Triangle In The 60s

A Memory of Triangle.

My family and I moved to Hollin Street in 1961. I was a year old. One of my earliest memories was my first day at Triangle C of E School, my teacher was Mrs Wilkinson, the headmaster was Mr Gaskell (we called him Gasbags), my favourite teacher was Mr Sunderland. Several families lived on our street, the Thompsons, Greenwoods, Turners, Wadsworths, Kershaws, Richardsons and many more. We made our own entertaniment, making dens in the trees in the plantation at the side of the school playground, sliding down the grass bank at the other side of the school, going for picnics (jam sandwiches and a bottle of water), and there was usually at least ten kids, sometimes many more. We used to go nicking apples from the big house up Butterworth Lane (next to the well) or rhubarb from the allotments by Union Street, then there were trips to the park which was opposite Hertz the hairdresses and by the bread and chip shop. Sometimes we would take a walk up Millbank (Milkybank) or go to the cricket ground and if it was a really hot day take a paddle in the stream by the mill or wander up into bluebell woods. I remember going to the post office on a Saturday morning with my pocket money to buy my sweets before we all caught the bus to the Saturday morning pictures, the only other times we went to the shop was for our mum or the neighbours for shopping and it always seemed to include Bella non-aerosol hairspray, well, it was the era of backcombing and the beehive. Most of our time we played out in the street, playing marbles, hopscotch, skipping, but the best was in the school holidays when we would play rounders, cricket, football etc and most of the mums and on a weekend the dads would join in and if the ice cream van (Mr Whippy) came on you were nearly always guaranteed a cornet and he used to throw out collection cards which had pop stars of the day (Lulu, Sandi Shaw, Cilla Black etc) which we use to keep or swap them for sweets or marbles. Another visitor was when the Corona pop man came on the street, if we held up the washing that was hung across while he did his deliveries he would give us a bottle of pop to share when he got to the end. We had outside toilets with paper that was hung on the back of the door but to us it was also our dressing rooms, we would dress up in the most outragest clothes (bought at school jumble sales) and make our big entrance down the steps where we did our shows for the younger kids, I was always Cilla Black.