THE FLATLEY DRYER

[Stanley]

I've just remembered something else about illegal betting in my youth. Before WW2 there were 'flapping meetings', usually for trotters and always held at out of the way venues. This came to my notice many years later when I introduced my dad to the little Irish bloke who was the horseman at Watson's near the canal on the way to West Marton, Billy Brennand. He and father got talking about a particular flapping meeting at a pub called the Flouch Inn near Holmfirth. It turned out that he and my dad must have met then because my dad was running an illegal book and used to go up there. It's a small world......

[Bodger]

I recall standing outside the Old Flouch Inn waiting for a Baddley bros bus circa 1940/50
bloody cold and draughfty in short trousers
http://www.jsh1949.co.uk/BADDELEY%20BROS.htm

http://www.examiner.co.uk/news/west-yor ... holmfirth-

flouch-4943030

Offline Valeen2

RootsChat Extra
**
Posts: 4
Census information Crown Copyright, from www.nationalarchives.gov.uk
View Profile Personal Message (Offline)

Re: Flouch Inn
« Reply #17 on: Sunday 19 December 10 16:24 GMT (UK) »

Quote

The present Flouch Inn which houses several restaurants was built after the "Old Flouch Inn" which is the Inn that was built around 1824 at the junction of the Manchester and Penistone Roads. The Old Flouch Inn sits diagonally across that intersection from the present Flouch Inn. The "Old Flouch " is now several independent residences. I am not sure when the New Flouch Inn was built. My mother, her siblings and my grandparents ( Percy and Beatrice Schofield) lived in the "Old Flouch " until the early 1970's when it was sold by my cousin after his mother's death. I am not sure when they originally moved in to the "Old Flouch" but I am sure they lived there in the 1930s because I have pictures of my mother there in her college days. She was born in 1912. When my grandparents lived there they ran a stopover for motorcoaches coming from Manchester to Sheffield and also for auto travelers. As a child I remember going with my grandfather across the road to a the shop that was set up to serve refreshments like tea, ices and Dandelion and Burdock. My parents had moved to the US by then and we would visit my grandparents every few years. I am also interested in the origin of the name Flouch and have had several theories given to me: one relates to the original owner, George Roberts, who had a "slouch lip" and because the old 's' looked like an 'f' it became flouch and the other theory that the original name New Inn was changed to Plough Inn and that the paint on the first and fifth letters rubbed off making it the Flouch. I think both are interesting stories but I understand Historian David Hey believes the first one to be the more accurate one. If anyone has further information I would be interested in hearing from them.

[Stanley]

Those old roads over the moors to Yorkshire were vital lifelines in the days before motorways. Snake Pass, Mam Tor and Owd Betts were well used routes. The old inns were places of refreshment and refuge in bad weather. In some cases like Tan Hill they were also 'trysts', the meeting places for the drovers. The later modern equivalent was the Jungle Café on Shap Fell.

[Stanley]

I was listening to a report on the fact that technology already exists to automate almost every aspect of domestic living. Soon it will examine what is in the fridge and cook a meal for you. The alarm clock can already open the curtains, switch the radio on, make a cup of tea and ignite your E-cigarette. Have you any idea of how this horrifies someone my age? I don't want a computer to decide on my activities and run my life! I shall resist this trend for as long as I am able!!

[Stanley]

One of my favourite TV programmes is Jeremy Isaac's 'World At War'. It captures exactly what I remember from my childhood and last night I saw the episode which described the famous strike at Betteshanger Colliery (LINK) that was almost the catalyst for the fall of the wartime coalition government. I wonder whether something similar could happen again to bring the politicians to their senses... Probably wishful thinking but God knows something is needed!

[Stanley]

By the time I was born in 1936 underpants for lads were every day wear but I can remember that at the beginning of the war when I was in short trousers they were always fully lined with cotton. I know now that this harks back to older times when this lining served the same purpose as underpants and the trousers were either washable or had a removable lining which later morphed into underpants as we know them today. I've always said that someone should write a social history of underwear.... But I think it might have been done and I have missed it!

