![]() We only spent time in it when the air raid sirens went off. He dug a pit about 3 feet deep, installed the corrugated shelter in it and covered it with the displaced earth. We were issued with an Anderson shelter, which Dad installed, in our back garden. ![]() Some communal air raid shelters were built in the streets but as they were brick built and had concrete roofs it was doubtful if they would have been very effective. A few stray bombs fell on Rainhill but did no significant damage. Whiston, from there, over ensuing months, we could see the effects of air raids on Liverpool, about 9 miles away. War broke out on the 3rd Sept 1939, and we were then living in a small semi-detached house 121 Dragon Lane. I could get to a cinema show for 9 pence. I earned 11 shillings per week and gave my mother 10 of these and had one shilling as spending money. I then started work as an errand boy at the Rainhill branch of the Whiston Co-op Society. I went to a primary school in Prescot, in the final year class.Īt the age of 11 I went to Whiston Central School until Easter 1939 In 1935 he got a job at Cronton colliery and the family moved to Whiston, renting an end terrace house in Brook Street. He and some other miners went to work in Kent but the conditions were so difficult that they came back to Lancashire. Times became hard when the Bickerstaffe pit closed and father was out of work. ![]() He fitted a seat on the crossbar of his bike and would take me for rides on it. We had no transport and Daddy went to work on his bike having to go over a fairly large area called the Moss. Sundays were spent going to chapel and Sunday school. All hot water came from a kettle, which was permanently on the fire or from the wash boiler, which was only used on washdays.ĭaddy would come home from work covered in coal dust and would wash all over in a galvanised bath in front of the fire or, if the weather was warm, in the backyard. The back kitchen had a slopstone and a cold water tap. ![]() Alongside the fireplace was a brick built boiler for washing clothes. The living kitchen had a coal-fired range, which had an oven on one side and water heater on the other. It had a back yard in which Daddy had a wooden hut in which he carried out his hobby of fretwork and other woodwork. We lived in a small terraced cottage in Spencers Lane, which had two bedrooms, a parlour (front room), a living kitchen and a back kitchen. I had an older brother called Eric and a younger brother called William or Billy who died when only three years old. Mother, Alice worked hard looking after the house and the children. My father, Joshua, known as Jos, was a coal miner working at a coal mine in Bickerstaffe. I was born in 1925 at a small village called Digmoor in Upholland near Wigan. Memories and Reminiscences of Bob Sharrock ![]()
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