HERITAGE CENTRE OPENING HOURS
We are pleased to say that a number of visitors have already taken advantage of the re-opening of our Heritage Centre during the last week and that more are booked in for the coming week. Our safeguarding procedures have worked well and we now feel able to offer visitors the opportunity to call in without pre-booking (unless this involves a group).
For the moment, the opening days are still Mondays (2-4pm) and Fridays (10am-12noon) but we are considering adding extra days as the situation improves.
Please be aware that we are asking visitors and volunteers to wear masks and to wear gloves when handling documents. We look forward to seeing you.
I hope you are all well and bearing up under the 'lockdown'. If things had been going normally, we would have had our AGM on 9th June and be celebrating 35 years of Horwich Heritage with an exhibition on 13th.
As it stands, we have been able to conduct the AGM on line but the exhibition will have to wait until we can mingle more freely at the Heritage Centre. In the meantime, we have plenty of material in the archives to put on the web site and remind ourselves of how far we have come in those 35 years. Most of you will be aware that we were formed to re-establish a sense of pride in the local community following the closure of the Loco works at the end of 1983.
We quickly gathered a strong membership of c.150 and embarked on a programme of speakers and events that have continued to the present day. Our first big 'breakthrough' came with the opening of Horwich Resource Centre in 1991 which provided a venue for our meetings and gift fairs and also offered us a small room to put on our displays. Having developed our exhibition skills over the following 15 years, we were able to persuade Horwich Town Council to let us have occupation of the refurbished 'phase 2' area (the former rifle range) and turn it into a Heritage Centre - which opened in March 2006.
To have a Heritage Centre to celebrate all that is great about the history of Horwich was always our dream, and I am pleased to say we are still living it 14 years later - thanks to the dedication of the Committee, Volunteers and Members and continued support of HTC. Over the years we have had hundreds of speakers, put on over a hundred exhibitions, run lots of trips and events and produced a number of our own films and publications - and it is always worth reminding ourselves how much has been achieved. So next month I will highlight some of the exhibitions we have put on, but this month I thought I would look back to the special time in the late 1980s - early 1990s when we took part in the Horwich Carnival and regularly won a prize for our outfits! See if you can recognise anyone from the accompanying photos.
As far as I can recall, there was a national request to build bonfires on local landmarks to mark the 50th Anniversary of VE Day on 8th May 1995 - just as there had been for centuries before whenever there was the threat of invasion.
Rivington Pike was such a landmark, having been used on a number of occasions over the centuries for such a purpose including to warn of the Spanish Armada in 1588. I don't know whether we sought permission or just did it but it required putting out a call locally in Horwich for surplus wood supplies. These were then deposited at the end of Georges Lane below the Pike from where a few of the Horwich Heritage members including Norman Pendlebury and myself hauled it up to the top (you can see us both on the photo).
It was a windy evening (as always) but the weather was fine and the fire burned successfully as you can see on the other photo. Somehow I don't think you would get permission to do that today and we (now over 70s) probably wouldn't be able to do lug all that wood up there now!
Despite the 'lockdown', I hope you are finding suitable ways to celebrate/commemorate VE Day - attached is my attempt! Here's to when "Well Meet Again" in the not-too-distant future. Best Wishes - Stuart
As I'm sure you are all aware, the 75th Anniversary of VE Day cannot be celebrated either nationally or locally in the ways that the Government had planned but that does not mean that this momentous event should not be recognised and commemorated.
As I write, plans have been announced for 2 minutes silence at 11am on 8th May followed by Winston Churchill's famous "This is your Victory" speech at 3pm. The Queen will then address the nation at 9pm and this will be followed by a 'sing-along'of wartime favourites.
Thanks to the internet and YouTube, we can all read and watch Churchill's speech and witness the wild celebrations that took place outside Buckingham Palace on 8th May 1945 and, during the coming week, the main TV channels will be showing recently-discovered VE Day footage which will definitely be worth watching. This was a day of national rejoicing after almost 6 long years of war but also a day to reflect on the hardship and loss that had been endured. Across the country communities celebrated in their own ways and, thanks to the Horwich & Westhoughton Journal, we have a record of some of the activities that took place in Horwich. The paper reported that "The victory announcement was greeted in Horwich with rejoicing and thanksgiving.
The Union Jack was hoisted on public buildings and works, mills and all the streets were gaily decorated with flags and bunting. The Public Hall was illuminated and, following the broadcast by the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, the Parish Church bells rang merrily. The streets were thronged with people on holiday and in the afternoon and evening the celebration was enlivened by Horwich Old Band who paraded the main thoroughfares halting to play patriotic and other tunes outside the Public Hall, at the Crown Square, the Labour Club, British Legion Club and Loco Works cenotaph. Horwich Boy Scouts drum & bugle band (see photo) also paraded throughout the town. Children in various parts of the town enjoyed street tea-parties, lit bonfires, burned effigies of Hitler and exploded fireworks.
At midnight the noise of fireworks was heard again and crowds of young people linked hands and sang and tripped merrily through the streets on their way home." Services of thanksgiving were held on the evening of VE Day at Horwich Parish Church and St Catherine's and there was a Civic Service attendee by the chairman & members of Horwich Council and members of the various organisations who had contributed to the war effort on Sunday 13th May.
With all this going on, it is disappointing to read the generally low key coverage of these events in the H&WJ of 11th May 1945 (see front page headline & article attached) with only one photo of the town's celebration's, near the Greenwood, included (copy attached). Maybe this was reflection of austerity (few reporters or photographers available?) or a combination of relief/exhaustion that it was all over. The attached page from that edition perhaps sums up the mixed emotions of the time with the wedding photo of George Smart and Joan Tomlinson at St Catherine's Church sitting alongside the summary of the Victory celebrations and the report of the death of Staff Sgt. John Ellison of Lee Lane killed in the airborne landings near the Rhine. The paper did find the space to (quite rightly) thank all the people who had organised the town's war effort but then quickly moved on the talk about other issues of the day like the burgeoning cost of running Fall Birch Hospital. This has left us with little visual coverage of the 1945 VE Day celebrations other than the 3 photos from our archives of the Scout Band in Winter Street and the St Anne's Road Street Party and children dressed up in Chapel Street. It would be great if more photos and stories could be unearthed by our members and the people of Horwich.
In the absence of a fuller celebration/ commemoration of VE Day over the weekend of 8th-10th May 2020, I hope this short article and attachments paints a picture for you of Horwich 75 years ago - a town suddenly realising that the long years of privation and loss were at an end and that the long road to recovery could begin. Perhaps we can take heart from their fortitude as we face our current crisis. Although the war with Germany was over, the war in the Far East still raged on until the Japanese surrendered in August. The current Government intention is to hold a combined celebration/ commemoration of VE & VJ Day on 15th August. Let's hope there is 'some light at the end of the tunnel by then'.
Best wishes Stuart Whittle.
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