Huncoat During Ww2

A Memory of Huncoat.

My family lived in Greenford, Middlesex but for a year or so during WW2 my mother took my sister and me to live in Huncoat with my mother's sister Mary. Both my mother, Ellen Lees, and my aunt Mary King worked in the Blackburn Aircraft factory which memory tells me was at Clayton Le Moor. I was told that the Blackburn Aircraft factory was underground and it was where aircraft engines were made. My mother was employed as an inspector checking the measurements of the engine parts which were made there.
That we stayed there for only a year was due to the fact that quite often after my mother had measured a part and found it was out of specification and rejected it she was ordered to pass it as fit for use. She worried that these out of spec items could result in an engine failing and a plane, with crew aboard, would crash. That she could not accept and so left and we returned to London.

In Huncoat we lived in a utility wood framed house covered in roofing felt, one of many built for "war effort workers". The housing estate was very close to Huncoat village north of Accrington on the road to Burnley. Our house was on Woodside Road. On the other side of the road to Burnley there was a reservoir and a quarry which supplied raw material to the nearby Accrington Nori brick works via an overhead ropeway.

It was a good place for small children to grow up in. There were fields and woods to play in and in those days children could play unattended safe from any molestation. We roamed far and wide.

In later years my father, who was in the building industry, told me that Accrington Nori bricks were the best in the world. I did not understand the truth of this quality statement until recently when I found out that over three million Nori bricks had been supplied and used in the foundation of The Empire State Building in new York.
Is Paddy Broughy or Stewart Mckidney still alive and kicking? If so I would like to hear from these friends of that time in Huncoat. Vincent Lees.

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