The Season of Goodwill…

Christmas is coming and the shops are bustling with people preparing for the festive season. In Knowsley’s Archive, as we take a moment to pause and reflect on the last twelve months and to look ahead to the New Year and those impossible to keep resolutions, we’ve been having a look at some of the more seasonal items in the collections and asking, what can the Archive tell us about the season of goodwill and its celebration in our communities?

One of the collections, the Cross Heuller Archive [KA189/B], reveals how a company might reward its staff for their loyalty and hard work throughout the year whilst involving their families during the Christmas and New Year period.

The Cross Company was founded in 1898 in Detroit, Michigan. Cross International arrived at Kirkby Industrial Estate to begin its machine tool manufacturing operation in April 1969, spending a brief spell in the Ward and Goldstone factory before settling into a new plant on Randles Road, Knowsley on 29^th December 1969. The official opening of the factory took place on 20^th March 1970, with Prime Minister and local Member of Parliament Harold Wilson as guest of honour.  Much effort went into getting the plant up and running and perhaps for this reason, the Company’s Christmas party for the employees’ children was held in early January 1971. Photographs of the event, captured in a scrapbook featuring key landmarks in the company’s commercial and social development, show that the festive spirit was still very much in evidence: the children are pictured tucking into sandwiches, jelly and ice cream whilst wearing party hats and pulling Christmas crackers.

Friday, 17^th December 1971 was the occasion of Cross International’s first employees’ dinner dance, set at Allerton Hall, Clarke Gardens with entertainment provided by the Barry Noble Discotheque. The menu included iced melon as a starter (a running theme in later celebration menus) and a traditional turkey roast with all the trimmings, followed by plum pudding and plum sauce.  Again, the Children’s Christmas Party was held in the early New Year. This was a very lively affair, with Father Christmas making a popular appearance to distribute gifts amongst the children. Entertainment included musicians, a clown and a film show. A letter of thanks, written by 3 of the children to the ‘Dear ladies and gentleman’, voiced their appreciation of the film show and the entertainers in particular.

The Cross International factory was cutting edge, with all the latest technologies incorporated into the machines and building design. Even the staff canteen was modern and streamlined, with an automated system for heating frozen ready meals in microwave ovens and vending machines to dispense drinks. Technology was likewise applied to Christmas: the scrap book contains a wonderful example of word processor art, with a seasonal greeting to overseas colleagues at Fraser and Crew created using the word ‘Cross’ repeatedly. The message seems quite primitive by today’s standards, but in 1971, this was the stuff of tomorrow’s world.

The first Christmas Dinner Dance in 1971 was organised by the Committee of the Sports and Social Club, a growing sense of community, identity and social awareness developing within the company. This gathering was held at Allerton Hall, Clarke Gardens, where guests danced to the Barry Noble Discotheque and enjoyed a traditional turkey roast (with iced melon for starters).

Such attention to the workforce, with an apprentice scheme and favourable conditions of employment – plus an investment in the factory of around £2 million – certainly seemed to be paying off for Cross International. In November 1975, the Managing Director, Ralph E. Cross Jr., reported a turnover of over £3 million and an enviable expansion programme, all at a time of recession for the machine tool industry.

Sending season’s greetings to friends, family and colleagues is another way of showing goodwill at Christmas. Christmas cards first appeared in the UK in 1834 and were devised by Sir Henry Cole [1808-1882] who, in his early career as a civil servant, was involved in the development of the Penny Post. Coincidentally, he commissioned his artist friend, J.C. Horsley, to design the first commercial Christmas card. This featured a traditional family enjoying seasonal fare flanked by portrayals of charitable works and retailed for 1 shilling.

Designs have varied over the years, but the sentiment remains constant. One example from the Archive collections was sent by a Huyton father to his young daughter in 1918. He had served in the Royal Flying Corps throughout the Great War: a previous card sent whilst he was on active service had been far more austere in its design, showing fighter planes in drab monochrome. That design was appropriately far more restrained than the whimsical depiction of three robins nestling in a bouquet of festive holly leaves that adorned the first card sent from father to daughter in the post war era.

