I960s Mods And Northern Soul In Crowd In Bury

A Memory of Bury.

In the late 1960's I was a schoolgirl at the Derby School. When I began to be independent and join a tribe I chose the Northern Soul gang and sometimes I used to go to All Nighters, with my boyfriend and friends at the Twisted Wheel in Manchester. We took the last train from Bury to Victoria Station and walked up to Piccadilly Station where the gang met. My Mum made some really cool dresses for me.

In Bury, in the evening, we used to hang out around the doorway of Dorothy Kershaw's fab shop opposite Kay Gardens. The Wimpy bar was open then in the evening and we often used to stay in there holding a glass coffee cup and saucer all evening. Occasionally we'd have a Wimpy. We also used to hang out at the Y Bar (YMCA) off the Rock. You could leave school at 15 then and many people I knew were working full time so could afford to dress in the Mod 60's style. We liked to think of ourselves as the In Crowd.

My friend's Auntie worked in the record dept at Sam Taylors and on Saturday's we used to look up the obscure USA soul artists' tracks in the huge record list catalogue she had.

Dorothy Kershaw's sold the first Nylon Tights in Bury (I think). The colour was of course American Tan! We schoolgirls all wanted them but had to make do with a paper psychedelic printed carrier bags and some perspex dangly earrings.

Later tights became much cheaper and we used to buy tights on the old Bury Market. We liked cream almost white tights which my Dad said made my legs look like milkbottles.

This trip down memory lane was sparked off by listening to the Wilson Pickett programme on BBC Radio 2 (12.3.12)