a walk!! I soon made friends with many of the local children, and we had a great time pinching fruit from local orchards, which was something I’d never done in Blackburn. We had acres of countryside to play in and it seems in my memory that the sun shined every day. My health soon improved, and it seemed like a long, wonderful holiday. Being down south made us closer to the War and sometimes we saw aeroplanes overhead. I can still vividly recall the excitement of seeing a real dogfight between two English and one German plane. The enemy aircraft was shot down and its pilot bailed out. Sherborne has a famous public school, at which the famous traitor Lord Haw Haw attended. The pupils I saw wore straw boaters and looked very strange. I don’t think they would have gone down too well in Blackburn.

When dad was able to get the occasional day off he took us out, sometimes to the seaside. I recall coming out of the sea after a paddle and I had oil stuck to my feet. Dad said it was due to all the ships that had been sunk in the English Channel, and he had to clean it off with his pen knife. It was very sad when we had to leave to return to Blackburn and Aunty Peg gave me a super stamp album with more than 3,000 stamps in it to remember them by. (I still have it) While we’d been away mum had let a displaced family “evacuees” from London stay in our house and they had made a real mess. We were pleased when they left, and it was just the two of us again. After that money became a little easier and mum took me to Blackpool for a week’s holiday. There we experienced the strangest coincidence. We went on a tram ride and two soldiers got on. We were shocked to realise that one of them was my dad. It was a huge surprise for him as well as he was handcuffed to a prisoner, a deserter who had been caught by the local police. So, our brief reunion only lasted for three stops until dad and his captive companion got off at the railway station!

Gradually as the War passed our lives improved. My health recovered and my father felt secure in his job and my mother worked hard as always. We must have been doing a little better for ourselves because we were burgled! The thief climbed up a drainpipe when we were out and got in through the bathroom window. He didn’t get any money or valuables to speak of because we still hadn’t got any. But they took away something more important – food.

The church plays a large part in my life today as it did even when I was a child, though then it gave me a frightening moment. I was in the church choir at St John’s and my scare came as we practised for the Christmas carols. We got onto Good King Wenceslas and then the choirmaster spoke words that struck dread into my young heart. He said, ‘Now, Alan will sing the page boy’s solo.’ I was horrified. All of a sudden I realised he was going to make me sing on my own and I flew into a blind panic and dashed out of the church. I just ran as fast as I could towards home. When I reached the sanctuary of 4 Bicknell Street I saw my mother, on her hands and knees washing the step as she so often did. I ran round the corner in hysterics crying, ‘Oh don’t let them make me sing on my own, don’t let them do it.’ She said, ‘Whatever’s the matter?’ And the choirmaster panted up behind me desperate to explain what had gone on. It was an early real-life nightmare that I’ve never forgotten. But I didn’t have to sing on my own!!.

A wonderful street party marked the end of the War. There were celebrations all over Blackburn, marching bands and processions and lots of flags. It was a very exciting time. Soon afterwards the streetlights were switched on again. They had been out for the duration of the war, and it was amazing to see the place lit up again. Everyone went out that night and walked round marvelling that they could see where they were going at last in these strange bright orange lights. It was almost as impressive as the day my dad came home and brought me a special present…a banana. We hadn’t seen one for years!

After the War my dad got a job back in a mill as a stripper and grinder. My mother still worked in a mill as well, but those post-War years were when cheap cloth from abroad threatened the mills of Blackburn and everywhere else in Britain. The writing was on the wall for a whole way of life, even though I was blissfully unaware of it at the time. When my father’s job went, he used his office skills and went working for the Refuge Insurance Group.

I was an enthusiastic member of the cubs then the scouts as I got older and became pack leader, which made me very proud. One of my clearest memories is of this time was attending a huge World Scout Jamboree where thousands of scouts gathered together. It was held at Huntroyd Park near Padiham. It was a very exciting occasion there was so much to see and do, it was a privilege to even be there. So much was going on that we scarcely knew what to try next. As a keen scout this was a really fantastic place to be. We were meeting scouts literally from all over the World we couldn’t believe it, these events were something that only happened every few years. While we were taking a break for our lunch who should come along but Lord Rowallan, the chief scout himself. He stopped and we had a conversation, and he asked what I was eating, then asked if he might have one of my cheese and tomato sandwiches. This delighted my mother when I returned home. She, a simple weaver in Blackburn, had made a sandwich for a Lord she soon told everyone she knew.

