[jambutty]

The public baths at the top of St James Street just below the Scaitcliffe Colliery. Just across the road from the baths was a side street and up a ginnel on the left was a ‘shop’ where you could buy a penny or twopenny bag of Smiths crisps. Actually they were the broken bits but the bag was proper full to bursting. You certainly got your money’s worth. You had to watch out for the blue one though. It was very, very salty.

As for the baths it was mixed bathing most evenings after six and Sunday mornings but most other times it was single sex swimming. Mornings was usually reserved for schools where we were taught to swim by a teacher stood on the poolside.

The ladies changing cubicles were upstairs on the balcony and the blokes were at the poolside. There was a three level diving board where we kids would launch ourselves into space in either a real dive or a bomb into just 6 feet 6 inches of water. The pool had stone steps at each corner leading into the water right to the bottom. There wasn’t a lifeguard as such but the attendant who looked after the boilers and the tub baths (I think they called them slipper baths. The swimming pool was the plunge baths) would look in once in a while. I never heard of anyone drowning.

I swam my first mile there when I was about 13. 72 twenty five yards lengths of the baths was 1,800 yards which is a bit over a mile.

The original Woolworths was across the road from the front of the Town Hall and a bit to the left. Free sweets if you were sneaky and quick enough. Although you did get a hefty clout round the ear if you were caught and chucked out of the front door with words like, “I know where you live. Wait till I tell your dad” reverberating around a throbbing lug hole.

Accrington had an abundance of cinemas. Empire and Princess on Edgar Street I think it was. Then there was the Odeon, the Palace, the Ritz and the bug hut. Sorry I mean Kings Hall. Best of all was the hippodrome theatre on Ellison Street just above the tram and bus depot.

The Coppice had no trees, which made sledging down in winter a fast treat.