Wigan Album

The fellow in this picture is my Grandad, and he is the chap who took most of the photos of Ince and New Springs and of the steam engines and railways that I have posted on WW. I am quite certain that he would never have envisaged such a thing as the internet and websites and similarly would have had little inkling of the potential permanence of these images of the 1950s. He had a passion for photography, and for steam, and Ince was his stamping ground. I think that he’d have been really pleased by all the comment and interest that has been shown to his photographs and I’m absolutely certain that he’d have been entranced by the technology.


Indirectly, he is also responsible for this photo: it is one taken about 1967 and is very likely to be the result of the present of a camera. I can, at least, be precise that it was a Halina 35X because I still have it. This was the second camera that my Grandad had bought for me. The first one was a plastic one taking 127 film, of which neither camera nor negatives survive, but this one was a reet proper job. It came in a leather case and had a focussing ring, aperture ring and exposure ring and was heavy. I had to use one of his light meters to set it and I’d have been pretty chuffed with that, although, looking at the picture, questions would have to be asked about the focus. It is strange what sticks in your mind and what doesn’t and how you’ve no choice in the matter for I don’t actually remember this day, and the taking of the black and white film, in the slightest, but, I’d say that the camera as a gift is the best explanation for the existence of these few backyard prints. Now, it seems that this is one of life’s lucky happenstances as I have no other pictures of him at this age and in these surroundings. He is as I remember him best; dressed, in shirt and waistcoat, as always, pants with a turn-up, unshaven in the mornings perhaps until dinnertime, and no teeth in. I had asked him why he never had his teeth in. In reply, he’d said that they were too big and made him talk funny and anyway he didn’t need them to suck an ox tail bone. It was true that he didn’t tackle biscuits, although he’d no problem gumming a Jaffa cake. He kept his teeth in a Kodak film box in the big cupboard by the chimney breast in case he had to go anywhere special although I don’t think he ever found anywhere to go that was special enough.



…………………………………when I first went to school mi Grandad took me. It was Ince Central and all the way down Belle Green Lane and past the pickle works. The pickle works stunk. Then we had to cross the big main road and he went on and on about the road – “Watch road. Watch road. Watch Road.” every two minutes along Ince Bar, but he used to take me and fetch me back and so he did all the road crossings anyway. He showed me where his pit bus stopped on the corner just after the pie shop. I knew it wasn’t the Wigan bus ‘cos he’d already told me that. It was an LUT bus. One morning he wasn’t there and had gone out. I asked mi Mam and she said that he’d gone to the hospital in Manchester about his arm. She said it was okay and he just had to go from time to time while they looked at it. I said was it on an LUT bus and she said yes. I said I should have gone with him and made sure ‘cos of main road but she said he would be alright on his own………………………(little dk)




The overwhelming memory that this picture brings to mind is because of the position that he is in. Sitting on your haunches is what it is called and it’s a pitman’s position for working in a low seam. He would sit like this with his back to the fire and his heels slightly perched up on the flattened top of the triangular, cast iron fender, quite relaxed and smoking an easy woodbine. The buckles on the back of his waistcoat would slowly get hotter and hotter and then, probably when just short of melting into the silk, he’d jump up and move away for a bit. He would regularly occupy the front step in the same comfortable way, and especially of a summer’s night with the door open behind him, a china cup of black tea, half supped, on the red step and jawing gently with any passers-by and with folk steering their passage into the Oak Tree directly opposite. Ciggy Harry never shuffled past without collecting a clean woodbine fresh from the packet either.


…………………………………everyone had gone out this afternoon. There was just me and mi Grandad left in the front room so we couldn’t play any games proper. Put and Take’s no good for two and dominoes is better with everybody. He had shown me before how all the pieces moved in chess and we did play for a bit but he didn’t have much patience for it he said. He sat in front of the fire on the fender and I was on the couch. It was hot and he told me about his arm. It was down the pit and the coal belt caught him and dragged his arm under. Someone stopped the belt and they all gathered round trying to get his arm out of it but it was fast and squashed. They’d taken him to the hospital he said and he lay there stuck in bed for week but he knew it was no good. He said he could smell it bad under the covers – gangrene – and knew it would have to come off. There was a piece of skin from lower down his arm that had been sewed over the stump. He said that the nerves were in the wrong place and if you touched it felt like his arm was still there. He started to tell me about his artificial arm and about it being too clumsy but I fell asleep I think…………(little dk)


He was a lean man and looks fairly lithe for his age in this picture. Partly, this would be due to a lifetime in the pit. He had left school at fourteen and gone down the pit. When he married, his occupation was entered on the certificate as dataller. A dataller was a day worker. If there was work you had work and if not, you didn’t. Mostly, the work would be of a maintenance nature, not a coveted job and generally more dangerous than others. A further contribution to his build would have been an ulcer from which he had suffered for years, taking antacid powders and Beecham’s pills and avoiding certain foods, before finally having an operation to have a portion of his stomach removed. This meant that he ate only in small amounts but more often. In mi Mam’s words, ‘he didn’t half enjoy hard fried eggs after that’.


