Life As A Child

We welcome you to this special page, here you can read what my wife’s mother wrote about her childhood in the village of Summerseat, which is in Lancashire, England.

Now Ellen was in her 80’s when she decided to do a bit of writing, sadly due to her failing sight, and also not being in good health, Ellen did not finish what we feel would have been a wonderful story of the days gone by.

We can however imagine a lot of the things that Ellen has wrote, and lets hope that it brings a few smiles to some of your faces, as Ellen loved to make people laugh at some of the old tales from “Them Good Old Days” (as Ellen used to say), and you never know it could even bring back some of the memories.

We have added a few pictures from Summerseat, two of long ago, and some at the end of this page from Summerseat as it is now.

MY  LIFE  AS  A  CHILD

IN  THE  BEAUTIFUL

VILLAGE  OF  SUMMERSEAT

From the Hand Written Copy by Ellen Lomax (1913-2002)

When I first came to Summerseat, I was just 10 months old, I grew up, and at that time I was just 3 years old, when my mum got a telegram off the king, to say my dad was missing presumed killed, you see, the First World War was on. He wasn’t the only one in the street, Mrs Russell got one as well, telling her that her son Tom was killed. At that time we lived at number 16, Thorn Street, when they got killed on the Somme, it was terrible, my mam had made a big potato pie and a big rice pudding, but none of us touched a bit of it. All I remember is my mam leaning with her head in her hands on an old mangle crying, and I was pulling at her white pinny, but life had to go on.

There were nine of us five girls, four boys and I was the youngest of eleven. We came to Summerseat from a place called St. Helens in Lancashire; I was born in Hope Street, St. Helens, Lancashire.

As I grew older, it was my time to go to school, I was five, I didn’t remember much about it, till I got bigger, and then I loved it, I didn’t like staying off, even when I was ill. We had a good headmaster called Mr Peason. We had some good times, me and my friends as kids used to play at shop, all along the wall on Nutty Brews at the bottom, sometimes there wasn’t a place to play at shop, because it used to be full up, them were the days, Happy Days.

In the summertime on a Sunday afternoon we all used to get Sunday dinner over, wash all the pots, clear the slop stone, clean and donkey stone all round it, put some coke on the fire, then all go up Nutts, and sit on the grass, and I tell you there wasn’t much free place left to sit down, nearly all in the village used to go up, or go for a stroll through the factory wood, right through to the dark wood, as we called it in them days. It was beautiful; there were beautiful trees at the far end of the wood. In the bottom, it was like a big blue carpet with bluebells, and there was a meadow at the bottom, full of buttercups and daisies, we used to walk across the top at Nutts, through Lammy Bank, up to Woodhey, picking all wild flowers, Mayflower, cowslips, red campian, wild sweet peas, harebell, buttercups, All sorts of flowers. We used to go picking blackberries and wimberries on Holcombe Hill, it was all good fun, besides getting the fresh air.

When we were kids we had to make our own fun, lads and lassies used to play together. In those days, people didn’t think nowt about it, like they would today.

I remember at Christmas time we used to distemper and whitewash the ceilings, well our lads did it, and my mam would buy some oilcloth and a peg rug, by god we thought it was ever so posh. If it was raining, they used to put the plant pots in channel to get a good soaking, and if you went in the house when it was raining, they used to shout, “Wipe your feet” as if you were going in a palace.

At Christmas me and my sister Mary used to hang our stocking up before we went to bed, and my elder sister Martha used to pull our leg, she’d say “I don’t know what you’re hanging them up for, you’ll get nowt only clinkers”, them were off the coke, after they’d burnt out on the fire. We didn’t have a lot of money to spend in them days, we used to take jam jars back to shop for halfpenny if it was glass, if it was a stone jar you’d get a penny, or take a bag of tata peelings to a house that had hens or ducks, and sometimes you’d get a threpenny bit, you’d thought you were well off.

On the way to Rowlands school where I went, we’d stop on the way at a little shop going up Mr. Pollards farm, and there was a very old couple had it, the old lady was bed ridden downstairs, when we went in, a bell would ring, and she would shout “Shop” to the old man in the kitchen, and he would come shuffling out from washing breakfast pots, all for halfpenny, but halfpenny was halfpenny in those days, they were called Mr and Mrs Southwell, we’d get halfpenny worth of aniseed balls, then on we’d go, and stop at another shop at the top of Rowlands, just before we got to school, she was called little Mary Lee, and we’d buy a halfpenny swaggering dick, it was like a thin piece of rock with stripes down, and we’d all come out of the shop laughing our heads off.

The village isn’t the same today, there’s nowt these days, one day the village butcher would come round with fresh meat, and it was meat in them days, there’s no taste in it these days, and you don’t get good gravy off it, like you did in them days. Then we’d have a cart come round another day, selling tripe and Cowheels, and the like. Another day we have fruit and vegetables Then a chap used to come shouting “Pots for Rags”,  if you give him some rags, he’d give you a glass dish, a plate, or a cup and saucer. On Sunday, after tea the Salvation Army used to come round playing hymns and singing at the bottom of every street, also the Summerseat Brass band used to come round on a march practicing for an outing they were booked for, or they would play on the football field, and everyone would be out listening to em.

On a Whit Friday, the churches used to walk, Rowland’s Church would walk down onto spare ground, and sing, and Summerseat Methodist used to walk and meet them on the spare ground, in them days I used to walk with the little Tin Mission, as they used to call it, then later it became St. Wilfred’s. The mill had two carthorses, the manager of the mill used to go to the mission, so he lent the horses and cart to them on Whit Friday, they used to line it with white calico, so we wouldn’t get our white frocks dirty, but there was only the little ones allowed on it, so we used to crouch down to make us look small, the one that was leading it used to lift us in the cart, all the others used to walk behind, because we used to join the Walmersley Church, and then have a ‘field day’ they called it, we used to get apple, orange, meat pie and a cake.

At Easter time there were two men, used to come round to every street singing. There was always something going on, in the winter nights when it was cold there used to be a man come round shouting “Hot Tates and Black Peas”

           Don't forget to visit our Photo Gallery where we have many photos of Summerseat

You can also see some old photo's of Ellen's family in 'Our Family Album', and there is also a little more information on Ellen's father Thomas Forrest on 'The Somme  and also The  Boer War' Pages, at Our Ward Family Website