[Tizer]

The Wikipedia page on `History of underwear' is a good start and gets to the bottom of it!

[Stanley]

One of my favourite sayings is 'You can always trust a man who tucks his shirt laps in his underpants'. It harks back to the days when there were no elastic waistbands and underpants were held up by tape loops on the band through which you threaded the attachments for your braces buttons so the shirt had to go in your pants. Not a bad rule to follow.
Closely related is something a detective from Moss Side in Manchester once told me. He said that in all his long experience he had never seen a dishonest man who wore a hat and smoked a pipe.

[Tizer]

But did the detective wear a hat and smoke a pipe?

[Stanley]

No but he was dealing with gun crime at the time.

[Stanley]

When I look back to my early years I am struck by how simple life was. It was home, school, reading the war and playing out with my mates. 'Entertainment', things like annual holidays and the circus were few and far between. The only given was 'the pictures' with the family every Thursday night and later when we moved to Heaton Moor, the children's matinee on Saturday morning at the local cinema, the Savoy. It seems to me that the modern view is that children must be constantly engaged in after school activities and electronic media. Is it progress?

[Stanley]

Another thing is that there was no such thing as 'the school run' in those days, we walked to school on our own! My mother took me for the first couple of months when I was 4 but after that it was down to me.....

[Stanley]

It's funny how things stick in your mind. I can remember every detail of my walk to Hope Memorial school every morning. I didn't cross the main Didsbury rod until I came to the railway bridge just past Cheshire Sterilised Milk and then down Huntsman's Brow to the school. It was paved with setts and in hot weather the gas tar melted and we could get balls of it and play with them. (No detergents then, mother used to get it off my fingers by rubbing them with butter!) The River Mersey was in the bottom of the valley a quarter of a mile away and there was a view over Stockport with the enormous railway viaduct. Two big Mills below the school, Buckta and the Ring Mill. It's all so clear in my mind.....



The school much later when it was a light engineering shop. The whole lot is buried under a large motorway junction now......

[Stanley]

If you followed the road down to the bottom there was a greengrocer's shop called Mathers and they sold fresh liquorice root, never seen it since, it was lovely. There was a bridge over the river into Brinksway and on this side a path down the side of the river to Didsbury. We often went down there after school for a furtle.... At that time the Mersey, a big river, stunk. It was actually an open sewer.

[Stanley]

One of the biggest personal hazards during the air raids wasn't the bombs but the shrapnel raining down from our Ack Ack shells. They didn't bring planes down by a direct hit but by bursting near them. They were designed so that the steel casing shattered into large shards of metal called shrapnel after Captain Shrapnel who invented the technique. You did well to wear a tin hat if you were out at night. On the way to school we used to collect shrapnel and compete to see who got the largest piece. Every now and then there was a scrap metal drive and I was forced to recycle my collection! I'll bet that metal detectorists in the areas that were defended by AA guns are still finding lumps of the stuff.

[Stanley]

Shrapnel wasn't good for roofs either! I remember five years after the war we had a leak and it turned out to be a hole punched in a lead valley gutter by a lump of shrapnel during the raids. This was a common occurrence. Tin hats were in themselves hazardous. My dad and the bloke next door, Arthur Upton, were Air Raid Wardens. Arthur was shorter than my dad and one night they bumped into each other during the blackout and the rim of Arthur's tin hat cut a hole through to the airway on the bridge of my dad's nose. He said he had never breathed as easily in his life but our doc, Tommy O'Connell wouldn't let him leave it open as it healed......

[Stanley]

The current controversies over free breakfasts in school remind me of how lucky I was in that my mother always made sure I started the day with a hot breakfast even in the darkest days of food rationing in WW2. When I got to school I had a free third pint of full cream milk mid-morning and a hot dinner provided free by the Corporation as we called it in those days. The dinners were cooked at a central kitchen and delivered in aluminium insulated boxes just in time for dinner. There were some very poor children at that school but they all got at least one good meal a day and don't forget that the ingredients were governed by the Ministry of Food under the guidance of their chief nutritionist Jack Drummond. This plus the clinics where we were given free supplies of concentrated orange juice and cod liver oil ensured that at the end of the war my generation was far healthier than we were in 1939. My generation is still regarded by many as 'the last healthy generation'. A sweeping statement but modern evidence seems to bear this out.
And yet today they are arguing about a free 40p of food for kids each morning.......