…………………………………last Sunday Auntie Nelly and Uncle Lawrence came. They only came now and again and mi Mam did rabbit stew. We didn’t like Uncle Lawrence much. He used to cut our hair with the hand clippers. We had to sit in the back on a stool and stuck a basin on our heads and set off with the clippers. They usually grabbed your hair at the back and pulled but he had his hand on top of the basin and he’d tell you not to be so soft and give you a shove. They’d only been there ten minutes when he asked mi Grandad to come to the Bush with him. Mi Grandad said he didn’t like alehouses and he didn’t want to go. Uncle Lawrence always wanted to go the Bush when he came. He went on and on about it and mi Grandad finished up shouting a bit and telling him he didn’t like alehouses and he wasn’t gooin and that was that. We had our dinner then. I weren’t keen on the rabbit, it had a lot of bones in it but mi Grandad liked it. After that, I don’t know proper, but they were talking and then next minute they were arguing again. It was about me beating little George at chess. Uncle Lawrence didn’t believe it he said ‘cos I was too young and little George was eighteen. Mi Grandad said why not and Uncle Lawrence said he must have let me win. I knew he didn’t ‘cos I’d only ever beaten him once and he beat me loads of times and when I had he pinned me down in the grass and said that he was going to make me sick by putting his big toe in my mouth. We liked little George. He was good fun. Then mi Grandad was aggravated again and I didn’t like it so I went in the big backyard and kicked a ball against the wall for a bit. When I came back in they’d gone and mi Grandad was back to normal. Uncle Lawrence shouldn’t have kept moidering about going to the Bush. I’d sooner have mi Mam’s meat and prater pie than that rabbit too…………………………………………… (little dk)


After the accident and the subsequent amputation he was kind of pensioned off onto surface work. I was taken there once and have since deduced that it must have been at Bold Colliery. I have a splinter of memory of him up some steps in a tower, all dark and dusty. He was whistling a wagon into position underneath a hopper and filling it up in sections by leaning on a long handle to release the gate and whistling the driver along. He was also in charge of emptying an electromagnet that was slung over the belt designed to remove debris. It seemed to be mostly pitmen’s penknives. We’d a house full of ‘em.


…………………………………yesterday, our Dave told mi Grandad that I had been swearing at him and I had called him a gt but I hadn’t. I had told him to get stffd. Now I knew gt was wrong, and I knew bldy and bggr were okay and I thought get stffd wouldn’t be bad ‘cos it’s different to gt. And I hadn’t said gt, and we weren’t allowed to call people a pig or a sod either. But, mi Grandad got me in the back and wouldn’t listen and told me he would have to slap me if I said that word again, and if he did it would hurt ‘cos he’d have to use his left hand and he couldn’t control it proper. ‘Course, I knew he wouldn’t, but I only ever said the ones we could say anyway. When he sent me back out to play, I couldn’t find our Dave who’d run off, but when I do I’m going to batter him…………………………………………… (little dk)


The tools of his trade then: a whistle and a spare whistle, one good left arm, two hard-fried egg butties wrapped in the bread paper and an NCB short donkey jacket.

There was a bit more to him than that, but where it all comes from I don’t know for sure. He never went out much except for a walk up the cut or to Wigan. He didn’t go to the pub. He didn’t drink except at Christmas. Then, he always got a bottle of Teacher’s whisky and a Captain Morgan rum for himself and a Sandeman port and Harvey’s Bristol Cream sherry for visitors. He’d put the whisky in his tea to help him sleep – he said! Actually, that may be true. He did let me finish off half a cup of tea once which I knew had whisky in and it sent me to sleep ok! The rum went into coffee which he only drank at Christmas as well. Proper coffee mind you, boiled and strained. I never saw him drunk. He always did the pools and we’d check off the results as they came in on the teleprinter. The newspaper was important too. We would argue over who was to read it first.

In most ways he was an ordinary man; an ordinary, down-to-earth pitman just marking off the days to his retirement. The thing that was extraordinary, to my mind, was that he was always up to something; either reading, or mending something, or taking something apart and fiddling with it. His range of interests was so broad and far-removed from his occupation. And, he’d always let you help him.