Back in Blackburn I remember three painful incidents where I paid the penalty for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was normal in those times that relatives visited for tea generally Aunties. When the guest arrived, we would usually go for a walk in the nearby Corporation Park first. My mother would ask me to see if our guest was coming. I would go down the few yards on to Lime Street and run along to Oswald Street where I could see almost into the town. I was running back towards our house to tell my mum that my auntie was on the way when a large Chow dog chased me and attacked me from behind. It bit my legs just as I was outside our front door where mum who was chatting to our next-door neighbour Mr Wilson. They tried to pull it off, but it bit my mother as well. There was blood everywhere and eventually some men dragged the creature away. I was taken to Ben Holden’s chemist shop on Victoria Street where they cleaned me up with iodine and bandaged my legs. (I looked a bit like an Egyptian Mummy) We heard a few days later that the dog had been put down which did not disappoint me.

Another unhappy memory from those times concerns having teeth out. Dentists in those days were not like they are today. I had a bad problem with gum infections which affected my first teeth, and resulted in our doctor and another man coming round to our house to carry out a total extraction. My mother didn’t explain it or give me advance warning. I was carried upstairs then I was held down on my bed whilst they forced a chloroform pad on to my face. When I came round I had no teeth at all, and I felt very ill. It was very traumatic, and it took me a long time to get over it.

Having medical treatment in my childhood days bore no resemblance to today. In those times it was very common to have Tonsils and Adenoids removed around six/seven years of age. I was admitted to the oldest wing of the old Queens Park Hospital (known as the workhouse). There were probably ten or a dozen boys and girls placed in a ward with little beds in it. It had half tiled walls a cold hard floor and as I remember a big old fireplace. The nurses didn’t seem to like young children much. We were admitted a day before the operation and given nothing to eat. Parents couldn’t visit and there was a lot of crying and whimpering it was all very scary. The following morning, we were ushered into what seemed to be a large cupboard and made to sit on the floor with a nurse looking on. Suddenly a door at one end opened and a masked man came in, picked up the first child at hand and took it back where he had come from. Sometime later the man came back, and I remember that his gown was a little pink. The procedure continued with us all gathered together clutching each other as far from “that door” as possible. Each time he re-entered the room the mark on his gown was more and more bloody. We all clung together scared for our lives then suddenly it was my turn the man returned now almost bright red and whisked me into the operating theatre where I was quickly laid down and a chloroform-soaked rag was put over my mouth and nose. That is all I can remember. I came round being sick in my bed with all the other children pretty much the same we all had very sore throats. We were given water to drink and later something called Gruel, a weak mix of porridge and water I believe. We were all encouraged to go to the toilet, put back into bed to wake up next day hoping mummy or daddy would soon be coming for us. I don’t remember any nurse talking to us or a doctor for that matter during the whole ghastly experience. A doctor did come round and each of us, in turn, were told to open wide whilst he pushed our tongues down with a wooden platen to view his work. I do remember my mother coming and gathering me up in her arms saying what a brave little boy I had been. One nice thing I remember was when we arrived home my mother asked what I wanted to eat. I chose new potatoes and best butter!

After the War we had our first family holiday to Butlin’s at Filey. There was so much to do, and everyone was beginning to see what real, normal life was going to be like. We didn’t have to fear bombs or the Nazis any longer. Which had been my entire life since just two years after I was born. Everything seemed to be amazing although in reality these were very hard times, but we learned to cope with the post war and the best life we could achieve. At Butlin’s a new experience for me was going into a swimming pool, I was so frustrated that I couldn’t swim, but it was wonderful and exciting to be in this happy environment with my parents. There were so many things to do. I got to stay up till my parent’s bedtime and we had a supper before we went to our rooms it was beans on toast, but it seemed so exciting. This was to be the first of many future holidays together as a family.

When I came home I constantly complained that I couldn’t swim but still went to the swimming baths. Blackburn had two public swimming baths Belper Street at Daiseyfield and Freckleton Street which had two pools. There was another swimming pool below the Blakey Moor School near the centre of the town which was reserved for girls for some reason. My mum said she would speak to a man at work called Bill Grogan, who was an ex-policeman and a fine local swimmer. He played water polo for Blackburn and was something of a local hero. We all thought he was like Tarzan, and he taught me to swim in just three lessons. There was no stopping me after that, I’ve loved swimming ever since. It was the only sport I ever really excelled. I was breaststroke champion three times during four years at Blakey Moor School and runner up the other time. I also earned medals for life saving and an instructor’s certificate. I loved to swim in the sea in later life and was happiest Snorkelling on holiday.

