Collins Green Farm

A Memory of Collins Green.

It was in 1958 when I was just 5 years old that my mum, dad, 3 brothers (John, Les and Robert) and younger sister Barbara went to live in Collin Green Farm. For the next 5 years it was absolutely brilliant. I started school at Burtonwood where I met a girl who was to be a life long friend, Rosemary Atkinson. This being a small village we, as a family, got to know everyone living there. We had a fabulous childhood, every day an adventure. Rose and I would go off armed with jam butties and a bottle of water to play on the muckies (mounds of coal dust). Living on the farm had many advantages; roaming around the acres of land finding ponds and catching tadpoles, my brother's put trapezes up in the barns where we spent hours swinging about on them, even winter was great, there was a huge dip in the back field which filled full of water, maybe 12 inches deep in the deepest part, this would ice over and after my dad tested it was safe, half the village would come skating on it. My best memories are of my dad bringing little lambs into the house to get them warm, it was great feeding them with a pop bottle of milk - we did the same with young calves. The house was realy old with huge oak beams going through it and the rooms were huge, it really was beautiful. It was in 1963 that we moved from Collins Green, I remember it so well, a very sad day. I loved living there, the people, the friends and the beautiful farm house, a far cry from what it is today.