Another of our collections, the Margaret Whitaker née Hodge collection, documents the experiences of the young Miss Hodge, a tutor at Kirkby’s Malayan Teachers’ Training College in the mid-1950s. She built a strong bond with her students, who kept in touch with her for many years after they had all left Kirkby. Amongst her correspondence we find some beautiful international examples of Christmas cards from across the decades. The first, a Chinese design depicting a beautiful pagoda resplendent with bright colours and glitter, dates from around 1954:

Our next example from the 1960s features poinsettias and holly tied up in red ribbon:

Our final card dates from 1996. Created by Miss Hodge’s former student, Hanna-Cheriyan Varghese for the Council of Churches of Malaysia and in contrast to the other cards featured, it illustrates a contemporary Nativity scene – a timely reminder of the reason Christmas is celebrated.

Whilst each generation adapts and develops new trends that reflect the times in which we live, re-enacting the traditions that have come down through the decades offers our communities touchstones that mark the passing years and strengthen those bonds that tie our families and communities together.

Gather Round: Tales of Autumnal Mystery…

Autumn has arrived; the trees are shedding their gold, red and brown leaves, the clocks will soon be turning back and as the evenings draw in, temperatures are falling.

Lancastrian dialect poet Edwin Waugh [1817-1890] captures the feeling with his poem ‘What makes your leaves fall down?’ when he laments:

‘What makes your leaves fall down,

Ye dropping autumn flowers?

What makes your green go brown,

Ye fading autumn bowers?

Oh, thou complaining gale,

That wand’rest sad and lone,

What sorrows swell the tale

Of that funereal moan?’

[from ‘Poems and Lancashire songs’ by Edwin Waugh, 4^th edition, published by Abel Heywood and Son, 1876: ARK Special Collections]

Winter is just around the corner and since prehistoric times, people have gathered together to share tales of bravery, hope, daring and the supernatural to defend against the dark of a long winter’s night. We have delved into the Archive to rediscover some local tales of mystery from long ago…

Legends of headless horsemen and ghoulish galloping steeds are told all around the country, but one such story relates to a place much closer to home.

Our source for the ‘Legend of The White Horse of Whiston’ is local historian and author Bill Blinkhorn, who retells a tale told to him many years ago by Mr. Horn of Rainhill. According to legend, a ghostly white battle charger can be seen galloping across Halsnead Park:

‘See I galloping Saxon White Horse ghost

Once leader in battle with Ancient Host

Frights maidens of the villagery

And oft makes the milk bear no balm

Misleads night wanderers, laughs at their harm

With ouglie hobgoblin Puck, no imagery

But with Lickers Fold sprites at early dawn

Speed away to rest like startled fawn’

[from: ‘Whiston: a young person’s guide’ by Bill Blinkhorn, published by KMBC Department of Leisure Services, Libraries Division, 1990: ARK Special Collections] 

Often, traditional tales such as this are passed from generation to generation, recounted as narratives or poems which are rarely written down but shared though storytelling. Others may have their origins in 18^th century chapbooks, cheaply produced works of popular literature which were sold on the streets and covered everything from tales of the supernatural to current affairs. Take for example the ghostly tale of ‘The Spectre Horseman of Giller’s Green’, recounted by James Hoult in a press cutting from the Prescot Reporter of January 25^th 1924 [KA57/P/Z9: Prescot Grammar School Collection].

A tale of thwarted love, this story was, it is said, repeated to customers by the landlady of a local hostelry, the Angel Inn, sometime during the 1700s. She told of a rich farmer from Giller’s Green (then a village in the old township of Eccleston – the area is now known as Gillar’s Green) whose daughter was engaged to an unsuitable young man. The farmer had the engagement broken off and his daughter sent away to stay with relatives. Tragically, the young man died of a broken heart, but the daughter wasn’t aware that he had passed away.

One night, she was awoken by a horseman banging on the door. It was her beloved, come to take her home – and because he was riding her father’s horse and carrying her mother’s hood, she believed that all of their troubles were over and that they could return together. She climbed onto the horse and riding pillion behind her fiancé, they galloped back to her father’s house.

