Wigan Album

That’s very commendable of you Irene.
Rest in Eternal Peace to all those miners who were killed trying to earn a living.

Irene thank you and all the people Abram , Platt Bridge and further afield who remembered the dead from The Maypole Pit disaster on the anniversary, I know from a conversation with you that the candles were lit at 5-10 the exact time of the explosion. You have a very warm heart and I'm proud to be counted as friend of you and Peter

Irene, that's nice of you, and others also in doing commemorations for the miners killed in the Maypole Pit disaster to be remembered.

Around fifteen years ago I left my Aspidistra outside after summer with forgetting all about it, it was caught in a few nights of overnight frosts and I thought it would be okay, especially with what folk used to do to them and they being called cast iron plants, but it didn't live up to its name and died, but they are from the part of Japan that's tropical so frost they don't like.

My dads cousin Jimmy.

I had to ask Ron to help me as my photo appeared sideways for some reason when I tried to upload it....I am useless at this.! We in Abram do this as every year on the 18th of August, the anniversary of The Maypole Pit Disaster of 1908. Residents choose a miner from the names of the 75 men who died and we light a candle or a lantern in our windows at 10 past 5 in the evening, the time that the disaster happened. That way, each miner is remembered individually as well as collectively. I have two miners this year, Peter Fishwick of 50 Warrington Road Abram, and James Byrne of 578 Bryn Gates Bamfurong. God Bless them and all who died in Abram on that fateful day. many of them very young men who left wives and young children behind. We also have people outside of Abram who join in and light a candle in memory of the men who died and a wreath is laid on the Maypole Memorial in Abram Churchyard.

Mick, the name DID make me wonder if James was a relative of yours. You and I may not always see eye to eye but I am proud to commemorate your Dad's cousin in my window. Cyril, I have had the aspidistra for many years and it is in a Victorian Plant-pot on a plant stand. It was failing quite badly last year but Peter re-potted it and it grew loads of new leaves; It may not be Gracie Fields' "Biggest Aspidistra in the World" but I love it and it suits my old-fashioned living room. Tom Walsh, thankyou so much for those lovely words. I know you are lighting a candle too this year, as a tribute to one of the miners from Scholes.

Irene, I don't want to alarm you but if you look on google maps you can see your Aspidistra along with a couple of rabbits.

Yes, I did know they appear on Google Maps. The rabbits are always in my window, and there are THREE now, (you know what the say about rabbits!) I love those rabbits and bought the yellow one with my first week's wages when I started work at sixteen, after admiring it for many years all through my schooldays on a stall in Wigan Market Hall, so it is a very old and precious friend! They are here by my side waiting to go back in the window tomorrow when I remove the Maypole items. Then they will be removed again when I do a Remembrance Day window in November. It makes a change for them!

Irene, You always keep saying that we don't see eye to eye, but I have never said a wrong word against you.
I think you are getting led on by some of you internet mates.

If there was a commemoration for every Lancashire pit disaster, there would be one every day.

You are absolutely right there, John; there would indeed. The Pretoria Pit, Haydock, Kirkless, Gibfield.....the list goes on. The fact that Abram does this commemoration annually is the choice of the people who live here; there is nothing to stop other villages/communities doing the same, but that is up to them. My own Dad was born in the year of the Maypole Disaster, 1908, (he was 44 when I was born in 1952), and he worked at The Maypole Pit in 1920 as a twelve-year-old boy ; we are all aware of the price that was paid for coal, hence the pair of children's clogs in my window display.