Greetings to all Accringtonians
 

Needing to find something to search for on an American search engine, for some strange reason I opted for Accrington and up came this forum. So here I am.



I am from the 1940’s 50’s era and it might be interesting to meet some old school or street friends of that time. Up until 1952 my school was the Accrington Secondary Technical School on Union Road in Ossy and I lived at 148 Blackburn Road in Accy. It is an amusement arcade now or it was the last time that I passed a few years ago.



I’m not too sure of the wisdom of this but it would be nice to meet Rose Griffiths who used to live at 2 Holland Street.

Oooops! I forgot to add my name. It's the old brain cell, it can only handle so much at any one time.

Jim Buckley

Hi there Jambutty and welcome to accyweb. Hope you will enjoy the forums, there a nice bunch of people on here. Good luck finding your old pals:)

Why thank you Wingy. The welcome is a nice gesture and all the way from China too. Accy folk have always been nice folk - well at least from my era they were. Don't know about now but I guess that most of them will still be nice folk.

Welcome to the forum Jim! I do believe I have been to your website before, the one with the dungeon game I am thinking.... hehe, anyway, another greeting from china - might make you think this is a chinese website!!

Ow do, Jiim. Or should it be... Ne hao!? Yet again more greetings from China. Wecome to everything Accringtonian.

My site is the one with the dungeon game on it Roy so I guess you must have had a wander round my web site. I don’t suppose that you had a bash at getting at my virtual gold. You can get your name into The Hall Of Fame if you get to it but on the other hand if you get clobbered by one of my monsters you get your name on the obituary page. So hurry up my monsters haven’t eaten for weeks.

Ow do and thanks for your welcome Sparkologist.
‘ere I know that call centres are being shipped out to Bombay but when did they moved Accrington to China? ;-)

Hi jambutty, welcome to accyweb.
Are you also a member on jambutty.com your name sounds familiar?

Thanks for the welcome janet. I’m not a member of jambutty.com yet because I have only just found out that it exists but I will be having a look around later on and will probably join. It could cause a bit of confusion. Hmmm! My name sounds familiar does it? Is that good or bad? I only know one janet (unless the one remaining brain cell is having an off day) and that was from Dynamo Electric around 20 years ago. I wonder if you are that janet? Nah! It would be too much of a coincidence if you are.

I dont know you personaly jim, just that the admin share's your user name on jambutty.com.

Ah! Yes! My user name. When I join jambutty.com I think that I'll have to use my alternate user name of jimbuck to avoid confusion. But I have been a jambutty since 1954 when I joined the navy. Never mind jimbuck is just as good. But now it is time for my afternoon nap. This retirement thing is great. Do what I want when I want but this overwhelming tiredness is galloping up on me. Too many hours at the keyboard! Zzzzzzz!

:ello: Hello Jambutty and welcome to Accy web. Hope you have hours of endless fun on here in your retirement (you lucky thing) I'm counting the days til mine. How many days are in 19 years and 1 month??

lettie 6946 days not too long is it hehe

Hi Jambutty.
Welcome to accyweb.
Checked out your site, had a trip down memory lane with the C.B. stuff.
Well done site.

hey jambutty good to have you here !

This has to be said but I have never had such a warm and friendly welcome when joining a forum than I have had on joining Accringtonweb. To be fair, I suppose, the other forums were international and as such you do not get the same camaraderie there as you get on forums such as this.

After surfing the international Internet waters and dodging the sharks for over two years it’s a bit like coming back home on leave. So thank you one and all.

In 19 years and 1 months time lettie you will look back and think, “hang on what happened to the last 20 years?” So don’t bother counting - it will be upon you before you know it. But when that day arrives I hope that you enjoy your retirement as much as I’m enjoying mine.

Nice to know that you found something of interest on my web site anne.

An finally for this reply thanks for your welcome glasgow guy.

welcome to accy web hope you enjoy :wave:

Hiya Jambutty,

Seems we have a bit in common. I wuz dragged up in Church, and the lived on India Street. I also went to Accy (Ossy) Tech from 1956 to 1959. Then I joined the RN.

So nice to have you on the site, might get back to you later.