On arrival, the young man dismounted, complaining of a terrible headache. The daughter took her handkerchief and bound his head before he left her to enter the house alone. Her parents, who had no idea that she was returning, were shocked by her arrival and could not believe what she was telling them. In disbelief, the farmer ran over to the stables to check on his horse. The beast had obviously been ridden hard as it was exhausted and sweated up – but how?

The following day, the farmer persuaded the sexton to open the young man’s grave, to make sure that he had been buried properly. His body was there in the coffin – with the daughter’s handkerchief tied around his head…

Could there be an echo of truth in this sorry tale, or was it merely a work of fiction used as entertainment in a local pub?

Cautionary tales are often told to warn people to keep away from dangerous places. Old Lancashire folklore is riddled with tales of boggarts, goblin-like spirits who would inhabit marshes, pits and dangerous roads, causing children to disappear and, in olden days, horses to spook and injure their riders. Many of us will be familiar with tales of Ginny Greenteeth, a frightening, hag-like creature that would inhabit waterways and canals. In wartime Huyton, young women working in the Royal Ordnance Factory in Kirkby were encouraged to get home quickly for fear of being caught by the ‘Galosher Man’, a sinister figure who would stalk lone females walking along dark country lanes. Again, these tales are rarely written down: we learned of the Galosher Man, a more modern urban myth, when talking to Blue Bell Estate residents about their wartime memories.

Knowsley’s Archive is a fabulous source of local stories. Why not visit us, take a closer look at the collections held in the ARK and discover the treasures that reveal the stories, facts, places and people that are at the heart of our communities?

Visit the ARK at the Kirkby Centre, Norwich Way, Kirkby, L32 8XY. For more information about the ARK or to find out about the services on offer, call 0151 442 4365 or email infoheritage@knowsley.gov.uk. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook and find Knowsley Archives on YouTube, Flickr, WordPress and Soundcloud.

One small step…

The Artemis 1 mission successfully launched from the Kennedy Space Center at 6:47am GMT (1:47am EST) on Wednesday 16^th November, marking NASA’s renewed mission to explore the lunar environment and deep space possibilities. The mission will extensively test the Space Launch System and the Orion module, which will travel out into deep space at a distance of approximately 65,000 miles beyond the moon before returning to Earth and splashing down in the Pacific Ocean on December 11^th 2022. Although this flight is unmanned, it heralds a renewed drive for space exploration.

If we cast our minds back some 53 years, we can recall another feat of trailblazing space travel. This momentous event occurred on July 20^th 1969. Three men – Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins – had piloted Apollo 11 to the moon and two of them – Armstrong and Aldrin – had landed the Lunar Module on the moon’s surface at Mare Tranquillitatis – the Sea of Tranquility. Its safe landing was announced to Mission Control and the waiting world by Mission Commander Armstrong with the words,

‘Houston, Tranquillity Base here. The Eagle has landed’. 

The following day, July 21^st 1969, saw Neil Armstrong take the first steps on the lunar surface, when he delivered the immortal line:

‘One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind’

It was. Who can forget being enthralled by the grainy black and white television images of these heroes as they explored the barren wastes of the moon, pictures beaming almost impossibly from space into our homes, schools and workplaces? Everyone stopped and watched, or so it seemed…

Back on earth, the local newspapers were busy reporting the day-to-day goings on of the communities they served. Delving into the Archive to look back at the microfilmed Kirkby Reporter, we can see that in the run up to the Apollo mission, the edition of Thursday 15^th May 1969 ran a feature which looked at a local school’s contribution to the Merseyside Science Fair to be held in June 1969 at Liverpool University, under the headline ‘In the name of Science’. All of the 335 pupils from St. Michael’s Junior School, Westvale, were involved in carrying out detailed scientific research for inclusion in the Fair. For example, one group studied the comparative heights and weights of girls and boys; pupils followed and plotted the progress of their teacher’s new born baby and one boy created a questionnaire to find out about blood, interviewing a local G.P. before putting the questionnaire together. Even the school budgie and Smokey the rabbit got involved – they had their pulses taken and recorded by pupils.

