"When I began this record of life and conditions as then existed, I was advised to weave the village history around the story of a my own life. I had no skill as an author or writer, but began with the object of producing an autobiography, recording the wonderfully happy life of our childhood against the background of life in the village. I hope I succeed in holding the reader's interest."

The City is the name by which the village of New Manchester, near Mosley Common, is commonly known. It lies in the extreme east of the former Tyldesley Urban District, close to an historic boundary. A short walk from the village lies a boundary stone, which over the centuries has marked the division of the Hundred of Salford and the Hundred of West Derby; the boundary of the parishes of Eccles and Leigh; the meeting point of the urban districts of Tyldesley, Worsley and Little Hulton; and more recently the metropolitan districts of Wigan and Salford. At the boundary stone, near to Ellenbrook chapel it is possible to put one foot in Tyldesley, the other in Worsley, and a hand in Little Hulton at the point where the Ellen Brook flows under the road. Just to the south of the village is the route of the Roman road from Manchester to Wigan.

Because of its location, the road into the village was never in a good state of repair. In describing the area of the village to those who have never visited, one should make clear its complete isolation from all the surrounding small towns and villages. There was, and remains, only one way in or out of The City with a vehicle. This was partly due to the building of railways in the 19th century, with three lines almost completely surrounding the village.

To the south of the village the London and North Western Railway from Wigan to Manchester ran from west to east. North of the village was a high embankment holding the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway, which cut the village off from Little Hulton; this line ran roughly north-west to south-east. (The LNWR and the LYR, together with the Midland Railway, merged in 1923 to form the London, Midland and Scottish Railway. This name appears on later maps.) To the east of the village, the Bridgewater Collieries mineral railway ran roughly north to south, thus enclosing New Manchester on three sides.

Because the area to the west of the village was farmland, no vehicle could enter or leave the village without coming under one of the railway bridges, and the only real access was from the south, under the LNWR line, using City Road. And so it remains today. This line was closed in the 1960s and the railway bridge has gone, but the embankment remains (pictured left), and City Road is still the only access route to the village for vehicles.

Including farms and smallholdings, the village comprised some 70 houses. I suspect that the isolation of the village and its people played a large part in developing the close community spirit that undoubtedly existed. Added to this was the role of the Primitive Methodist Church and Sunday School. A third factor was that the people were all poor together, and this compelled mutual assistance as one after the other fell on bad times. There were many social services in the village, which the authorities have since tried to establish generally. It was the richest communal living that has ever existed anywhere, I feel sure.

Many of the street names associated with the local coal mining industry are derived from places in Manchester and Salford. This is because miners came from these towns to work in the Duke of Bridgewater's early mines, and he provided cottages. Place names thus arose which had no direct local significance. The village was known as New Manchester by 1803.

The last row of houses up City Road, beyond Leyland's Farm (not to be confused with a smallholding called Leylands near the entrance to the village), was known as Shude Hill, after that district of Manchester, and Gatley Row was at the top of New Row.

New Manchester became known locally as The City. The street sign City Road was placed at the junction with Bridgewater Road, and the name New Manchester was placed on the gable end of the long row in City Road.

Many of the houses in New Manchester were owned by the Bridgewater Trustees, and were built in the 18th and 19th centuries. The rents were between two shillings and sixpence and five shillings per week (ie between 12 and 25 pence today). They had flag floors and nine-inch solid walls of hand-made or wire-cut bricks. There was a fireplace in the living room, and a smaller one in the front bedroom. There was a wash boiler, coal fired, in the kitchen. The houses were lit with candles and oil lamps, and later by gas. The row of the houses with the gable end on City Road had no back doors, and in the old beams in Gatley Row, supporting the upstairs floor, could be seen notches that had been cut to bolt the hand-looms.

The village had no flagged footpaths, nor kerb stones. There were drains to take the surface water from the roofs of the houses. There was no sewage system, as all the trustees' houses had privy middens; there would be a board at the bottom of the garden, with one or two holes to sit over. Later some houses had tippler toilets, which over-balanced, and emptied into a sewage system; later still, water closets were built, either outside or inside the houses.

The first residents in the village were farmers, working part-time in industry. Some of the farms were too small to provide a living for a family: they would be described as smallholdings, having a few cows or pigs, and poultry. The larger farms would have between 10 and 20 cows, a horse, a couple of pigs and poultry. At the beginning of the 20^th century there were two smallholdings and three farms within the village, and these adjoined two or three other farms in the areas of Tyldesley and Worsley.