Hi Darby,
Nice to meet an ex-pupil of Ossy Tech. You are one of a few. I left in ’52 but I suppose that you still had the same teachers that I had. Mr Marsden was top of the shop. Mr Abbott the science teacher who came to school on his Corgi scooter. I wonder did he also pull his ‘observation’ stunt on your class as he did ours? He would dip a finger into a beaker of very mucky water and then lick it. We all went Uggh! Sir! But he just asked if anyone saw what he had just done. Of course no one had. He went on to do it again several times and no one twigged what he was doing until he explained that he had dipped his index finger into the beaker and then licked his middle finger. But it did teach me to look at life in a slightly different way.
Mrs Archer a rather largish woman taught geography and English and drove to work in her car. Mrs Westwell the art teacher. Miss Street a very young teacher who taught music and had the fourth formers hanging their collective tongues out. Mr Cunliffe with his rimless glasses looked like a Gestapo officer and could hit a ‘talker’ with a piece of chalk without seeming to look. Mr Roberts did maths, PE and sports while Mr Gladstone, a yank, taught history and was very handy with a plimsoll. Bend over lad! Whack! Ouch! Now go and get a drink of water! I can’t remember the rest of the teachers but on balance they were really OK although we didn’t think so at the time.

Yeah, that's the mob of teachers, as I remember them in 1959 we had:

Marsden (Headmaster)
Abbott (Physics)
Roberts(Science)
Waterhouse(Maths)
Eland (Metalwork)
Howland (Woodwork)
Gordon (English)
Westwell (Mrs) Art
Archer (Mrs) Geography
Cockroft (History)
Shaw (Mrs) French
Cunliffe (PE)
O'Hare (Tech Drawing)

:smokin: :smokin: I woz bad lad number 1, and given an opportunity to leave (or be expelled) in 59. Being and honourable lad I did the former, and joined the Navy (Ganges - which was a sight worse and 10 times harder), from there, there was only one way to go :drunk:

Hi Darby,
Ah! Yes! Some of those names come back to me as the skunk said when the wind changed direction. I haven’t been past the old school for a year or two and I read a while back that it is coming down to make way for houses.
Ganges eh! I went straight to Collingwood to train as a radio electrician but we did have a day at Ganges to climb the mast. It sure was a long way up.

For Jambutty and Darby
 

A special piccy for you both. Thought you might enjoy! Its well before your time, but .. the only one I have at the moment.

Thanks Atarah, It's still looked like that when I was over at Xmas. Although the trams and tram lines have been gone for some time.

What was on at the Palladium at the time?? Charlie Chaplin??

I was wondering where the school was, i knew it as Rhyddings Annex.

alas but the shops onthe right have all gone now, i remember the cloggers that was there , used to take dad shoes there .

One Sunday afternoon in May 2000 I were driving down Union Road in Ossy approaching my old school and listening to Desmond Carrington on Radio 2 playing music from the 50’s when for one fleeting moment it seemed like I was back in that time. I stopped and took this photograph.



Thanks for the old photo Atarah and it looks like the school hasn’t changed at all in all those years. You can use my ‘modern’ picture if you want Atarah.



The Rhyddings’ girls used to use our football pitch size playground after school hours to play netball or rounders and we of course gave them vocal support until their teachers told us to clear off.



In spite of what we thought at the time ASTS was a good school. Once a week we were taken to King George’s playing fields to play football or cricket and once a week we went to the baths just a bit lower down than Scaitcliffe Street pit for swimming lessons. But then the school hours were from 9 until 12 and 1 until 4 so there was time for these ‘outings’. We didn’t get cluttered up with silly lessons. Just maths, English, geography, history, science, art, technical drawing, music, RE, French, PE, games and half a day each for woodwork and metalwork down in a building that was behind the Grammar School. We had an annual sports day at the Church cricket ground and a town sports day as well as the school swimming gala and a town swimming gala. Best of all was the cake shop next door to the school where we could buy hot muffins or penny loaves of bread also still hot.

Hello Jambutty,

So you were'nt taught gender, media & comparative cultural studies then?

Nope tealeaf, we found out about gender the practical way. It were much more fun. I don’t think that the word media existed in those days. Comparative cultural studies? Didn’t do that either unless you consider that being a part of geography and a small part of history we were learning comparative cultural studies? But we had a sizable Polish community in Accrington and they integrated with the English without too many problems so we had practical experience as part of the normal day. I can only ever recall seeing just one West Indian and there were no people from the Indian sub continent. Plenty of Irish and from other parts of the UK though.

if you don't get "media & gender" studies - all a load of rubbish, of course - rammed into your head as a kid now you're considered socially disadvantaged.
You've not yet commented on my media study of your piccy of Acct Town Hall & the sunken garden. Were my comments right? Do I deserve an A++ in media studies?