Farming In Harwood
A Memory of Great Harwood.
We lived at Bury Meadows Farm, Roading Brook Road, Harwood near Bolton Lancs, by the time I'd written that down everybody else had been waiting ages at Bradshaw School.
My sister Janet and I had many happy years at Bradshaw School with our cousins, John and Margaret Dewhurst who lived at Springfield on Roading Brook Road. Mr and Mrs Barker ran the school as headteachers. My first teacher was Miss Ivel. I loved school and we used to go to Brownies there. We were both in the Sprites, brave and helpful like the Knights. My friend was Rachel Dover.
Because we were farming children we had freedom to roam and we did - all over what is now Harwood Golf Course and beyond. We used to dare to creep up on Alfie Blake and look thru' his farmhouse window.
Arnold was our dairyman at Old Holts where my darling Granny - Marian Parker - lived, it was just up the field from our house. Arnold was a really good singer and used to sing in the dairy as it echoed. 'Dream Lover' by Bobby Darin was a favourite.
We caught the bus to school at the bus terminus at the top of Stitch Mi Lane outside Mr Brierly's shop.
In the spring we had the Holcombe Hunt Point to Point and later the Harwood Show. In the winter we had those sulphur fogs - pea soupers where you could see hardly anything - thick yellow air choking you. Also lots of snow and so sledging happened on the golf course and my dad, John Parker, made us fab sledges. Our friend Philip Lomax joined in with us as an honorary cousin. His mum gave Janet and I a victorian bisque head doll. I swapped my half for her half of the pony. She's still got the doll called Jemima! My darling brother Richard was born in 1959.
We left Harwood in the early 1960s when my lovely granny passed away. She's buried in Harwood Church along with her husband Mark Parker who died before I was born.
Janet lives in Shrops now, Richard in France and I live in Notts. I've still got horses. Riding never faded for me. They were happy carefree days in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Hello to anybody who knows me.
Dorothy
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