The photography fascination was a long one and started before his marriage and children arrived. The back bedroom really was a dark room with black-out curtains and a yellow lamp. The bunk, a piece of stairwell protruding into the back bedroom and finished off with floorboards like a workbench, was occupied by an enlarger and numerous plastic trays, with the complement of ancillary equipment – guillotine, glazing machine and developing tanks. The chemical store was a shelf in the coal hole under the stairs. Some of the prints that I have carry a stamp on the back in blue ink with his name and address and ‘Developing and Printing’ so I have an idea that he did try to nurture this hobby into becoming an occupation but this wasn’t in response to the accident. I think that, quite to the contrary, the loss of his right arm, which is such a huge handicap in so many ways, proved to be the end of this particular ‘thing’. The difficulties associated with simply manipulating the objects overcame him. Imagine opening a bottle of some chemical or other with one hand, not to mention that most of the chemicals involved were either caustic or poisonous in varying degrees! Or, think of threading a film into a developing tank in the semi-dark. Everything would have taken so long to do…… But, even though his faculties became seriously diminished, his interest in taking pictures continued and as well as the early prints, close-ups on glass and some attempts at trick photography, I have many prints, negatives and standard 8 films, most of them in colour, that were taken in later years. I am curator of these objects which include telescopes and binoculars along with the surviving cameras and projectors and other optical paraphernalia.


…………………………………mi Aunty Bet came round and said that her microphone wasn’t working on her tape recorder and could mi Grandad have a look at it. He sent me round with the long nosed pliers, screwdriver, soldering iron and piece of shielded cable and told me to take the end off, undo the microphone and put a fresh cable on. I knew what to do ‘cos we’d been soldering wires for ages. Anyway I fixed it and checked it and it was working. When I got back he asked had I done it and I said Aye. And he said did she treat me and I said Aye – two bob. He didn’t ask owt else but he seemed happy enough…………………………………………… (little dk)


What he did do in direct response to the handicap was to take a correspondence course in commercial art. In those times this would have been the only possible way of gaining qualifications. He had taught himself to write with his left hand which must have been difficult enough and it seems that this idea of drawing and sketching was seen as a way forward or, at the least, a way out of the pit: “Whatever you do”, he once said to mi Mam, “don’t let them lads go downt pit”. I know that he did garage plans and extension plans for people as well as some signwriting. I also have a sketchbook of drawings and colourings with some cartoons and copies of Disney characters.

Perhaps it is that he did make some money out of the commercial art and the photography but it couldn’t have been more than the odd few bob here and there. Everything that he bought was on instalments. He used Wildings in Wigan extensively for photographic equipment, and the small electrical shop in the Wiend opposite the Ship, and would go in every Saturday to pay. A chap, Charlie Nolan, used to come round once a week, and his suits and shirts came from this catalogue man: half a crown a week and us kids hiding in the back laughing and counting how many times the catalogue man said “There, Aye Harold” in one visit.

The other source of ‘stuff’ was the Manchester junk shops. Manchester was an interminable bus drive away and I was taken there a few times with a bottle of orange pop administered as a cure for the coach sickness. I can’t remember much more than this, except that it was Fanta orange, but I do know that it was these types of shops – army surplus and second-hand – that were the origin of a lot of the photographic, wireless and optical equipment. And, anything else that just took his fancy: a transmitter/receiver in the front room like the one used by Radar in MASH; ex-army compass; record players; tape recorders; wireless sets for ever more; a Hi-Fi cabinet styled in walnut with three-speed tape to tape, reverse, and VHF radio built in and bigger than the front room table which was used to boom out Gilbert and Sullivan. There was even a photocopier which he used to copy a one pound note. The forgery stank of ammonia and was purple.

Of course, a good few of these things didn’t actually work, or, if they did work then not all of the time. A lot of effort went into dismantling things, soldering and fettling them, changing valves with the aid of the Mullard Book of Valve Equivalents, and then putting them back together with a coat of paint to make ‘em look good.