The two smallholdings were tenanted by Jimmy Rothwell and Tom Markland. The former was at the entrance to the village, near the Manchester to Wigan railway line. The latter was at the west side of the village, and was known as Leyland's, though it is not to be confused with Leyland's Farm.

The three farm tenants were my uncle, George Roscoe, at Leyland's Farm, Derek Higginbottom at Common Head Farm, and Rodger Ashton at Platt's Fold Farm. Derek Higginbottom and Roger Ashton were full-time farmers, but my uncle George worked only part-time at Leyland's Farm, and also worked as an attendant looking after the fan engines at the colliery. His sister, Dinah, returned to the farm with her two daughters when she was widowed. Members of the village helped at peak periods of work on the farm, such as hay-making time. My brother George, the eldest of our family and a bricklayer, could use the farm machinery, such as the mowing machine, and did most of the mowing. My youngest brother, David, and myself were sent out to help on the farm.

Nearby, Jim Grundy lived at Turncroft Farm, in the direction of Parr Bridge, where there was a level crossing over the railway line for the farmer to gain access to parts of his land, some of which extended to the village. Near Turncroft was a hamlet known as The Gore, and an isolated house referred to as Strawberry Gardens because the tenant, Mr. Clare, grew the fruit in his large garden. A gore is a triangular piece of material, such as would be used to make a skirt, and this smallholding was so named because of the shape of its land.

Alan Burns was at Stone House Farm in Tyldesley, while Mr. Thornley lived at a farm in Little Hulton, to the north of the village. The small Hurst's Farm, adjoining the Yew Tree Inn at Mosley Common, was tenanted by Mr. Davy. Another smallholding near the Yew Tree Inn was farmed by Tom Tyldesley.

The village had a number of large holes which had been made by the excavation of clay for brick-making. One was known as Th'owd Hollow (the old hollow). Down the Valley (at the bottom of Tho'wd Hollow) were two houses, occupied by Jack Seddon and by Andrew Kay and family, and a single house at Keeper's Delph, where Sammy Kay and his family lived. There were pig sties here, and the pigs were kept for the bacon they provided for the family. It was a common thing when a pig was killed to see a ham or bacon, or a flitch of bacon hanging from a hook in the pantry.

A few hens were kept in the back yards of many houses, with cotes made from the boxes that oranges were delivered to greengrocers in. My father kept hens in our back yard, and my brother David (two years younger than myself) and I had bantam hens and a cock as pets. The next door neighbour also had bantams, and it was a constant worry making sure that the cocks did not fight each other when we let them out of the pen for better picking - especially as their cock was bigger than ours, and sure to win.

There were a number of large holes in the village from which clay had been extracted for brick-making. I have not yet been able to trace the site of the kilns, but some of the old trustees' houses (demolished in 1938) were built from hand-made bricks. Brick-making moved to Ellenbrook, and was on a much larger scale than previously. Here brick kilns were built for making wire-cut bricks to be used in constructing brick arches down the pits. They were also for the inside walls of brick-built houses, which had cavity walls and pressed bricks on the outside.

The brickworks was under the administration of Mosley Common Colliery, and the electrical plant was installed and maintained by the colliery's electrical staff. I was engaged in installing the electrical equipment for brick-making during this period. Clay was extracted by picks and spades from the land surrounding the brickworks. The area covered some one hundred acres, or more, and went to a depth of seventy or eighty feet. Much of this land had not been backfilled by the early 1980s when these notes were written. There was an endless rope haulage, to which the tubs full of clay were lashed by chains - similar to the mining method at the colliery. These were wound by electric haulage up the long sloping gangway to the tipplers at the top of the gangway, and the clay fell into the rolling mill with the revolving pan, and the heavy rollers crushing it through the holes in the bottom of the pan. After further crushing with finer rollers, it was pressed through the die, and extruded into long lengths of clay, 9 inches by 4 and a half inches, and finally cut to 3 inches thick by wire cutting through the extrusion. The bricks were then stacked on trolleys, and left in the drying sheds for days, after which they were stacked in the kiln and bake-burned for two or three weeks. The kilns were then opened, and the bricks allowed to cool, ready for use.

At one stage a mechanical digger was installed to dig the clay out, and fill it into the tubs, or small wagons. The navvies thought they would be out of work, but in fact the production of clay by the digger was so increased that it became necessary to engage five or six more men to cope with the work - though not, of course, for digging clay. The brickworks flourished during the 1930s, when there was great demand for bricks to support suburban development, but production was ended during the war in 1941, never to recommence.

