FORGOTTEN CORNERS

[Stanley]

Sidney Nutter in the office at Bancroft. Part of the Nutter family but as he used to say, not the Nutter Millions. Together with his cousin Eughtred Nutter he ran the office at Bancroft until his sudden death.

[Stanley]

Eughtred and Sidney Nutter making the wages up in the office at Bancroft. Eughtred came in on two days a week to help his cousin Sidney on the busy days, making up the wages and distributing them. Remember the weavers were on a piece rate based on picks.
I don't suppose anyone counts the money out and puts it in envelopes these days. (I used to take mine home and give it to Vera unopened.....)

[Richard Hargreaves]

I have an idea that they did the same for Vera and I at Trinity in 1959.
The two brothers were definitely characters and famously fell out with each other from time to time. I remember my mate Robert Aram coming to Barlick one day. He had a slow puncture in one of his tyres and after filling up he asked Shirley if he could inflate the tyre, she directed him round the corner into Vicarage Road. He went round, found the air line laud on the floor and was seeing to his tyre when Maurice ran out with an axe and cut the airline in two. Robert didn't wait to find out why, he jumped in and drove off as fast as he could! I told him that this was quite normal behaviour.
Somewhere in my neg files I have a pic of Jim and Maurice squaring up to each other in Daniel Meadows' front room. He had invited his friends in to see an exhibition of Barlick pictures and for some reason Jim and Maurice came to blows.
Despite all this Maurice in particular was held in very high regard I always got on well with him. When he died the funeral service was at Trinity and I think every mechanic in the town turned up in a clean pair of overalls, unique in my experience and a nice touch. I have an idea that Maurice wound and maintained the clock at the church for many years but could be wrong.
Shirley was the power behind the throne in the family business. She was the only person who could control Jim and Maurice and frequently had to clear up after them!
All part of Barlick folk history that will never make its way into the text books but important I think.

This thread would have had my late mum in tears of joy. Jim Windle was my grandad - sadly I was only 10 when he died in 1983 so he's very much a blurry figure from my youngest days. I remember him as a jovial, larger than life character who was never happier than watching World of Sport wrestling on a Saturday afternoon while eating ice cream with a bowl of prunes. That or driving his Morris Oxford which was like a tank. He was passionate about aviation - he had a large collection of pre-WW2 books and had yearned to join the RAF but for an ear complaint. Because of that, he made a point during the war of offering a taxi service for free in many cases to airmen returning home - he thought of it as doing his bit. And it's thanks to his love of history, dragging me around castles, museums and especially air shows, that I became a historian, so I owe him a lot.

I'm old enough to remember both the garage - he kitted me out in a Texaco racing uniform through his contacts! - and the undertakers at Sherbrooke. Both were sold in 1978 when he retired and moved to Monkroyd with my grandma (Evelyn, d.1994). As a curious 5 year old I remember having the full run of the house... and grandad being grandad didn't lock access to the mortuary so i saw a few corpses ("wax models" he told me...).

I didn't know Maurice that well - other than neither my mum (Betty Windle) or grandad got on with him. Grandad was always the most placid, carefree chap, never troubled by anything. Maurice was the only person who could wind him up!

Auntie Shirley (married name Haigh) was the last of the four Windle siblings - she only died about five years ago in her 90s, a couple of years after mum.

There was a famous picture in the family archives for years, sadly gone now, of Jim, Shirley and my mum all in their uniforms outside Ghyll with their Humbers (I think) for a wedding, probably taken early/mid-1960s.

Thank you for the trip down memory - it confirms a lot of what I knew/thought about the brothers!

[Stanley]

Richard, so glad you found the thread. Sorry to hear Shirley has died, tempus fugit!



Jim at Gill on wedding duty in 1977.