History of Wigan   (Help with ancient and recent history.)

As a 14 year old I visited Macfarlanes for a day in the school holidays. My mate, a year older, had just started his first job there piling scrap into the top of the furnace from a platform over the yard.
It was 1969 and still primitive- health and safety not yet a bother for the bosses. Two (council) workers came into the yard to empty the Macfarlane workers' chemical toilet. On the way out as they passed , looked up at us working on the platform, one said ';'I wouldn't lahk a job lahk that would tha, pal?'