Higher Education

I was eleven and it was time to leave St. John’s school. I was at last in my final year at Primary School and as a pupil I did well in most of the subjects we learned. It was the time of the “eleven plus” and my parents had been told that expectations were high that I would pass with flying colours and were expecting I would go on to Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School better known locally as QUEGS.

But this wasn’t to be what happened. Earlier in this text I related a terrifying experience when all my teeth were removed in a very violent and frightening way by two strangers holding me down forcibly onto my bed whilst one applied Chloroform then all my teeth were torn from my mouth leaving me terrified of doctors and dentists for years later. I had also had a very frightening procedure relating to having my Tonsils removed in the old Queens Park Hospital.

When I was around 6/7 years old. (what is this all about you may ask?)

I sat the first part of my eleven plus exams and passed with the flying colours my teachers predicted. A week or two later Part 2 of these exams were to be taken. Guess what? They were to take place the day before an operation I was destined to have. This created acute fear, and I could think of nothing else. The anticipated trauma of being in the hands of surgeons again overcame all reason and I failed the exam. Ironically when I went to the hospital for the operation the consultant decided I didn’t need it after all. This has a “what if or if only” flavour about it. There was nothing to be done and before too long I found myself entering my new school, Blakey Moor Boys Modern Secondary School in the town centre.

In those times if you were going to secondary school you were given a choice of three: - Blakey Moor, Bangor Street or St. Peters. It was obvious that a particular close friend would not necessarily get into your school. Most of my friends chose St. Peters and so did I. Yet only I and one other were sent to Blakey Moor whilst my best Friend Bernard went to Bangor Street with several other “Friends”. We couldn’t change anything so on a morning in August 1948, I found myself adorned in my first ever school uniform (Black blazer with red Maltese Cross Badge, red lapel trim, grey shorts, grey shirt, tie with dark blue and red diagonal stripes, black shoes with black knee socks with two red bands just below the knee. A black cap with red Maltese Cross Badge on top completed the effect)

I went to town with my parents to visit Gray’s school wear shop. We went on the Saturday before I started school on the following Monday. On the Sunday I pressed my mother to let me wear it for a while and to show Auntie Nellie, Lilian and Pat. They seemed impressed, so I decided to go for a little walk and found myself at the bottom of Corporation Park about ten minutes away. Everything seemed okay until I was spotted by three boys a little older and bigger than I was. They came over and started pushing me about telling me that they were pupils at Blakey Moor but didn’t have to wear the uniform which was just being made compulsory that year. They pushed me into one then another saying they were going to bash me up, I fell down, and they tried to drag me but I resisted and managed to get up again and started to run for home they started to chase me, the leader of the three said leave him, we will get him at school tomorrow. For the first three months they bullied me wherever they found me. On one occasion, and this is true, I was going down Duke Street during lunch break. I heard shouts behind me. When I looked round, the three bullies were there each of them was carrying an air pistol, I ran for it, however, a few strides before I reached the school gate, I felt a burning sensation in my right hand [which started to bleed. When I had got into the safety of the school yard and looked at the back of my hand I could see a pellet deep down inside. In those days you didn’t tell a teacher, or your parent’s or things always seemed to get worse. I had several friends already and showed them what had happened. One suggested enlisting some boys older than the bullies. I enlisted the help of two third formers, Albert and John, who later in life became myself and Bernards best friends, all through our teens and up to us all getting married. They took hold of the ringleader and took him behind the bike sheds and told him they were looking out for me from now on. The bully glowered at me whenever he saw me but from then I was able to enjoy attending this fine school without fear.

Life in Bicknell Street was changing too, with all the dad’s now back from the war. It seemed a little strange at first, having spent five years or six (in my case), most of our early childhood, with just our mums. We now started to do more “boy” things such as going to the Rovers in winter with my dad and my uncle Charlie and to the East Lancashire Cricket Club in summer. Despite most people being short of money (hard up we called it!!) most parents were resourceful and quickly got to grips with the way things were. My mother was still weaving, but as previously mentioned, my father found keeping a job in the spinning mills was getting more difficult especially as Blackburn was always more of a weaving town. He was getting to the point of desperation. Just to give my readers a little example of how things were. Just a few months before he was made redundant on a Friday “at teatime” he literally ran into the house waving his pay slip overjoyed because he was now earning £10 for a 44-hour week. We were so proud he was earning what seemed to be lots of money.