The period before the moon landing was an exciting time in Kirkby: the first Kirkby Show was held over two days on Friday 11^th and Saturday 12^th July and the Reporter was there to capture the fun in the giant marquee, declaring ‘It’s a Hit!’ in its headline from the 17^th July edition. 14,000 visitors attended the Show – reportedly a fifth of Kirkby’ population.

The front-page headlines of 24^th July featured the visit by Princess Margaret to Fazakerley Hospital’s new £740,000 maternity unit (she had been unable to attend the official opening in May due to an attack of gastro-enteritis) – and the moon landing inspired a number of witty advertisements from local companies. Don’t worry that you can’t book a seat on Apollo 11 – Phythians Travel Agency of St. Helens will put your name down in their Lunar Flight Register for early booking once moon flights are available (we’re still waiting…). In a tongue in cheek feature article, Budget Rent-A-Car International, a subsidiary of Trans International Airlines, appears to have beaten them to it, offering commercial charter flights on the TIA ‘949’ Super Spacecraft, luxury accommodation at the Hotel Luna in the Sea of Showers and, of course, lunar vehicle hire. The space race certainly inspired the imagination!

The Kirkby Reporter is also the source for some interesting accounts of sightings of Unidentified Flying Objects and alien beings. In December 1970, the Reporter put out a call for anyone who had witnessed several incidents involving U.F.O.s flying over Kirkby and the Industrial Estate that had been reported back in 1964. A man who was working as a security guard at the time of the phenomena was writing a book about the encounters and wanted to gather people’s evidence. He had witnessed unidentified objects flying singly and in formation, at times at very high speeds, throughout July and August 1964. The book – U.F.O.s Over Kirkby by John Parkinson – was published in 1972 and contains very detailed accounts of the mysterious craft sighted in the Kirkby area. It is available to view in the Archive.

Other sightings have been captured in the Kirkby Reporter.

As reported on Friday 24^th May 1963, two local teenagers were stunned when a beam of light lit up the sky close to Kirkby Fire Station at around 10:30pm. One witness stated that ‘…it was a funny shape and a beam was coming from it at intervals’. The featureless object was hovering about 100 feet from the ground and circled the area for about an hour.

The front page headline on Friday 6^th January 1978 declared ‘Serious Sighting Shocker’. Four young men had been driving along Old Cut Lane in Simonswood when they were confronted by an eight foot tall monster. The creature, described as wearing ‘an asbestos-like spacesuit’, blocked the road and approached the vehicle, at which point the men fled the scene, calling the police from a nearby farmhouse. The police took the sighting very seriously and emphasised that there was no indication that the men were drunk or that they were the victims of a prank. However, this didn’t deter the Reporter’s journalists from doing their own investigation – the following week’s edition featured a Reporter staff journalist dressed as an alien and parading around the town to get reactions from the local residents!

Whether sightings of other-worldly crafts and beings were prompted by the excitement of the space race of the 1960s and 1970s, or even the impact of Hollywood blockbusters like Close Encounters of the Third Kind and the Star Wars franchise, we continue to look to the stars. With advancements in technology – the James Webb Space Telescope is capturing the most incredible images of the earliest galaxies in the universe – we continue to find inspiration in space travel and exploration.  

Family History Help Desks 2019

As previous blogs have described, Knowsley Archives provide a series of Family History Help Desks in libraries across the borough every month. If you are new to family history research, or are trying to find your way through the maze of information and resources, expert advice and guidance is available to help you on your way.

If you would like support with your family history research, staff at the ARK – Knowsley Archives’ base in Kirkby Library – are available to help during our opening hours (see sidebar on the right), but the Family History Help Desks are an opportunity to get support at a time and location that may be more convenient for you.

There is no charge for sessions and they are run on a drop-in basis. We will do our best to answer your questions on the day, but more complicated queries may need to be followed up after your visit or require an additional appointment.

