The Pit-Banks
The colliery which spawned them had shut down in the 1890's; my father had made a pen drawing of it from an old photograph.
By the 1930's the only survivor was a single-story, brick building,used by a crate-maker.It might once have been stables, or pit-head store-rooms; perhaps it was where miners had collected their lamps and brass number tags. Certainly none of us knew; we were not interested in the building. Our target was the slimy little pool at the foot of the grey marl pit-banks. Presumably this was where the crate-maker soaked the willow to make it pliable, though I never saw any, and it was not until years later that I realised why everyone called it the Crate pond.
We fished it for newts and 'askers'. The grey mud plastered boots socks and trousers, then dried a dirty white. Mother hated the place and could not understand why we had to go near those dreadful pit-banks. She never allowed any of my catch in the house, so they stayed in their jam jar on the bench by the garden shed, which was just as well, because by the following morning the jar would be empty and its escaped prisoners no doubt on their long treck back to the pond.
The pit-banks ('bonks' in local speech) were not the familiar cone-shape, but a low sprawl pocked with round hollows, ideal for playing Cowboys and Indians. We all took names of film heroes of the time. Tom Mix - was it spelt like that? - is the only name I remember. Unlike the other members of the gang I never went to the Saturday morning 'tuppenny rush' at the local
'pictures' and so did not become familiar with those great men.
The territory of the pit-banks lay between Fellbrook Lane,Bucknall and the large council estates of Abbey Hulton, from where came gangs of lads, rougher and tougher than any of us. In later years we engaged in ferocious twenty-a-side football games on Clough's field, which was only across the lane from the banks. But in the days of Cowboys and Indians the warfare was more naked and unashamed. The banks were rich in pieces of slate,('bass' we called them); we would spend hours hurling them at each other. Occasionally someone's head would be cut by one of these missiles and that brought angry parents and an enforced peace. More usually the battle would end with us in flight, pursued up Fellbrook Lane by the Abbeys. Like their brothers, the proverbial Red Indians of the film industry, they always seemed able to call up vast reserves. Outnumbered, we were forced to scatter to the safety of our homes: there was no equivalent of the U.S. cavalry.
There were two separate banks. The other was gravelly and reddish in colour, hence its name, the Red Ash bank. I wonder if the colliery had also done some iron smelting. I have seen similar heaps at Whiston, but that,I believe, was debris from copper furnaces.
The Red Ash bank overlooked James's pool, allegedly bottomless.
Horse, cart and driver had all disappeared in its grey depths, never to be recovered. No one knew who the victims were or when it had happened, but they had been told by someone who knew and so passed the story on to others. In winter, when it was cold enough, we used to slide on the ice. I was both terrified and conscious that my parents had forbidden me to go near. In such circumstances who could resist the dare? Once I fell, and as I hit the ice, felt a reverberating crack. It was a terrible moment, when in imagination I joined that driver with his horse and cart. But no, the surface did not give way, I picked myself up and went on sliding.
As a young man my father had loved ice-skating, on Trentham Lake and along the canal between Stoke and Trentham. He kept his skates and in later years, before I began my excursions there, he tried again on James's pool. But it must not have been the same, or maybe he worked such late hours and so many week-ends to keep the family and find the money for the mortgage payments. Anyway, he gave up skating after that. Fifty years later, when the bungalow was being sold after mother's death, I was clearing out the garden shed. Inside a tiny suitcase I found the skates, neatly wrapped in grease paper but irrecoverably rusted.
At the foot of the Red Ash bank, domed over with brickwork, was one of the mine's shafts. The other was about three hundred yards away, nearer the lane, a perilous hollow fenced in with barbed wire. These defences leaned at all angles, rotten and rusty; none of us ventured within that sinister circle. It was terrifying to think of the black world, silent except for the drip, drip, drip of water, how far down, down, down? Once, one Saturday or Sunday, I remember a crowd of men around it, local residents, including, I think, my father and grandfather.
The policeman and some firemen were there too. A dog had fallen into the shaft and they were trying to rescue it. It is a vague memory. Why am I sure the dog was a spaniel, yet cannot
recollect whether the rescuers were successful or not?
