Newsletter 170

Photographic Archive

Just before Christmas I was invited to a house in Mawdsley by a lady, who said she had a box of slides that she thought we might be interested in. The lady was Liz Smith and the slides were taken by her brother-in-law, Jack Smith, onetime assistant headmaster of Woodfield Primary School on Wigan Lane (not our friend and fellow archaeologist from Chorley). This Jack Smith took the photographs in the mid sixties, while apparently living at Giant's Hall Farm just north of Beech Hill.

It's a fascinating collection of images of collieries in the area at the end of their working lives. The collection, which is quite unique, includes coloured slides of John Pit, Taylor Pit, Gidlow Washery and Giant's Hall Colliery as well as the coal tipper on the canal at Crooke. By the way, nobody is sure where the name Giant's Hall comes from; some say it's from some huge stone blocks found in the area. The farm building itself dates from 1675 and is listed as Grade II*.

Liz would like the slides to find a good home and is also keen to see them digitised so that they can be preserved for prosperity. We will be able to scan and add them to our digital archive, but we may pass the slides themselves onto the Archive Services in Leigh as we have no archiving facility ourselves. However I'm sure we will be able to get the images onto the internet for everybody to enjoy.

The Standish Estate Catalogue

We have a similar situation with some documents that have recently come into our possession, offered to us on long term loan. They are the catalogues for the sale of the Standish Hall estate which took place in 1921. The sale, in the Empress Hall (Wigan Casino), lasted over two days but not everything was sold. The estate at that time was owned by James Birkett Almond (son of the famous Standish brewer of the same name). The fate of Standish Hall itself is unclear as it also failed to reach its asking price (a mere £4800). We do know it became derelict and a few years later the oldest parts, including the chapel and Tudor-style wing, were taken down to be reerected in America (although nobody knows where).

The catalogues give a fascinating insight into the size of the estate at that time. It covered a total of 3000 acres and included many businesses and homes and almost all the well known farms in the Standish area. It included Brimlow, Wakefield, Brockhurst, Upper and Lower Wood Folds, Giant's Hall farms. The businesses included Jolly Mill, Roburite Works and even the Bleach Works at Worthington. Although we won't be able to keep the documents, we will be able to hold onto them for a while to help us with our researches.

Programme for 2014

As usual this is still work in progress but already we have in April a talk on a community excavation project in Rainford called Rainford Roots and in June we have organised guided a tour around Standish Parish Church.

Next Meeting

Wednesday 5th February - in the Standish Suite at the Brocket Arms (7.30pm as usual). This month it's our AGM and at the meeting, we will be hoping to install a new chairman. Patrick Maloney, our acting chairman, has been doing a sterling job since Eric Walter stepped down in September. Thankfully he has also volunteered to carry on in the post and I'm sure he will carry on his good work. We also intend to increase the size of our committee and Andy Wilcock and Neil Warner have kindly offered their services. After the formalities, there will be a presentation summarising our project work over the past year. This will include the researching and site surveying of both the Kirkless and Pingot sites. We hope to be doing further work on these sites and this will be explained in the presentation.

Hope to see you there - B.A.