An attempt was made recently to make bricks from colliery spoil, the dirt wound out of the coal mine, some of which had been tipped in the hole from which the clay had been extracted. This did not continue, presumably because it was not a success. Thousands of tons of dirt, shale and rock were wound from the mines when mechanical coal cutting replaced the pick and spade method. There was a problem of disposal of this waste, and any space was used for dumping. The clay hole was therefore an ideal place, which restored the land to its former level.

Many mills were built in Walkden and Farnworth, and one at Parr Bridge, just over the Common on the way to Tyldesley, taking water from Shep Brook. The Walkden mills were known as Rothwells, New Mill, Howarth, Burgess and Ledwards, and hundreds of women and men were employed in them.

Work began at 6am, ending at 5.30pm, or 12 noon on Saturdays. The working week lasted 54 hours. There was no transport, except tramcars running from Mosley Common and along the A6 to Swinton and up Bolton Road to Farnworth and Bolton. These were of no help to those living in The City and working in the mills of Walkden. People walked in their clogs to their places of work, and were fined a few coppers if they were a few minutes late. My four sisters, Margaret Ellen, Annie, Lily and May walked to work from the village, and later from Commonside when we moved next to the school over the Common.

There were no facilities for eating or cooking meals at the mills and mines, and food was carried to work in baskets or tied in red handkerchiefs with white spots. Two meals, breakfast and lunch, were needed to cover the day from leaving home at 5.15am to returning after 6pm. The girls had an arrangement to eat their food in local houses near the mills, and paid the tenant for the dining facility and hot water. Works canteens were a much later provision, mainly during the second world war.

Wages were very low, and some of the mill owners were men who had risen from being workmen, and who had invested a little money in cotton. Many of them worked in the mills themselves until the mills began to prosper, and they became fully occupied in management and administration. Two that I knew personally went on to the cotton exchange in Manchester: Mr. Barnes and Mr. Robert Howarth. Mr. Howarth's nephew and Mr. Rothwell managed the mill later for Mr. Howarth. There was often a friendly relationship between the employer and the employee, perhaps because the former had experienced the latter's position. But other employers became greedy for wealth, while employees badly needed more of the spoils of industry to live.

One of the large holes caused by clay extraction for brick-making was known to us all as Th'owd Hollow, The Old Hollow. Th'owd Hollow, which is of course the Lancashire dialect way of describing it, was opposite the church, and extended to Helen Dobinson's shop. It was used as a dumping ground for anything that people wanted to dispose of, but we children spent many happy hours playing there. We hid and played cowboys and Indians, or dug holes as caves, or camped out. It was a grand area in which to use our imagination, to develop leadership, and to invent games.

Games were played in groups by all the children in the village. There were no flagged footpaths which could be used for Hop-scotch, nor kerb stones, so we marked the dirt path out into squares, using our iron clogs as the marker, and hopped along knocking the scotch with our clog sole from one square to the next.

Whip and top were played where the road surface was hard. Marbles, merps as we called them, presented no problem: a small ring was scratched into the dirt, and the game was enjoyed just the same, with merps changing hands as the game proceeded. The marbles were mainly of stone, but some were of glass with fancy patterns in; we called these glass alleys, and used them as tors - the marbles we flicked with a thumb and finger to knock the stone ones out of the ring. You kept the marbles that you managed to knock out of the ring.

Another favourite game played by boys and men was called Piggy. A hard piece of wood, usually a knot out of a railway sleeper, was shaped at one end like a pig's nose, and measured about two inches long. It was put on a flat stone, and the point hit by a pick handle shaft, causing it to jump up in the air, whereupon it was struck by the pick shaft again, and driven as hard and as far as possible. Your opponent then had to skip or jump to where the piggy landed, and the number of skips counted was the measure of your score. Sometimes men played this game for money.

Trust Weight was played in teams. Two or three boys would bend down, the first leaning with his head on the rails around the field, the second with his head tucked down on the shoulder of the first, and the third leaning onto the second. The other team would then jump, straggle-legged, onto the back of the first team to break them down. Hence the name, Trust Weight.

Playing Tippy Finger, one boy or girl stood facing the wall, with eyes closed and hands behind the back. The other children were behind, and one would quickly tip the finger of the child facing the wall, who then had to guess which child had done it. He would then say how far someone should run, and if he had guessed correctly, the child who had tipped his finger had to run the distance. If his guess was wrong, he had to run the distance himself.

