The photo on the right is celebrating the Queen’s Coronation in 1952. We children in the nearby streets were treated to a party at the slipper mill, which was at the bottom of our street.
I am in the second row, second one along from the right, next to a girl helping a child just in front.
All those surrounding 5 neighbourhood streets were bounded by the factory at one side, and a recreation ground at the other.
Fields at the top and a main road and River Limey at the bottom, with a big wood across the other side.
It was a close community.
We had a reunion of all those streets in 2001. 139 people turned up after all those years.
We’ve had several more since then.
A lot of us had kept in touch since the days we were kids in the ‘50’s.
All spread out in different places, and some still in Woodcroft (which we called our neighbourhood ). It is on the main road from Rawtenstall towards Burnley and still looks much the same today. Obviously properties have been updated and the fields built on.
But the memories of our childhood days there are so fresh in our minds..
We could wander the hills, cross the river and play in the woods. Or go to the tops of those steep streets and have the freedom to delight in catching minnows in the stream which fed the mill pond, build dams, see the fields covered with buttercups, daisies and mayflowers, cowslips and wood anemones under the trees.
Not a lot of us had tv’s. My granny hired one for the Coronation Service and I remember the darkened room with “emergency chairs” for others watching.
In June 2013 the photo was recreated at one of our reunions. I am on the front row next to a girl in red. We used the positions of the first photo.
Obviously some people were no longer around anymore. But it was amazing, even now, to think that after all those years we all got together, and shared so many experiences of then and in the intervening years.
A real testimony to a close community in the 50’s which endured.
If you would like to read some more about it look at my Bio. I wrote a blog about those days. “Woodcroft. A 1950’s childhood”