When my father applied for a vacancy at the Refuge Insurance Company. (It’s original offices still survive in a beautiful stone building just behind St. John’s Church on Ainsworth Street.) many of his friends thought he was mad. My mother and I knew that when my dad had health problems during the war, instead of discharging him they transferred him to a division of the War Office in Sherborne, Dorset. At some time, he had learnt to type and do the books, he was the perfect applicant for the Refuge Company. He wasn’t demobbed until 1946, for some unknown reason. He now had a nine to five job which he enjoyed for a time but a few years later he was offered a post in the steel stores at Foster Yates and Thom, which four years later I would be offered an engineering apprenticeship.

My mother finally got tired of being constantly made redundant from the weaving sheds she had worked in since she was a young woman and changed career to working in children’s care homes. In later life she and my father became managers of a large children’s home in St. Helens housing sixteen children.

But I digress, back to Blakey Moor School. I settled into my new school environment at a time when its staff were changing, a bit like, out with the old and in with the new. It was a big step up psychologically it being all boys. It was housed in the same building as the Blackburn Technical College which was co-ed. Boys from both schools had access to a large school yard bounded by high walls the college girls having their own yard. The uniform of that school was basically a combination of brown and yellow. The two groups of boys got on pretty well for the most part although the college students attended until 18 (I think). This college was on the ground floor of the building whilst we were on the top floor.

In the first few days we were given test papers to evaluate which of the three forms we would be in, i.e. A, B or C. I was put into form 1A.

The school was spacious and newly decorated, in each form there were 36 pupils. The pupils were divided over four “Houses” Gordon, Livingstone, Nelson and Scott. (All true British hero’s) I was allotted to Gordon the famous general hero of battles in the Sudan. I would be in this house for my four-year term at this school. It all seemed quite strange at first, but we all settled in quickly. Having been used to all female teachers at St. John’s, apart from the headmaster, the teaching team at this school had only one female teacher a lady called Mrs Duerden. She taught English language and literature. She was married to the then well know organist at Blackburn Cathedral. She was a really good teacher and easily kept us all in check. We were each allotted our timetable for each week and told homework would be given each day and brought back the following morning. They had a points system with pluses and minuses; these were correlated to be presented at the Monday morning house meeting when those with the most plus points were (publically) congratulated and those with minus points were (publically) exposed and chastised. It was amazing how competitive we became.

We were expected to be in the hall for reception at 9am (heaven forbid those who arrived late!!) where we sang a hymn, and a pupil read a lesson. The headmaster, Mr Walton, addressed the school with words of wisdom and a run though of events current and in future. Then an orderly walk to our classrooms for the day. Each lesson the pupils occupied their own classroom with the teachers moving around to each classroom at the change of each lesson.

It took a few days to get started. Our form teacher was Mr Sutton whose subjects were History and French he was a good teacher.

Our arrival at Blakey Moor coincided with an influx of much younger male teachers than previously and this prompted interest and enthusiasm with us. As an example, that first year, Mondays first lesson was art which should have been enjoyable, but our teacher was a Mr Noble whose idea of art was to have us printing the words “Best slipper” in many variations in print types. It was uninspiring and boring. The art room was large and should have been the brightest classroom in the school. Along the outer wall where large windows which sloped to maximise the light. There was access to the roof for even better drawing options but instead Mr Noble kept many of the lights off leaving us to work in very dingy and uninspiring conditions. A few weeks in Mr Noble became ill and left the school permanently. We had a temporary teacher who created a much better working environment, then like a flash of magic, Mr Edwards burst in. On his first morning with our class 1A., after a brief introduction every light in the room was switched on. He located some paint and ladders and got us all involved in producing an art room to be proud of. It didn’t take long with our involvement and it was a big stride to normality. School painting was drab in those days and all classrooms had a green tiled dado with cream above. When all the work was finished, he split us up into groups of 4/5 then got the ladders back and gave us the go ahead to draw rectangles on the newly painted wall with chalk creating picture frames, he then encouraged us to choose a topic and paint in the frames the themes we decided, like a garden, street scene or railway station etc. These murals, as Mr Edwards called them, stayed there long after we had left the school four years later.

As can be imagined young Mr Edwards was the most popular teacher in the school and over the years, with the help of other young men, Mr Skirmer geography. Mr Harling science, Mr Rawcliffe, maths, Mr Kenyon music and sports, and several others brought in an enjoyable environment and enthusiasm to do as well as our abilities allowed. It was a happy place and well-disciplined I enjoyed every minute.

Written and researched by Alan Duffy

Published June 2025

Alan Duffy 1937 to 1952