Wigan Album

Doreen Parkinson of Greenwood ave was my cousin.

This was the mill my Dad started work in after leaving school. My Auntie Annie, his older sister was already working there. The year would have been abt 1920/23. Dad, William Bradshaw was in weaving in some way or other all his working life.

My mother worked at Eckersleys from 1954 into the 1960s along with my eldest sister Margaret she went straight into the mill when she left school which was Pemberton Girls. She joined my mother as she started in around 1956. They both turned out in a morning at 7.10am bus at bottom of ST.Paul's avenue ,and got home at 6.00pm they were long days .

I worked in number 3 mill, as a lap-carrier, in the mid 60s. Some great people there.

"Owd Nat" being the name people used to refer to Nathaniel Eckersley.

Mick, isn't that a great photo of Doreen and lucky she was standing right on the end, wonder how old she would have been then - 16 or maybe 17. Also I didn't know she'd worked at Eckersley's and always assumed she'd been at Heinz with her father and mother Bill and Elsie and brother Barrie also working there, I never knew where Billy worked. I remember whenever we visited their house Kathleen and I would be reading her Deportment lesson books and copying walking around the room with books on our heads etc., and those lessons paid off for her too with landing a good job in America, and a world away from being a doubler and doffer at Eckersley's.