Sessions for 2019 are as follows:

PRESCOT LIBRARY Tuesday 10am-1pm	STOCKBRIDGE LIBRARY Tuesday 2pm-5pm	KIRKBY LIBRARY Thursday 10am-1pm	HALEWOOD LIBRARY Friday 2pm-5pm	HUYTON LIBRARY Saturday 10am-1pm
22nd January	22nd January	24th January	25th January	26th January
19th February	19th February	21st February	22nd February	23rd February
19th March	19th March	21st March	22nd March	23rd March
23rd April	23rd April	25th April	26th April	27th April
28th May	28th May	30th May	31st May	1st June
25th June	25th June	27th June	28th June	29th June
23rd July	23rd July	25th July	26th July	27th July
20th August	20th August	22nd August	23rd August	24th August
17th September	17th September	19th September	20th September	21st September
15th October	15th October	17th October	18th October	19th October
12th November	12th November	14th November	15th November	16th November
10th December	10th December	12th December	13th December	14th December

 

Test your Knowsley Sports Knowledge!

As part of the Knowsley Sports and Culture Awards, which were held on Friday October 13th, 2017, Knowsley Archives put together a sports quiz based on items from our archive collections. Thanks in particular should go to our super volunteer, Michael, who has been scouring our newspaper cuttings to find interesting sports-themed stories.

Huyton Cricket Club, 1955

We’ll be exploring some of those stories, and looking for people’s memories, memorabilia and experiences, as part of our Heritage Lottery funded sports project. Look our for more information about that project in the local press and on our social media pages – and we’ll be adding another blog here all about the sports project very soon.

In the meantime, follow the link below to have a go at our quiz!

Take Our Sports Quiz!

 

The Malayan Connection

“The most important thing about your stay in England must be the development of yourself as a more mature and far-seeing person. When you go home, as a graduate, you will be expected to work miracles – and only you may be aware how little you really do know – but you will have the means and the initiative to study further on your own and to adapt yourself.”

There’s a word I’ve removed from that statement above. Without it, many readers could assume the author was talking about graduates of a prestigious University, an Oxbridge one perhaps, or maybe an elite private school that churns out leaders of the future.

Margaret Hodge (right) with some of her students, 1953

The quote is taken from a notebook that belonged to Miss Margaret Hodge, an art tutor at the educational institution in question during the 1950s. The students she was preparing this address for had travelled to study in England from Malaya (which would later, in 1963, become Malaysia). During a ten year period, from 1952 to 1962, something like 1900 Malayans arrived to study a broad range of subjects. The students represented the multi-ethnic diversity of their country and many, like the products of England’s famous private schools, would indeed go on to be leaders of the future; as politicians, royalty, lawyers, and numerous esteemed professions that would mark them as pillars of their communities.

It’s the location of this remarkable, ground-breaking establishment that is missing from the extract above. The place that became a temporary home to some of Malaya’s brightest and best was the Malayan Teacher Training College in Kirkby, near Liverpool. It may still not be an internationally famous town, but to alumni of the college, Kirkby was the centre of a life-changing experience that would resonate across the world and ensure that the town would remain a symbol of innovation, transformation and hope. At the time the Malayan College was first opened, Kirkby was a small town, much of it still rural; a relatively small Lancashire community that few outside of the region would have been aware of. After the Blitz of the Second World War devastated so much of Liverpool, Kirkby would become one of the ‘overspill’ areas for the city as it embarked on a programme of slum housing clearance and establishing new out-of-city housing estates. The lifetime of the Malayan College coincides with the beginning of Kirkby’s rapid expansion into an urban town when the Lancashire accent would be edged out to be replaced by the very different scouse twang. You can hear some of the memories we hold in the ARK about this period on our Soundcloud page, including memories of rural Kirkby and interviews conducted as part of our Heritage Lottery funded work with Kirkby residents about the 1940s-60s in the town.

Students and staff at the Emergency Teacher Training College, 1948

Prior to the college taking over the site, the buildings which would accommodate the college had been used as the location for an Emergency Teacher Training College (a location which included the repurposing of a former hostel for the Royal Ordnance Factory during the Second World War). Like others set up around the country after the close of the War, Kirkby’s Emergency College, which opened in 1948, was a response to a national shortage of teachers and a much-needed way of providing men returning from the War with a qualification and career. By 1951, the college was closing down and the Malayan Government were invited to take over the site for their own Teacher Training College.

