Failsworth

A Memory of Failsworth.

We came to live in Failsworth in l956 when I was 8, we lived in Firs Avenue where the school clinic was held at what used to be Firs Hall, where I believe the owner or manager of the local mill lived. There was an air raid shelter still in the back which wasn't knocked down until the mid 1970s - so it had 30 years of kids playing in it, sliding down it on coal shovels when it snowed. A lot of my relatives lived in Failsworth, Dean Street, Dalton Street and Mather Street where I went to school until I was ll. There was a pig farm nearby and an old clay mine which was still dug out, full of rubbish and water in which we floated about in old, leaky tin baths - in all that muck, getting covered in lead paint and burning oily rags in tins with holes in, my sister used to make with a handle made out of string so they could be whizzed around and blaze away. I could write a book - but...