One other survival of the old colliery was the weighbridge house and presumably office, which had become a home for the Forrester family. It had an enormous cellar which you entered down steps by the side of the house. The son of the family, Gerald (Jeggie), was one of our gang, though regarded by us as something of an eccentric, not particularly interested in football or cricket, nor for that matter in lobbing lumps of bass at the heads of Abbey Hultonites. Mr. Forrester, a small, dark-featured man, owned the field which surrounded his house and extended to our back garden fence; it had once been part of the colliery. Father called him Aubrey, though that was not his
name. He never used the field for anything, but every year he would burn off the grass, which did not please my mother. "He always waits until I have put my washing out," she would declare. Father didn't mind so much, until one year, Aubrey set fire to our fence as well. Then there were heated exchanges.
Most of the year the field was a great place for the gang, secure from all but the occasional wandering Abbey Hultonite. As the time for paying dog licences drew near, however, it would become inhabited by a daily-increasing mob of strays of all colours and sizes.I can still see one; huge, reddish-hued and with a lionlike mane. They became both a pest and a peril, scavenging in gardens, constantly warring among themselves. Our respectable, licensed pets would be drawn toward them, sometimes to stay out for days, returning filthy and glassy-eyed. Eventually the police dog-catchers would arrive with their van and the hordes of Attila would disappear for another
year.
Playing in the field was safe as long as Jeggie was with us. If he was not there, Mr. Forrester would like as not chase us off. The field was a good route to the pit-banks and James's pool. Troops of boys would trundle up our path, across the lawn and over the fence. Father grumbled at this, particularly when he was trying to grow a hedge to keep arsonist Aubrey at bay.
My first experience of real smoking - not the rolled brown paper in our garden shed - was in a dugout den we had constructed by the side of a gulley in the field. We clubbed our pennies together and one, more streetwise than the rest of us, fetched five Park Drive from the local barber's shop. I can see the neat, narrow packet now; I think it cost 2«d. One good thing the experiment did for me - it made me so sick that I never smoked again, not even during my three years in the army when we had a free tobacco ration. Only when I was at University and twenty six years old did I fall for the habit and this time it took fourteen years to kick it.
Forrester's house was well back from Fellbrook Lane. A long straight path with a line of tall Manchester poplars along one side of it led to the front. It was an approach we never used. Our route was always across the field, round the back past what appeared to be a wooden holiday bungalow filled with lumber. Approaching the back door it was vital to look out for Rover, Forrester's great dog who looked half Alsatian, half Red Setter and was a silly sex-maniac rather than a savage beast. The grid by their kitchen door always seemed to be half-filled with cloudy water and there was that sickly-sweet smell of clogged drains.
The remains of the bridge which had once carried the railway over Fellbrook Lane and on to the weighbridge house still stood, two retaining walls of immaculate, cut stone one on either side of the sunken lane.On the far side, the embankment where the tracks had led toward the junction with the Stoke to Leek line, could be traced easily. It is now a pathway leading into Bucknall park; the retaining walls have gone. It was possible to scramble up on to the parapet of the far wall. A narrow ledge was bounded by a fence, just room enough for a foothold. And it was here that the bigger lads played the most famous of their dare games. The idea was to ease your way to the edge, then over the parapet to hang by your hands and finally to drop on to the lane below. I suppose it would be about ten feet. I had to have a go and eventually, urged on by the darers, I dropped into the void. I realise now that it was necessary to drop lightly on the balls of the feet, bending at the knees to take the impact. Unfortunately I crashed rigid-legged and on my heels, jarring my back, hideously. I must have been fortunate not to do any permanemt damage. I did, however, start a monstrous nose-bleed. Mother must have had a shock to see me being led up the path blood-smeared, tear-stained and hobbling.
Around our garden were lots of large, dressed stones. Father used them to make steps down to the lawn or for rockeries and borders. He had dug them out when we moved in - a time I was too young to have any recollection of. They had formed a cobbled walk or cart-way from the lane to the colliery and stretched diagonally across what became our front garden. some of them may be lurking there still.