The impact of Kirkby’s Malayan College is truly remarkable. For students, it offered a high quality education, an international perspective and a sense of cultural awareness, with the reality of studying, living and socialising with Malayans of many different backgrounds seen as an ”opportunity to view and study the Malayan political and social scene with at least some degree of detachment.” (Panduan, the college magazine, July 1953). For the Kirkby residents and the schoolchildren and teachers who came into contact with the students, the college provided a rare chance to meet people from abroad and share in their culture; an experience that the students recognised as mutually beneficial. Perhaps the most significant thing about the college is its importance in international history. Regarded as a flagship example of Malaya’s ambitions for a harmonious society, it was fitting that, on 7th February 1956, Malaya’s Chief Minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman, chose the college, rather than a government building in London or Kuala Lumpur, as the venue to make the momentous announcement that the British colony was being granted independence.

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Former students of the Malayan College return to Kirkby, August 2017

Thanks to our Heritage Lottery funding, we have been able to explore the history of this fascinating, and often overlooked, part of Knowsley’s history. Staff and volunteers are busily gathering memories and memorabilia from local people who remember the college; many of whom have wonderful memories of being taught by the students from the college as part of their teaching placements. In addition, we have been extremely fortunate to develop strong links with the alumni association of the college – who refer to themselves as ‘Kirkbyites’ – and they have been very generous with their time and with donations of a wealth of superb documents, photographs, magazines and films relating to the history of the Malayan College. A highpoint of the project was a visit to Kirkby by almost 40 of the Kirkbyites and their families, travelling from all over the world, to help us commemorate the college with the unveiling of a plaque to mark the original location (now an area known as Granbourne Chase). The alumni, who were all septuagenarians and octogenarians, were fantastically energetic and their enthusiasm and affection for the college and Kirkby was infectious for everyone who was lucky enough to meet them. Whilst in Kirkby, they were also able to be the first to see our new exhibition, in Kirkby Library where the ARK is based, about the Malayan College. We were relieved that they gave it their seal of approval! The exhibition was at Kirkby Library until 31st October 2017. In this blog, I’ll give a very brief overview of our collections relating to the Malayan College and an idea of our exhibition for those of you unable to visit. You can also see the exclusive film we made to mark this project and the visit of the Kirkbyites at the bottom of this post.

The Malayan Connection exhibition in Kirkby Library

One of the largest collections relating to the Malayan College is the personal archive of Margaret Hodge. This includes lots of photographs and college-related documents, along with her own lovely artwork. Here you can find portraits of college students and her beautiful illustrations for a Malayan government commissioned children’s book, Tijah, Mat Dan Nor. Also amongst her papers are her notebooks that include draft lesson plans and points for discussion with students. Miss Hodge’s archive, alongside the many donations and memories we are gathering from local people and college alumni, help us to gain a much clearer understanding of life at the college and the huge impact that Kirkby and the college had. Some of Margaret Hodge’s photographs can be see in the galleries in this blog and you can see more on our Flickr site.

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The first group of 149 Malayan students arrived at the college on 2 January 1952. For many students, this wasn’t just a place to gain a teaching qualification; it was also an opportunity to bring the many Malayan cultures, races, languages and religions together, looking towards the vision of a multi-ethnic, diverse and tolerant Malaya that they hoped for. Panduan embraced this optimism as a “challenge to work for a united, progressive and harmonious Malaya, having its roots in and drawing its sustenance from the [country’s] several diversities.”

The Malayan students had a busy social life. We know from the memories of former students and articles in Panduan that many of them would regularly visit local towns and cities and very much enjoyed eating fish and chips and to Kirkby’s pubs! Within the college, students were able to become part of a wide variety of clubs and societies, organising a packed calendar of dances, film nights, sporting and charity fund-raising activities. Drama and musical productions were also a fixture of college life, as well as celebrations of religious festivals that brought all of the students together to recognise and enjoy the many different faiths represented within the college.