…………………………………in Physics, Mr Millet had set up an oscilloscope and two signal generators for the lesson. He did a demo to show the sine wave that was produced by the signal and some talk about the time base. Towards the end of the lesson he moved on to question what would happen if we switch off the time base and put a signal across the x-axis instead. This ended in a ‘let’s try it’ conclusion. Next question was where is the x-axis input? It was at the back and I knew that because I had one at home. I naïvely blurted this out and it caused disbelief and a bit of a stir and I was forced to explain that it was bought from a junk shop in Manchester by mi Grandad and I’d been playing with it at home and it had two terminals on the back marked x-input. After the lesson mi Grandad was soundly condemned as an eccentric and I took umbrage at these remarks. Big Frank spent a quarter of an hour in explanation that eccentric wasn’t necessarily a disparaging term and having an oscilloscope at home was a bit unusual after all……………………………… (little dk)


There were two magazines that he got and it was from these I suppose that his knowledge of electrics was gleaned – Practical Wireless and Practical Electronics. He made an electric alarm clock in the days when most alarm clocks had the bells on the top and you forgot to wind them up. This clock was made from the innards of an old transistor radio to produce a beep, a small speaker from a similar source and a bought-out electronic clock. The whole lot was encased in hardboard and painted black and was roughly the size of a transistor radio. He slept with it on his pillow so that he wasn’t late for the early shift. Perched on the mantelpiece over the fire, it was also use to remind him that a programme was about to start. Mi Grandad didn’t watch telly much. He’d get the paper and ring round the things he wanted to watch and then set the alarm from programme to programme. In between times, he’d switch the set off. We weren’t allowed to watch a couple of things either: Alf Garnett, because of the way that he talked to his wife and Steptoe, because of the swearing. Two programmes were never missed.

Match of the Day on Saturday night. He liked to lay on the couch for this and his foot would twitch, involuntarily, if a player got in the box. He’d laugh about it. We watched the 1968 European Cup. His foot didn’t half do some twitching in extra time!

The other programme was Sky at Night. Absolutely never missed, and it was always on late. I’ve known him have a nod in the rocker so that he could stay up and watch it. Astronomy was a really big interest. Maybe it was through spending so much time underground. I have many astronomy books in my care. The Larousse Encyclopaedia of Astronomy (no longer in print) is a treatise difficult to better, even today, in terms of thoroughness. I have many other books and all are second-hand. Most of them are written such that as the chapters expand from the sun outwards into the solar system in conventional manner and you get to Pluto…it’s not there. Pluto hadn’t been discovered when they were written. It seems strange that Pluto is not, officially, a planet any longer. In 1969 we stayed up to watch the moon landings until four in the morning. He was amazed.

The pride of my collection of heirlooms is a little brown astronomy book designated as a primer. It was published in 1876 by Macmillan. Written in pencil underneath the date is 1951 which is the date that mi Grandad bought it. Below that is the subtraction for 75 years. This book is full of pencil and ink written notes in the margins and masses of underlining. Watercolours of the planets on small pieces of paper have been glued in at the relevant section. There are calculations about the speed of light and even corrections: he has crossed out 91 millions of miles for the distance to the sun and written in 92.9. All of these annotations are in his spidery, left-hand handwriting or his elegant, calligraphic capitalisation. I think that it was this book that provided the basis of his astronomy. It is very precious.


…………………………………last night we were looking at stars in the little backyard again. November was always the best time he said, with clear skies and lots of scintillations. We’d checked in the Daily Herald and it gave the time and position for the Ariel satellite to pass over. It was cold and very clear and it was easy to pick out the satellite because of its speed across the sky even though it looked just like a bright star. I knew about the Great Bear - Ursa Major, and Cassiopeia with its big W shape and we looked at them for a bit. He pointed out the second star in the handle of the plough which he said was really two stars and although he couldn’t make them out with his eyes I should be able to with mine. I said I thought I could but I wasn’t really sure. We got the binoculars out and had a look and it was easy to see then…………………………………………… (little dk)


This has to end at the end, I know that. It was quick. His heart gave out.


…………………………………that morning mi Mam said we had to take all the decorations down so we did. Then we bounced the balloons about around the front room and tried sitting on them to burst them. It wasn’t easy because some had gone down a bit and shrivelled up until mi Grandad popped one with his cig end and then it all turned into a big fight to try to stop him popping the rest, but we couldn’t. When they had all gone we burned the bits on the fire and there were only the paper chains and the twisted crepe left. They weren’t as much fun as the balloons but we burned them as well. We had a great time.

Just after we had our dinner mi Grandad said he had heartburn and took some Settlers. After a bit he went into the petty and took a spoon. I knew it was to make himself sick ‘cos that’s what he did when he couldn’t get rid of the heartburn. Then he told mi Mam that he was going to bed to have an hour and see if that got rid of it.

Mi Mam was upstairs in mi Grandad’s room and she shouted me to run up to Aunty’s and ask her to borrow the water bottle ‘cos mi Grandad was complaining he was cold. So I ran up the lane to Battersby Street and mi Aunty wouldn’t let me go ‘til I’d answered all of her questions and she said that she would come down and have a look.

