Results tagged “Burscough” from O & S Advertiser - Memories

WITH 2009 dawning to the woes of the credit crunch and fears over job losses, this week's memories harks back to a similar time of high unemployment.

Early in 1981 the jobless rate for Ormskirk was 17.2% of the working population, well above the national figure of 10%. At the time there were only 22 vacancies in the Ormskirk unemployment office.

More than 50 people were made redundant at Universal Bulk Handling on Orrell Lane, Burscough. The news came as a blow to workers as the company had only announced a £150,000 order a few weeks before.

CHILDREN from St John's CE Primary School in Burscough celebrated harvest festival in October 1980 by taking a close look at where their food comes from.

Pupils went along to farmer Jim Hesketh's barn and sat among the bales of hay for the traditional autumn service.

After the sermon the children went on a tour of the farm to see how Farmer Jim worked. They enjoyed the trip so much they painted pictures about it when they got back to the school.

THIS week we start with a few old codgers who were making an appeal for the return of some ornaments to their local watering hole in February 1988.

Barry Taylor, Jim Winrow and Len Saunders, regulars at the Red Lion in Burscough, used to have their own place 'Codger's Corner' where they used to sit every time they had a pint.

Landlady Mary Kitts placed four wise monkeys carved from wood which depicted the proverb 'see, speak, hear and do no evil' and a shell owl as a joke on the five men who sat there.

THIS week we have a picture taken in 1985 of David Bellamy at Martin Mere in Burscough.

Botanist Bellamy was there to open the Wetland and Wildfowl centre’s new marsh garden.

When it was opened the garden was the only one of its kind in the North West, featuring plants like water lilies and marsh marigolds.

WE kick off this week’s Memories with a picture of Gordon Cottle and young football stars of Dynamo Football Club taken in 1992 at Victoria Park in Burscough.

The football scout was on the search to recruit more young supporters for Burscough FC.

He told the Advertiser at the time: “I want to try to raise awareness among many young people in the Burscough area to come and join us at Victoria Park.

WE are back in 1990 this week for the Martin Mere’s 15th birthday celebrations.

Our first picture shows staff at the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust Centre on Red Cat Lane in Burscough.

The mere is a vast marsh that, until it was drained, was the largest lake in England.

We have some very generous people who raised cash for children of Chernobyl in 1995.

The youngsters, aged eight to 12, came from Belarus to West Lancashire to spend a month living with local families and visited Burscough St John's CE Primary School.

The children were still suffering form radiation-related illnesses ten years on from the disaster and organisers of the Burscough and Lathom banch of Medicine and Chernobyl invited them to England so they could benefit from breathing uncontaminated air and eat radiation-free food.

ADVERTISER readers were really seeing triple back in 1985.

Hitting the headlines were the Porter triplets, from Burscough, pictured at five-weeks-old.

Matthew, Natalie and Laura featured on the front page of the newspaper and were born five weeks early at Ormskirk Hospital and spent their first few days in incubators before being transferred to the special care unit.

THE early 90s saw the arrival of bands like Oasis from Manchester, Blur from Essex ... and Sweet Mercy from Burscough.

The five-piece band came back to the town to play a gig at the Barons pub in 1992 after touring all over the UK.

The group were formed a year earlier and were made up of guitarist Tim Bradley, drummer Simon Ward, on keyboards Paul Draper, Tim ‘TJ’ Jarvis and Simon ‘Flash’ Gordon.

ELEVEN-year-old Damien Dunn came up trumps in 1983 with his nifty bit of detective work.

When the youngster handed over a large stone over the bar of the Red Lion pub in Burscough, landlord Des Feely promptly honoured a pledge he had painted on the stone, before hiding it in the Lake District.

On it was written: “If you find this stone, then claim your free pint at the Red Lion, Burscough.� Des had hidden the stone in a wall near a stream. The wall crumbled and the stone fell in the stream.

BURSCOUGH butcher Eric Mullis retired from the trade in 1987. Eric had bought his shop on Liverpool Road North 24 years previously from Jim Smith whose father and grandfather ran the business before him.

Jim Smith’s father Harry took the shop over from the Walker family and the name was associated with much of the property around Burscough which they owned at the time.