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During the two year course, the students were expected to study a broad range of subjects, including English, Education and Mathematics. Alongside their studies, students also had to gain teaching experience and would be placed with schools across the region to develop their classroom skills. We are delighted that we have been contacted by people with childhood memories of meeting the young, Malayan teachers and being introduced to new cultures and even foods (one gentleman remembered seeing a pineapple for the first time!).

This project has helped us to learn so much more about the history of the college, the lives of the Malaysians who studied there and their impact on local communities. The exhibition is an opportunity for us to share this extraordinary history and remind people of Kirkby’s international significance and why it is held in such high affection by alumni of an exceptional and distinct college.

Rock The ARK: Capturing Knowsley’s Music Memories

Do you have an interesting story to tell of artists or groups that you’ve seen or heard? Maybe you were in a band, a choir, an orchestra, or remember songs your grandparents used to sing?

If so, the ARK (Archive Resource for Knowsley) wants to know about it!

Your story could be of an artist or group from Knowsley, or from anywhere else, so long as you yourself live or work in Knowsley (or have done in the past).

Classical, pop, rock, jazz, soul, folk, disco, blues, gospel, techno, house, hip-hop – whatever music has been a part of your life, it’s important to the ARK.

The ARK wants to find out what music means to people and build a community collection of memories and memorabilia that traces Knowsley’s music history.

Each of Knowsley’s libraries (Halewood, Huyton, Kirkby, Prescot and Stockbridge Village) has an exhibition with information about artists and groups from Knowsley during the past 100 years or so. Each library in Knowsley focuses on different artists so, if you can, go and visit them all.

In all five of the libraries, you can listen to a selection of songs from Knowsley artists and vote for your favourite – this will create a Knowsley’s Top 10! Don’t worry if you can’t make it to one of our libraries – you can also vote right here using our poll below and see videos of each of the songs to help you choose your favourites.

How about sharing your music memories in writing with us to help us build our music memories archive? There are lots of ways to share your memories with us. You can send any memories to us via email or post (see below). Or, if you prefer, you can also share your stories on ARK’s Facebook and Twitter pages and use #RockTheARK so we can find you! Alternatively, you can leave comments below this blog. Every so often, we’ll be adding some of the best stories to our Rock The ARK music timeline – take a look!

Or maybe you’d be willing to be recorded talking about your music memories and experiences? If so, the ARK would love to hear from you – these recordings will be added to our oral history archive collections and be preserved for future generations!

The ARK is also keen to capture any memorabilia that you might have, and be willing to part with or share a copy of, such as photographs, tickets, flyers, posters etc. Help us create a wonderful resource that will mean people in the future will discover why music was important to you. We’ll add #RockTheARK images to our Flickr page so that they’re all in one place and can be easily viewed.

Rock The ARK is one of the ARK’s community history projects funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund. Everything that is captured during the project will be kept in Knowsley Archives for posterity.

As well as social media, here are the other ways to contact the ARK:

Tel: 0151 443 4365

Email: infoheritage@knowsley.gov.uk

Post: Rock The ARK, Archive Resource for Knowsley, 1st Floor, Kirkby Centre, Norwich Way, Kirkby. L32 8XY

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Calling St. Gregory’s School for Girls, Kirkby…

Earlier this year, we were very fortunate to receive an interesting donation which recalled the work of Miss Mary Thomas, the former Head of the House Craft Department at St. Gregory’s Roman Catholic Comprehensive School for Girls in Kirkby. Born in 1925, she was a dedicated teacher and later, founder in 1987 of the older peoples’ charity, Dark Horse Venture. She spent many years at St. Gregory’s and this collection recalls her work there.

