My Roots

I have always threatened to write a book about my experiences which are many and varied, so those of you who find it interesting, perhaps you will become regular readers and just maybe take a look at my website. So here go's.

Born in Hope Hospital, Salford England, June 12th 1942, six week premature. Subsequently I spent the first three months of my life in an incubator. The day that I was taken home from the unit a bomb landed on It. you could say that I had a charmed life. This was to become a bit of a pattern. On this theme we had to be evacuated to the moors between Lancashire and Yorkshire because of yet another bomb.

The area we went to was out on the moors some eight miles from the small town of Littleborough, poulation at this time being approximately 2000. The nearest hamlet, which we had to pass through in order to reach "Longden End", the name of the house we had moved was called Rakewood, population 28.

Longden End was a large house built of local stone. Formerly the managers house for the local water works. It is set on the banks of a small brook in a steep valley. nearest neighbours were two farm houses one and a half miles in either direction. A lovely but isolated spot. It was going to prove an ideal place for my brother Peter and I to be brought up. The problems and they were many, my mother being a single parrent mainly had to deal with.

The house had no water, lighting, gas, telephone, electricity or sanitation. There was no transport,shop, street lights and no proper road surface..She had to work, as in those days there was no welfare. In fact she was a remarkable woman. On reflection I do not know how she managed.