Wigan Album

Used to play round there as children.

What sort of farm was it, ie cattle or crops?

Did Devine have it ?

The farm had Sixty Acres of crops.

I believe the farm belonged to the Daniels family, a young lady Jo Daniels use to plough the fields with a David Brown 990 tractor, but that was the mid 1960s.

The Daniels family had this farm, i have been in there loads of times, i went to school with his son, they had a billiard room with a full size billiard table, i thought i was on a different planet when i was there, with me coming from a 2 up, 2 down. It was a cattle farm Peter.

Whereabouts is this.

Sorry, the cattle farm reply should have been for Alex.

MarieM, this is in Standish. If you walk along Green Lane (which starts from School Lane i.e the road from Standish centre towards Almond Brook)and follow it round to where it joins Standish Wood Lane near to the Cricket Club then Strickland House Farm is to your left along this lane. Alternately, you can walk to it from Beech Hill from the end of Willow Road and along the path which starts near Giants Hall.

Standish MarieM.

Marie, turn into Beechwalk next to St Maries Church, School Lane and it is about half a mile plus down there.
Colin i'm going back to the late 40s very early 50s and i dont remember any arable at all then, mind you i was only a 10 year old in 1950. I DO remember Mr Daniels herding the cows back to the farm from a field next to the mineral line (Wigan Rd end of Beechwalk) and the ground opening up about 50 or so yards in front of him and a few cows disappearing down it, old mine workings if i remember correctly.

Thank you Garry, Derek and Jonno.

Residence and death place of one Mr John Taylor of Taylor Pit fame, I think his son was called John alas John Pit.

Or it could have been taken from his name of course! Perhaps coincidentally his son was John.

Jimmy Daniels was in couple of classes above me at Thomas Linacre School. Spent a couple of days hay-making during early 1960s in field adjacent to Gidlow Cemetery entrance on Wigan Road. There were some angry white geese which patrolled the front of the farm.

I lived there at the time the older photo was taken (I am the quoted Jimmy Daniels) and note this picture was taken after the barn fire which occurred in about 1955. The trailer parked outside is an a old exUS airforce trail or bought from Burtonwood when the USAF were leaving. My father. Did a lot of deals with Burtonwood surplus equipment and his two best buys were 275,000 tent poles which he sold onto to sheep farmers for use as fencing posts. The other one was 200 plus yellow trailor mounted battery chargers for B-47 bombers which he later sold back to the US airforce. They had been sold for £12:50 each and they were sold back for over a thousand pounds. The prime minister wrote to my father congratulating him for this deal as part of the small exporters scheme that Macmillan's government had in place then.
The farm was predominantly a pig farm with over 2,000 pigs although some dairy cows were kept. One of the cows, Manningford Faith Jan Graceful, produced over 10 gallons per day and had cost 3,400 Guineas at Crewe auctions. At that time a record for cow at auction.
The room behind the wall pictured had two billiard tables, one full size and one three quarters size, plus a table tennis table. It was a very large room with a massive mahogany fireplace. The windows were notable for having stained glass panels showing the Owl and the Rat which was the coat of arms for the Standish family. The house was massive with over Twenty beds and several toilets and bathrooms. There was a music room with a white ERARD grand piano which my father claimed was one of only two - the other being at Buckingham Palace.
I now live in London but my sister, Joe, still lives in Wigan.

Hello Jimes , My father Gerald bought Strickland house of your Dad . Very interesting article you wrote !! Hope you and your family are well . Ps your father was a REAL character!!! Lol