In Whistle Bird, a boy would go out into the dark and hide. He would whistle with his fingers in his mouth, and the rest had to find him. It was like Hide and Seek. If we could not find him we had to call for a second whistle by shouting "Whistle Bird".

We played a game called Billy Fall Brick, in which we put duck stones (as we called them) one on top if the other, about 18 inches high, then knocked them down with another duck stone. Duck stones were small boulders, about the size of, or slightly larger than, a cricket ball.

As I write we have just entered 1983. New Year's Eve brings back many memories of the fun we had. It was of great importance who entered the house first at the dawn of a new year, as superstition had it that this would determine your fortune. A man of dark complexion was said to bring good tidings.

We all looked forward to being old enough to go out all night carol singing, assembling in the school before midnight, wrapped up in scarves, warm clothes and heavy boots. We borrowed lamps from the colliery to illuminate the music and the paths down to the houses, for some had long gardens, and only the main streets were lit by gas lamps. We announced which end of the street we would start after the clocks had struck 12 and the whistles had stopped blowing. The men carried a little organ, which Sam Lunn, or before him Jim Barr, would repair. We were all brought to attention as we gathered around the door, and silence was called for by Sam or John Booth before we started to sing.

No house was left out, including the farm houses; some opened their doors after we had sung, and the table would be laid with food and drink. We would eat, then sing a second carol inside the house, and the householder would give us a donation before we moved onto next door. If we were not invited inside, a bedroom window may open and a donation given; we would invite a request for a second carol before moving on again. This would continue until 8am the following morning, by which time we were all played out and singing had become painful. The schedule became so heavy that in later years we divided into two parties, each covering half of the village.

Grandma Lloyd acted as the village midwife before there were professionals. She saw into this world every child born in the village, and she laid out every corpse that left the village. She also treated people's illnesses. Whether simple or serious, she was involved. She lived to be over 90 years of age, and made her own shroud to be ready for her own departure. I think she thought that no one else was capable or willing. I remember her telling me of these preparations for her own departure, as though she was going on holiday, and leaving the family with full provisions until her return.

Just south of New Manchester village, where City Road meets Bridgewater Road, there was a crossroads into the yard of Mosley Common Colliery. The mine was an enormous influence on the whole life of the village. It was the major pit in the area during the 20th century, and it was here that Edwin Roscoe served his apprenticeship as an electrician. Undergoing huge investment in machinery, and employing 3,000 workers at its peak, it was a national show pit during its 1950s heyday. It ceased production in 1968. A number of smaller pits were worked in the immediate area during the 19th and early 20th centuries. These included Gatley Pit (also known as City Pit) and Ellenbrook Pit, which are referred to below.

I was familiar with the site of Gatley Pit, as it was in the north-west corner of the three-acre sports field bought in 1921 by the Trustees of Mosley Common Primitive Methodist Fellowship Circle from the Bridgewater Trustees. I uncovered the brickwork around the shaft as a young man, along with other members of the organisation. We planted a poplar tree in the shaft, which grows today, and is the second tree from the roadway. The pit bank is close by, in the next field nearer to New Row. The coal seams were Brassy (266 feet deep) and the Rams (360 feet deep). The pit ceased production in 1877.

Gatley Pit was a lonely place, and there were some rough characters hanging around there. A story was told of a man who was missing, and legend has it that the heel irons from his boots were found in the ash from the boiler, suggesting he had been burned.

There was another shaft about a quarter of a mile to the north called Madam's Wood Pit, and another at Ellenbrook. A railway line connected Gatley Pit and Ellenbrook Pit, and another junction line connected Madam's Wood Pit and Ellenbrook. It was on this line that a dog known as Old Dick Evans was killed by a wagon, when taking his master's dinner to Madam's Wood Pit so the story goes. A stone (pictured left) was laid to mark the dog's burial place at the edge of Four Acre Field, and is still to be seen alongside the path leading from Gatley Pit to Little Hulton.

The loaded wagons, with a brakeman on board, travelled downhill by force of gravity; they were pulled back up the incline by ponies which travelled downhill on the back of the wagon. I do not remember any actual railway lines, but the dirt or ash track on which they ran was very clear, and some of it exists to this day. Pictured right is the path of a former tramway, which approached the village from the North West.

The site of another shaft was in Gulliver's field, about 100 yards north of the house. There was a colliery spoil heap here until the new sewage works was built near the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway line, when Mr. Gulliver had the heap levelled down by the bulldozers working on the sewage works.

