Growing Up In West Gorton, Manchester 12.

A Memory of West Gorton.

I was born at 124 Clowes Street, West Gorton, Manchester 12, and soon after my birth, we moved near to the Beswick Co-operative Wholesale Society Butchers' shop and next-door-but-one to the Beswick Co-operative Wholesale Society Grocer's shop - all of which stood on a block between William Street and Elizabeth Street.
Directly opposite our house on Clowes Street was Bert Hall's butchers' shop and the house of a blind piano tuner and teacher.
I had two half-brothers, Peter (who died many years ago) and Philip (still well and aged 82 years) from Dad's first marriage, who lived on the Prison Ground across Hyde Road, with Dad's sisters and their families, and my younger brother Chris was born a couple of years after me.
I was at St Marks' School (between William Street and Robert Street) from 1953-1959, after which I went to Manchester Central Grammar School in Whitworth Street, Manchester, whilst our Chris went to Openshaw Technical High School on Pottery Lane, near Ashbury's Station.
Our 'gang' in West Gorton included Tony Latham, Alan (Bunny) Clark, Keith (Fudgie) Brooks, Barry Slevin, David Roberts, Frank Partland, Michael Williams, Stuart Sherriff, Eddie, Peter, Brian and Raymond Frost, Bernard Burke, Brian Ravenscroft and Stanley Gaunt.
We played all the usual street games, like Rally-Vo, Kick-Can, Hide and Seek, Racing 'Bogies' and Paper-Trail, but we never seemed to get into trouble, as far as I remember.
Saint Marks' School was a good school, the Head Mistress was Mrs Clayton and her Deputy was a sadistic hateful man (who nobody had a good word for), the caretaker being Mr Ephrahim Arthurs, who lived in a terraced house on nearby Clowes Street.
My earliest memories of school in 1953 were : The Coronation of Queen Elizabeth the Second (when all the kids got a free decorated mug) the annual Rose Queen Pageant in the summer, playing in the sand-pit and the water-tank, and painting on wooden easels with basic powder-based poster paints (paper was so short at the time that we painted on old newspapers, pinned to the easels) and taking home hyacinths at end of term in tall glass vases, to be looked after during the holidays.
We had a council-issued radio on which we would hear stories broadcast, and the classrooms had floor-to-ceiling glass-paneled dividing screens, allowing a large room to be used as two separate classrooms, heated with huge cast-iron radiators fed by a coke-fired furnace located near the back of the adjacent church and kept alight by the caretaker Mr Arthurs.
We had a good football team and once a week were marched across Clowes Street, over Thomas Street and down to Bennett Street Rec (Recreation Ground) in nearby Ardwick, which was a cinder-topped pitch that caused bad scrapes and cuts whenever you fell over.
Boots were old-fashioned ankle-high leather ones with six or eight studs hammered into the soles and laced up tight, and the ball was known as a 'Casey' or 'Case-ball', which I never understood why.
I took my eleven plus in the winter/spring of 1958/1959 at Openshaw Technical High School, when I walked there with a mate, Keith (Fudgie) Brooks, but only two of us passed for Grammar School, me and a lad called Billy Harper who lived at his parents sweet shop on the Prison Ground, in Ashmore Street I believe.
All in all, they were happy days, no distractions like TV's, Play Stations, Mobile Phones, i-Phones or the like, just conversations with others, laughter, banter a few tears and some great mates, some of whom I still keep in touch with today, some 72 years since we started at St Marks. School.
Simple, but Happy Days, back then.
If you know any of the names mentioned here, please get in touch by email.

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