Copyright © Bernard Gilhooly - All Rights Reserved
By the 1930's the only survivor was a single-story, brick building,used by a crate-maker.It might once have been stables, or pit-head store-rooms; perhaps it was where miners had collected their lamps and brass number tags. Certainly none of us knew; we were not interested in the building. Our target was the slimy little pool at the foot of the grey marl pit-banks. Presumably this was where the crate-maker soaked the willow to make it pliable, though I never saw any, and it was not until years later that I realised why everyone called it the Crate pond.
We fished it for newts and 'askers'. The grey mud plastered boots socks and trousers, then dried a dirty white. Mother hated the place and could not understand why we had to go near those dreadful pit-banks. She never allowed any of my catch in the house, so they stayed in their jam jar on the bench by the garden shed, which was just as well, because by the following morning the jar would be empty and its escaped prisoners no doubt on their long treck back to the pond.
The pit-banks ('bonks' in local speech) were not the familiar cone-shape, but a low sprawl pocked with round hollows, ideal for playing Cowboys and Indians. We all took names of film heroes of the time. Tom Mix - was it spelt like that? - is the only name I remember. Unlike the other members of the gang I never went to the Saturday morning 'tuppenny rush' at the local
'pictures' and so did not become familiar with those great men.
The territory of the pit-banks lay between Fellbrook Lane,Bucknall and the large council estates of Abbey Hulton, from where came gangs of lads, rougher and tougher than any of us. In later years we engaged in ferocious twenty-a-side football games on Clough's field, which was only across the lane from the banks. But in the days of Cowboys and Indians the warfare was more naked and unashamed. The banks were rich in pieces of slate,('bass' we called them); we would spend hours hurling them at each other. Occasionally someone's head would be cut by one of these missiles and that brought angry parents and an enforced peace. More usually the battle would end with us in flight, pursued up Fellbrook Lane by the Abbeys. Like their brothers, the proverbial Red Indians of the film industry, they always seemed able to call up vast reserves. Outnumbered, we were forced to scatter to the safety of our homes: there was no equivalent of the U.S. cavalry.
There were two separate banks. The other was gravelly and reddish in colour, hence its name, the Red Ash bank. I wonder if the colliery had also done some iron smelting. I have seen similar heaps at Whiston, but that,I believe, was debris from copper furnaces.
The Red Ash bank overlooked James's pool, allegedly bottomless.
Horse, cart and driver had all disappeared in its grey depths, never to be recovered. No one knew who the victims were or when it had happened, but they had been told by someone who knew and so passed the story on to others. In winter, when it was cold enough, we used to slide on the ice. I was both terrified and conscious that my parents had forbidden me to go near. In such circumstances who could resist the dare? Once I fell, and as I hit the ice, felt a reverberating crack. It was a terrible moment, when in imagination I joined that driver with his horse and cart. But no, the surface did not give way, I picked myself up and went on sliding.
As a young man my father had loved ice-skating, on Trentham Lake and along the canal between Stoke and Trentham. He kept his skates and in later years, before I began my excursions there, he tried again on James's pool. But it must not have been the same, or maybe he worked such late hours and so many week-ends to keep the family and find the money for the mortgage payments. Anyway, he gave up skating after that. Fifty years later, when the bungalow was being sold after mother's death, I was clearing out the garden shed. Inside a tiny suitcase I found the skates, neatly wrapped in grease paper but irrecoverably rusted.
At the foot of the Red Ash bank, domed over with brickwork, was one of the mine's shafts. The other was about three hundred yards away, nearer the lane, a perilous hollow fenced in with barbed wire. These defences leaned at all angles, rotten and rusty; none of us ventured within that sinister circle. It was terrifying to think of the black world, silent except for the drip, drip, drip of water, how far down, down, down? Once, one Saturday or Sunday, I remember a crowd of men around it, local residents, including, I think, my father and grandfather.
The policeman and some firemen were there too. A dog had fallen into the shaft and they were trying to rescue it. It is a vague memory. Why am I sure the dog was a spaniel, yet cannot
recollect whether the rescuers were successful or not?