At one time Mosley Common Pit was a model colliery. In 1915 it had three shafts winding coal, and an air shaft across Bridgewater Road, known as the Fan Pit (No.3 shaft).

The winding of coal was at No.1 pit, but this was also the pumping shaft. Here a beam engine had a 72 inch diameter cylinder on one end of the beam, and a long beam of wood at the other end, which went down the shaft and operated a pump at the bottom; this forced water from the mines up a pipe which ran up the pit shaft. The beam was some 10 to 15 yards long, and stroke of the engine some 6 to 8 feet, doing 2 to 3 strokes per minute. These figures are only from memory, not exact, but not wildly inaccurate. The shaft was 15 feet in diameter and 320 yards deep, and had cages, each with four tubs, one above the other. The winder had to deck - as it was termed - bring the cages level with the pit bank four times per wind. The loaded tubs were pulled out by the banksman, and empty tubs pushed in place, at right angles to the ones removed. This happened again at the bottom of the shaft, in reverse of course.

No. 2 shaft, which was only 30 to 40 yards away from No.1, wound six tubs at each wind. It had three decks, with two tubs per deck, and was of the push-through type, where the full tubs push out the empty ones at the bottom, and vice versa at the top. I think this shaft was 460 yards deep and 18 feet in diameter.

No.4 shaft wound eight tubs per wind, with two decks and four tubs per deck, again pushed through two tubs side by side. The shaft was some 200 yards from Nos.1 and 2, and was 640 yards deep and 25 feet in diameter. All the electric cables for underground lighting and power went down this shaft, and turned in the mouthings for No.1 and No.2 pits.

Some 2,000 men were employed at Mosley Common Pit. In 1915, when I began working here, No.1 pit had 10 to 20 ponies underground, drawing the tubs from the distant mine workings to the bottom of the shaft. A man by the name of Branchflower looked after them, and the term "looked after" reflects the care he provided. He cut grass on the surface and sent it down to ponies, and he kept them clean in the stables down below, where electric lights were installed. They were in the intake of air from the bottom of the shaft.

All three pits were 'downcast' shafts, that is the air from the surface went down them and was sucked out after going round the working at No.3 shaft, the Fan Pit. Eventually there was a change of air circulation, and the ponies were in the return air, which caused the provender which they ate to become alive with cockroaches. The ponies were brought out, and we installed electric haulage to drive the ropes.

The word 'tubs' was in common use, no doubt from an earlier period when baskets and tubs had been used to carry the coal, or to be slid along the ground. The tubs were small wagons, which ran on wheels with flanges that went on narrow railway lines of about 20 inch gauge. A tub of coal, when full and ready for sending out of the mine, weighed between seven and eight hundredweight. Each tub was weighed in on a weighing machine at the surface, and the weight was indicated in the weigh cabin. The weight of each was recorded by two men, one employed by the mine owners, the other from the Miners' Federation. The latter was known as the Check Weigh Man. The miners who filled the tubs fixed on the side a small tin disc, known as a tally, which showed their numbers. Outside the weighing office a boy checked the number on the tally, and shouted this into a speaking tube to the men checking the reading of the weighing machine. There was a name for every number called, rather like in a bingo hall; he would call out "125, Batty; 289, Toddy", and so on.

I will briefly record the process. If a tub contained too much stone, or dirt, it was ordered to be tipped over on the pit bank, the stone picked out, weighed, and left with the tally for all to see as the miners returned. But this could be caused by a roof fall into the tub after it had been filled with coal. The tubs were never filled to the top, but to about six inches below, otherwise they were too heavy to handle or to lift onto the rails if they ran off. After weighing, the tubs went on an incline into the tippler. This was a revolving drum with rails in, and a brake handle. The operator would release the brake and the drum would turn to bring another set of rails level; he would then hold the drum steady as a second tub went into the tippler. Again he released the brake, and the drum would turn again. By this time the first tub would be on its side and would be tipping out the coal. Thus the process continued.

Some drums tipped two tubs at once, and all had three sets of rails inside. The coal fell onto shakers, which were large trays, shaking backwards and forwards. The shakers had graded holes in them to allow the different sizes of coal to pass through. Different sizes of coal, known as nuts, cobbles and cobs, finally dropped onto slow moving metal belts, which were at table-height. Here men and women stood on each side, picking out any stone that passed, and throwing the stone onto another belt which tipped into a railway wagon. The different grades of coal were also dropped into wagons under the belt room, and were dispatched from here to the various customers. Nuts went to the domestic coalman, and steam coal went for factory boilers.

