Hollinwood 1943 1963

I was born in Oldham Royal in 1955, but lived for the first two years of my life in Bourne St, at no.45. on the corner just before backins and The Shoddy. I remember watching bales of old cotton being loaded from wagons using scissors grips and a chain, lifted into the air and into the building through a loading door above main entrance. My dad painted a sign on the wall of the Shoddy proclaiming "Polite Notice. No Parking", and my uncle Bob inscribed his name into the brickwork of this building just above the little garden that my granddad had cultivated along the right-hand side of the backins. There were four houses on our side, with three of them containing family members: my parents and auntie Alice, and my nan, Charlotte with my granddad, Jim Thomas. Next up the street was another auntie, Agnes Clegg and her husband, Fred. Actually she was my nan's cousin... then there was a house occupied by someone of whose identity I know nothing, but before that, nearer to Manchester Rd, was the first occupied house on the left going down the street, and that was rented by another auntie, Polly, and her husband, my uncle George Hall. She was my nan's sister, and George was the father of United's goalie when they won Division 2 back in 1935/6, John Hall. On the other side, near the railway sidings, a little further down, and opposite The Shoddy, the only people that I could identify would be the barbers, Shorrocks's, who had a shop on Manchester Rd. Being so little, I started off getting haircuts on a high chair with a height-adjusting seat in their front room near the siding wall. Today, there are no houses on Bourne St... but the street is still one of bare setts. It has never been covered by tarmac.
I do remember houses at the top, near Manchester Rd on the right as you went down the street, old ones with a door at the top of steps. That area became a carpark in the early 60s, I think. Now the Congie has long gone and a street cuts across the top of Bourne St - Clock St. There are no houses on Sefton St or Clowes St, either.