Mi Mam said he’d gone to sleep and she’d made the hot water bottle by the time mi Aunty turned up and they both went upstairs. I was in the kitchen, listening, but they were very quiet. When he woke up he started shouting a bit and groaning. I didn’t like it so I went outside in the little backyard but I knew something was up and I had to go back in. I waited at the bottom of the stairs. He was shouting loud now and kept saying, over and over, that he was gooin, and for mi Mam to look after them kids and then he went quiet.

Mi Aunty came down and got the whisky from out of the big cupboard and went back up. After a couple of minutes, she came down again and went out of the front door and I followed her. The Oak Tree was shut, but she knocked on the door until Bill Greg came out. He was in his vest. She asked him to use his phone to get a Doctor and he said he would. When she came back in, she went upstairs again but she didn’t say anything. I waited at the bottom of the stairs.

I could hear mi Mam and mi Aunty talking but I couldn’t tell what they said. After ages, someone knocked and mi Aunty came and let a Doctor in. It all went quiet again and mi Auntie came down and took the big shaving mirror off the sideboard and went back up. It was only a bit of time before the Doctor came down and then he just went.

I waited, but they weren’t talking. I shouted mi Mam could I come up and she said no not yet. She said I’d better just wait there for a bit. But they started talking again then, and mi Auntie came down and put her coat on and she shouted up to mi Mam that she’d best go and tell people and make arrangements and then she just went.

Mi Mam came down then and said it, but I knew. She told me to go up if I wanted so I did. The bedroom was cold and I could smell whisky because the bottle had been left on the bunk with the top off. I looked inside and there was a bit of whisky in the cap. The big shaving mirror was at the side of the bottle. Mi Grandad was in bed. He looked just like he did when he was nodding, tucked in under the eiderdown with just his face showing. He didn’t look no different. I didn’t touch him. I went down.

Mi Mam was in the back making a pot of tea and crying. I’d never seen her cry and I didn’t know what to do, so I washed up. She started to talk about it after a bit. I asked her about the whisky and she explained that you put a bit on the person’s lips and the shock of it might revive their system. The mirror was so that the Doctor could hold it over his face and see if there was any breathing on it ‘cos even a very tiny amount would show up like that. Mi Grandad would have said condensation. I didn’t say nowt else…………………………………… (little dk)


So there you have it: a little tale wrapped around an old photo. It’s not sad really. Or, sad maybe like the rising and falling tea table in Mary Poppins is sad. It’s briefly sad. I’m happy to remember all of these things and I know that I’d be a much, much poorer person today without little dk’s precious memories; much poorer. I wouldn’t erase a single thing even if it was possible.

I hope that there may be a few people of Ince who remember him. Perhaps, there are one or two still around who walked up the traffic-free lane on a summer’s eve with the street lights just threatening to come on and, upon reaching the ale house, already lit up and alive with the clink and murmur of the vault, might have nodded and said, ‘Now Harold’, in passing, to a chap sat on his haunches on the front step.

To the charge of being an eccentric, well the jury’s back and I’ve had to accept their verdict but it doesn’t sit comfortably in my mind. I have, long ago, lost the ready ire of adolescence, but I still feel like I did in that lesson, deep down. Eccentric? He was no more eccentric than I am!

He was a kind, friendly and caring man, somewhat strait-laced and proper in his ways and a true stoic in mild acceptance of life’s vicissitudes. He had patience without end and a great curiosity. He explained things. There was always time to explain things.

He was a very gentle man and I was such a lucky little lad.


It’s only right to let little dk have a final fragment:


…………………………………mi Grandad was doing tape recording today. He had to set it up first with a lot of ‘testing testing testing 123’ so that the needle on the recording level stayed out of the red ‘cos doing it too loud would damage the equipment. I did Witch Witch and There Was a Little Man Who had a Little Gun and some others, and our Dave did some, and I joined in with the endings and got told off. Then we did all the nursery rhymes we know and then Old King Cole. We got a bit shouty with Old King Cole and I got told off again ‘cos the needle was jumping over. Then our proper Aunty sang All Things Bright and Beautiful in a high pitch voice and we joined in with that. Then she sang it again in a really high pitch voice and really loud and mi Grandad went mad shouting ‘Weigh Weigh – Bldy needle’s gone reet across’ but we all joined in and he couldn’t stop us then. He played it back after that. Your voice sounds funny on a recording. When it got to the All Things Bright and Beautiful bit we all joined in again but really loud this time ‘til we were all laughing. And, mi Grandad were laughing his head off too……………………………………………