I trained as a mining electrical engineer, working for Bridgewater Collieries, later part of Manchester Collieries. As a colliery electrician, my work took me to the coal face to maintain the underground signals for coal transport, along the slants and tunnels, while the tubs (wagons) were travelling, sometimes at very fast speeds under low and dangerous roofs, lit only by a one-candle-power miner's oil lamp. So what I report here is not hearsay, but first-hand knowledge from personal experience.

There was much unrest in the coalfields, which Mosley Common and the other Worsley pits did not escape. The work of mining coal was hard and dangerous and low paid. Many men would go home at weekend with only a pound or two for a week's work. They worked eight-hour shifts, six days a week, except for Saturday when the mines stopped at 1pm or 2pm. The accident rate was very high, and there was constant bickering over working conditions and pay. When the mine owners tried to reduce the miners' wages, which were already too low, the miners naturally rebelled and went on strike in 1916, during the war. This brought party politics into the industrial dispute. Lord Justice Sankey was asked to arbitrate between the miners and mine owners, and he made an award which was favourable to the miners. The government was compelled to take over the mines during the war to safeguard production, and to ensure victory. During this period the owners ran the mines for the government, and re-equipped the mines at the government's expense.

Another strike occurred in 1921, and the General Strike of 1926 followed a few years later. There were a number of outcrop seams of coal in the village, which during the miners' strikes were opened up by the miners to provide themselves with coal and with money to live. The picture on the left shows miners and their families at Mosley Common looking for coal during the strike of 1921.

Anyone who thought that the miners were a lazy group of men and women - for women and children were also employed in the early days of mining - could not be more ill-informed. They were without exception hard-working, and some of them were slaves to the task. I ask my readers to take this as the absolute truth. I saw these men in all conditions of their working lives, from 1915 to 1925, and it was all of it next door to slavery. It was a hard, dirty, dangerous, unhealthy, rough job and life, from the moment you passed through the colliery gate to leaving it again.

The strikes and lock-outs by the mine owners had so reduced the wages in mining following denationalisation in 1918 that the wage of three pounds and three shillings offered to me on joining the Lancashire Electric Power Company in 1925 was attractive. I believe that it was from this period that the nation has suffered from low wages and bad human relations in mining. The whole policy of the mine owners was a disaster, and did much to promote Socialism and nationalisation.

Tragedy struck when my brother Dan was killed in the mine at Astley Green on 11 December 1921. He had substituted for a blacksmith to work in the shaft one Sunday. Dan was cutting out a steel rope when it twisted off at the top, pinning him to the cage and knocking his friend down the shaft. The whole village was in mourning. Dan had not been married for long when this happened. The church closed for the day, and we were all in deep sorrow. He was just 33, and an active trade unionist, being President of the Colliery Tradesmen and Kindred Union.

The Weslyan Methodist Church, was named after John Wesley (1703-1791), the founder of the Methodist tradition. As the Weslyan church became more organised and centralised, a Primitive Methodist tradition arose, which placed the emphasis on the independence of local communities and congregations, and a more forceful form of worship. Primitive Methodists became known as Ranters.

It was not uncommon to find Weslyan and Primitive Methodist chapels in close proximity to one another, and this was the case with the Primitive Methodist Chapel at New Manchester, the Weslyan Chapel at Boothstown, and others in Walkden. Methodist union occurred in the 1930s.

Edwin Roscoe was a lifelong, and devout, member of the Primitive Methodist Society at New Manchester. The chapel served much more than a religious function: it was the focal point for most of the social and recreational activity within the village community. Edwin Roscoe drew an immense pride from the vitality of the Methodist Fellowship, and his religious convictions and principles were manifest in all aspects of his life. The following notes were written before the closure of the chapel in 1986. Pictured left is the Primitive Methodist Chapel in May 1998, several years after its closure.

There can be no doubt that the church and Sunday school has moulded the life of the village for over a century. It has provided periods of training in many ways, both mentally and socially, teaching people to live together as a community, through pain and sorrow and difficulty, and how to ride cheerfully over whatever problems beset them.

The Primitive Methodist Chapel was built in The City in 1868. The Sunday school was built in 1883, and extended in 1907. These were not the first buildings used for worship or for Sunday school. The first was on the site of the house occupied by Mrs. Lloyd and her son, Alf. There was an upstairs room, entered by steps, made from sods or turf, on the outside of the house. Later another room was provided, which was part of a shop in New Row, but which was used for religious purposes at weekend. Thus the society started long before the building of the chapel in 1868.