One other survival of the old colliery was the weighbridge house and presumably office, which had become a home for the Forrester family. It had an enormous cellar which you entered down steps by the side of the house. The son of the family, Gerald (Jeggie), was one of our gang, though regarded by us as something of an eccentric, not particularly interested in football or cricket, nor for that matter in lobbing lumps of bass at the heads of Abbey Hultonites. Mr. Forrester, a small, dark-featured man, owned the field which surrounded his house and extended to our back garden fence; it had once been part of the colliery. Father called him Aubrey, though that was not his
name. He never used the field for anything, but every year he would burn off the grass, which did not please my mother. "He always waits until I have put my washing out," she would declare. Father didn't mind so much, until one year, Aubrey set fire to our fence as well. Then there were heated exchanges.
Most of the year the field was a great place for the gang, secure from all but the occasional wandering Abbey Hultonite. As the time for paying dog licences drew near, however, it would become inhabited by a daily-increasing mob of strays of all colours and sizes.I can still see one; huge, reddish-hued and with a lionlike mane. They became both a pest and a peril, scavenging in gardens, constantly warring among themselves. Our respectable, licensed pets would be drawn toward them, sometimes to stay out for days, returning filthy and glassy-eyed. Eventually the police dog-catchers would arrive with their van and the hordes of Attila would disappear for another
year.
Playing in the field was safe as long as Jeggie was with us. If he was not there, Mr. Forrester would like as not chase us off. The field was a good route to the pit-banks and James's pool. Troops of boys would trundle up our path, across the lawn and over the fence. Father grumbled at this, particularly when he was trying to grow a hedge to keep arsonist Aubrey at bay.
My first experience of real smoking - not the rolled brown paper in our garden shed - was in a dugout den we had constructed by the side of a gulley in the field. We clubbed our pennies together and one, more streetwise than the rest of us, fetched five Park Drive from the local barber's shop. I can see the neat, narrow packet now; I think it cost 2«d. One good thing the experiment did for me - it made me so sick that I never smoked again, not even during my three years in the army when we had a free tobacco ration. Only when I was at University and twenty six years old did I fall for the habit and this time it took fourteen years to kick it.
Forrester's house was well back from Fellbrook Lane. A long straight path with a line of tall Manchester poplars along one side of it led to the front. It was an approach we never used. Our route was always across the field, round the back past what appeared to be a wooden holiday bungalow filled with lumber. Approaching the back door it was vital to look out for Rover, Forrester's great dog who looked half Alsatian, half Red Setter and was a silly sex-maniac rather than a savage beast. The grid by their kitchen door always seemed to be half-filled with cloudy water and there was that sickly-sweet smell of clogged drains.
The remains of the bridge which had once carried the railway over Fellbrook Lane and on to the weighbridge house still stood, two retaining walls of immaculate, cut stone one on either side of the sunken lane.On the far side, the embankment where the tracks had led toward the junction with the Stoke to Leek line, could be traced easily. It is now a pathway leading into Bucknall park; the retaining walls have gone. It was possible to scramble up on to the parapet of the far wall. A narrow ledge was bounded by a fence, just room enough for a foothold. And it was here that the bigger lads played the most famous of their dare games. The idea was to ease your way to the edge, then over the parapet to hang by your hands and finally to drop on to the lane below. I suppose it would be about ten feet. I had to have a go and eventually, urged on by the darers, I dropped into the void. I realise now that it was necessary to drop lightly on the balls of the feet, bending at the knees to take the impact. Unfortunately I crashed rigid-legged and on my heels, jarring my back, hideously. I must have been fortunate not to do any permanemt damage. I did, however, start a monstrous nose-bleed. Mother must have had a shock to see me being led up the path blood-smeared, tear-stained and hobbling.
Around our garden were lots of large, dressed stones. Father used them to make steps down to the lawn or for rockeries and borders. He had dug them out when we moved in - a time I was too young to have any recollection of. They had formed a cobbled walk or cart-way from the lane to the colliery and stretched diagonally across what became our front garden. some of them may be lurking there still.
Copyright © Bernard Gilhooly - All Rights Reserved