[plaques]

Which brings back my first memories of unintended bias. As a six year old and the war having just finished out infant school were in receipt of a load of food parcels given by some very generous and well meaning Americans. Sitting crossed legged in the hall waiting for our names to be called out in full of anticipation of the goodies we may receive. Unknown to us at that time the gifts had been given against class photographs that the school had provided. At the end of the hand out the score was.. Shirley Temple, 3. the biggest winner. Quosimodo, (me) 0. the worst loser. Fortunately one of the teaches spotted the imbalance and raided the pile to put something together for me. Six years old and my first experience that life wasn't going to be easy.

[Tripps]

When I got to school I had a free third pint of full cream milk mid-morning and a hot dinner provided free by the Corporation as we called it in those days. The dinners were cooked at a central kitchen and delivered in aluminium insulated boxes just in time for dinner. There were some very poor children at that school but they all got at least one good meal a day

Were there any children who were vegetarian, or vegan, or 'dairy intolerant, or had a nut allergy, or needed halal or kosher food ? Life was a lot simpler in those days. The only food freakery we had was fish on a Friday.

[Stanley]

Good point David, no there weren't! We just ate what we were given...

[Stanley]

Memory is fickle. I seem to remember more thunderstorms in my childhood but suspect that was because they were such a notable event. My mother always reassured me that they were not dangerous, it was only 'God's Coal man' making a delivery! Mind you I also noted that she always opened the house windows when one was happening. Later I found out that this was a very old tradition based on fear of a 'thunderbolt' coming down the chimney. If the windows were open it could get out of the house. There is some truth in this as the carbon content of the soot in the chimney could act as a conductor and a lightning strike on the house could continue down the flue.
Mother did a good job! I have always liked thunderstorms and when I was in Berlin saw some big ones, I loved watching them!

[PanBiker]

My mum used to open the back door for the same reason. I have seen a few houses hit by lightning and the resultant damage, I doubt that having the door or window open would have made any difference. A few microseconds of billions of volts can basically do what they want.

[Bodger]

My grandmother always covered mirrors and put away shiny objects when thunder was about

[Stanley]

Extreme weather has always fascinated me. When I was house sitting for Martha and Roger in Northfield I sat on the front porch and watched a tornado develop. The 'super cell' which is what they call the cloud was 85 miles across and ten miles high, you could watch it on the Doppler radar on the TV. Extremely impressive and it touched down about three miles away..... Apart from the destructive wind, we had over 6" of rain in twenty minutes. As Ian says, Nature can be quite awesome!

[PanBiker]

I had an up too close experience with lightning once when I was fishing at the roller bends between Southfield Bridge and Church Pool at East Marton. I was fishing on the first bend on a very warm sultry evening in Summer. There is an 11kv pylon in the field behind the first bend and the HT cable crosses the cut between poles at an angle away from where I was fishing. It was very warm with little breeze, not a sound apart from the bird song, bees buzzing and the general hum and flutter of the bank side insects.

First thing I notice was that I felt the air get very stuffy, quite oppressive really, then everything went noticeably quieter. A split second later the insect life in the grass around my seat and along the banking became agitated you could actually hear the rustling and I noticed the shorter grass around me start to move, I got the feeling of a massive static build up and at that same moment or a millisecond later the pylon behind me 20 yards back in the field exploded with a direct strike, there was an overall smell of ozone from the discharge, every hair on my body stood on end as my flight reaction threw me from my basket on the bank side. The air was thick with the smell of electrical discharge and burning. Very frightening and I had to have a fag to calm down, I was physically shaking from the near miss but could probably have taken on ten men if you know what I mean.

Spectacular experience but not one that I would like to repeat.