We held a Sunday school for the juniors, followed by a chapel service at 10.45am, and a Sunday school at 2pm for both adults and juniors. We divided into classes, and the men's class had a regular attendance of between ten and twenty each Sunday. Frank Lloyd, Oliver Howarth, Bill Johnson, Walter Lloyd and Daniel Roscoe (my brother, who was killed one Sunday at Astley Green pit) gave the address in turn. At the age of 21, I too became a teacher to this class.

During the first 30 years of the 20^th century men's classes were regularly well-attended in Methodist Sunday schools in Lancashire. It was a Socratic education: papers were prepared and read to these classes by laymen and ministers. In fact, many of the ministers were lay preachers who had graduated to become reverend ministers by their own efforts and study. The subjects were naturally theological, taken almost without exception from some passage of scripture. Many hours of study were involved in their preparation. After readings, there followed open discussion on the subject of the paper, and wider topics. I went to the men's class at Trinity Methodist, and to Walkden Wesleyans and to Kearsley to speak, as well as to our own class.

The minister was asked to take his turn at teaching this class, and other speakers were invited to address us. We dealt with the application of Christianity to the social problems of our day, as well as with theological issues. Mosley Common Methodists had thought out the principles which underlay the establishment of the welfare state 20 years before the Beveridge Report; we had reached the same conclusions in our men's class.

Methodism was closely associated with the Liberal Party in those days, and the vast majority of Methodists voted Liberal, especially in the Wesleyan section, for Methodist union came later than the days recorded here. The Primitive Methodist Church was the reforming section of Methodism, as you can learn if you read Trevellyan's Social History. This went back, no doubt, to the Tolpuddle Martyrs (1833), when farm labourers (five of them Methodists) were deported for forming a trade union in that village. I have, pressed between glass, a leaf from a tree in Tolpuddle, which I took when visiting there.

When the Labour Party became increasingly active, some members of the New Manchester chapel transferred their political allegiance from Liberalism to Socialism and to the Labour Party. The result was that New Manchester became a Socialist village, with few exceptions. The church was known locally as one with left wing attitudes, and I am certain that the ministers who faced the questions and discussions of this class improved their knowledge and thinking on Christian Social Ethics. This became the title of a book by Rev. B.J. Coggle and Rev. Bairn, whom he met in Preston, but who never came to Mosley Common.

From someone at the top of the church there came the idea that these classes were not the best way to use the men of the church, and an edict came down that the men would be better occupied in other work within the church and Sunday school. Whoever decided this did not know that you can not dictate to men what they should do with their time and effort. The result was that the great majority of men gave up attendance of Sunday schools, and that they were lost to other services as well. I contend that whoever was responsible for this has much to answer for. These classes were our adult educational institute before the Workers' Education Association was formed. They trained men to think and prepare papers and speak in public. They were a university to me, and I know of many who would say the same.

Around 1920, Sam Astle and his wife became interested, not so much in church affairs, but in the recreational side of the village and the fellowship. Sam became an active leader and chairman of the fellowship, and under his influence it was decided to buy a field of just over three acres from Bridgewater Estates. The price was £300, and the field was to be used for sport only. I believe this to be one of the most remarkable pieces of voluntary work undertaken anywhere. The rewiring of the church was an achievement, but to make a sports ground as we did on this field was a mammoth job.

Sam Astle drew maps of the areas to be assigned to different activities, and we set about making these various facilities. A cricket pitch and an outfield; two hard tennis courts; a croquet lawn and a bowling green 34 yards square.

I have previously stated that the Gatley Pit shaft was in one corner of this field, and round it was the pit bank, built with large stones. From here there started the railway that ran to Ellenbrook Pit, near to Ellenbrook church. The embankment ran diagonally across our field, and was 12 yards wide at the base, and four feet high at the trapezium section. At the Shude Hill end there was a large and deep hole, no doubt from which clay had been extracted for brick-making.

We began with barrows, removing the railway embankment, putting much of it into the large hole, with the rest forming the foundation for the bowling green, croquet lawn or cricket field. Drains were laid for the greens, and the water ran to the brook that flowed along the New Row end of the field. This took some fifteen years to accomplish, with ten men working each night and some Saturdays. During much of this period we had made the cricket pitch large enough to play on, and we entered a team in the Bolton League. As the years passed we started to bowl and play tennis.

In summer we cut down the amount of work done at night, and spent the time playing games, but we worked in winter when games were impossible. The proportion of work to play was reduced as we were able to enjoy the fruits of our labour. We were helped by Mr Robinson, the engineer for the colliery, who loaned us rails and a tub to transport the dirt from the pit bank and the embankment to different parts of the field. Ellenbrook brickworks was taking clay from a neighbouring field, the turf from which was very good, and we were allowed to use it to lay the bowling green. We made stretchers and carried the turf along part of the railway, which was in my Uncle George's field.

It was not unknown for Sam Astle to come down on a Saturday morning and knock the chaps out of bed to go and work on the field. There was a boost when the miners were on strike in 1921 and 1926, as the men were available all day, every day, to work on the field. During this period the chapel was in need of pointing, which we undertook using scaffolding borrowed from the colliery. Despite the miners' strike, the women made large potato pies and brought them onto the field at lunchtime for the workers. The men were thus kept out of the house and, as was often said, from under the women's feet. The construction of the bowling green was a large undertaking. At one corner the ground had to be filled to a depth of four feet. We had to allow time for this to settle before laying the turf. At the opposite corner the green was at the level of the field, and was therefore stable and firm.

The bowling green was a crown green with a nine-inch crown at the centre. It was opened in May 1927 by Granny Lloyd, aged 87 years, who bowled the first wood across the green. This was followed by a match between Percy Sixsmith and Sam Astle. The men folks had never owned white flannels for cricket and tennis, and in order to buy these, and the bats and rackets, some gave up smoking. In the summertime most of the village would be found on this field in the evenings and on Saturdays, either playing or watching.

Eventually the work was largely complete, with all sections of the sports ground available for use, though there was scope for improvement. I personally wired and erected the fencing around the two hard tennis courts. With my close friend Jack Hope, a keen sportsman and hard worker on this project, we would play tennis in the summer evenings and on Saturdays all through the year.

Having now provided all the outdoor facilities it was felt that the stage in the Sunday school was in need of improvement. The existing stage was only about 15 inches high, and was little more than a platform. It was raised to its present height on trestles and stage lighting was installed, with floodlights on the side walls. A switchboard was built for control of the stage lighting.

With these indoor and outdoor facilities we decided to hold an annual sports day, with the village divided into three areas: Walkden and Mosley Common, New Row, and City Road. All year round games were played and points won and recorded. The sports day was the final event, when all the points were totalled to find the winning section of the village. There was flat racing, long jump, high jump, a cycle race, tug-of-war, tennis, bowls etc. The whole village was involved. A shield was held by the section that won the sports day finals, and cups were given to the winners of each event that had gained the most points for their section.

Apart from Sam Astle, the name of Arthur Lloyd should be mentioned here: he was secretary, and as well as being active in the Sunday school, he was as good at sports as he was at organising them. He had played football for Altrincham during his younger days. Sam Markland was interested in bowls, and became treasurer of the bowling club. The effort to raise money to buy bowls, along with Granny Lloyd's donations, realised eight guineas.

The creation of the sports field was a long and sustained effort over some 15 years. We had erected a new pavilion, built by Arthur Hilton, a joiner; all the costs were raised by our own efforts. We had provided our own entertainment for winter and summer for all members of the church and village, regardless of religion, class or creed, and we had made no charge on public funds. In other parts of the area some of these facilities had been provided at public expense.

In the late 1930s one could see the storm clouds of war gathering again, and in 1938 the council struck a blow at the village by having the old trustees' houses declared unfit, and having them demolished [Gatley Row]. Only the three farm houses were left standing. Some thirty houses were demolished, and the tenants were dispersed to council houses some distance from the village, over the Common or in Tyldesley, or to private houses which they found for themselves, mainly in Walkden.

With half of the village's houses demolished, and with war being declared the following year, all of the Methodist Fellowship's activities ceased. I wrote at the time, and I still believe, that it was a disgrace that the council did not replace the old houses, thus maintaining the village and the activities that it so much deserved.

After the second world war we started to build a new pavilion with second-hand bricks, which Sidney Wood, one of our members, obtained for us. When this was done, the cricket recommenced with a team in the Bolton League. We were unable to reorganise tennis after the war, and the brick pavilion was in fact built on the site of the hard tennis courts.

But the whole project was destroyed: many of the young men did not return after the war; vandalism commenced and the field became neglected. Eventually the field was sold, and the whole organisation was dissolved.