Invitation to attend the ‘A Right Handful’ exhibition, 1979

After gaining her teaching qualification, Miss Thomas began her career at the Bovington Secondary Modern School in Dorset, followed by a spell in Tunbridge Wells and then a stint at a rural school in Sussex. St. Gregory’s Girls’ School opened in September 1958 on the same site as St. Laurence’s School, which had previously opened as a mixed establishment for boys and girls in the newly developed town of Kirkby in 1956. The two came together in 1963, when Miss Thomas was offered and accepted the post of Head of the Housecraft Department at St. Gregory’s, where she was responsible for 12 housecraft rooms, 6 needlework rooms and a team of 14 teaching staff. She introduced ‘Mothercraft’ as a taught subject, educating the pupils in all aspects of parenthood, from conception within marriage to all aspects of caring for a child – often using the girls’ baby brothers and sisters to demonstrate the practical skills required. An exhibition – ‘A Right Handful’ – organised by Miss Thomas at the Kirkby Civic Buildings (now the Kirkby Centre, home of The ARK) celebrated the International Year of the Child, 1979 and highlighted the students’ achievements.

Year Four pupils volunteering with the W.R.V.S. Meals on Wheels Service

Miss Thomas also made sure that the pupils were involved in their own community. She organised the Fourth Year girls in volunteering with the W.R.V.S. Meals on Wheels Service in Kirkby, helping to deliver hot meals to older people and also fundraising for the cause: it was reported that the students raised £33.00 and purchased a large aluminium food container and dishes which were presented to the W.R.V.S. by Miss Thomas and a group of pupils.

She eventually retired from  the school in 1983, but not before she had established a vibrant, forward thinking department which prepared the students for real life. Many will remember her saying: ‘If you want to make something of yourself you can. Take command of your life.’

The collection of materials looks at her time teaching at the school, including a scrapbook, colour and black and white photographs and negatives, newspaper cuttings and examples of posters for a child care exhibition involving pupils from St. Gregory’s as part of the Year of the Child in 1979. Miss Thomas has also deposited a copy of her autobiography, ‘So there you are…’ published through the Small Wonders Community Programme. Thanks are due to Mike Ravey, who deposited the collection on behalf of Miss Thomas.

We are currently holding an an exhibition of items from the collection which can be viewed at Kirkby Library during normal opening hours – and with Mike’s assistance, we’ll be hosting an open afternoon for ex-pupils which will be attended by Miss Thomas herself. This will take place on Thursday 9th June 2016 – do get in touch if you’d like more information.

Mr. Clark’s Wonderful Album

If I tell people that we have Victorian family photographs in the ARK, many imagine they know what to expect: stiff collars, stiff backs, stiff upper-lips and stiff poses. Whilst there are indeed photographs in our archives that show Victorians staring firmly at the camera or looking as though they would rather be anywhere but in front of a camera; we are also lucky enough to have some wonderful 19th and early 20th century photos that gleefully disregard their period’s reputation for dour frowns and rigid stances. One such collection is Mr. J.R.J. Clark’s photograph album, containing pictures taken between 1899 and 1900, which has recently been catalogued and digitised thanks to our Heritage Lottery funding. To highlight the work done during the digitisation process of the album, a small exhibition of images from the album has been put together in Kirkby Library.

Mr. Clark’s group portraits are almost always of people laughing and enjoying themselves

Mr. Clark and his young family lived in Huyton during this period and were clearly a wealthy family. Mr. Clark’s father had been the proprietor of the Lancashire Gazette newspaper and his son, it seems, had trained and worked in law before retiring from the profession at a relatively young age. As our photograph album demonstrates, Mr. Clark used much of his free time to take holidays, enjoy sporting and leisure activities, and pursue an interest in photography. It should be noted that at least some of the pictures are likely to have been taken by other photographers, particularly as Mr. Clark features in some of the images.

This photograph shows three children with two adults who we assume to be household servants. Mr. Clark’s album unfortunately provides no information as to who they were or what their household roles were.

Mr. Clark’s photographs are all exterior shots (where the light, of course, was better) and so all of the images of his Huyton home are outside and usually in the garden. Judging by the fruit and vegetables growing in pots – not to mention the types of clothing people are wearing – these garden photos were taken on warm spring or summer days. As well as family members and friends, household servants weren’t safe from Mr. Clark’s roving camera. Amongst the photographs in the album, there are shots of servants on their own and some where they are shown alongside family members, especially the children. The handwritten captions within the album are unfortunately very erratic, with very few details provided beyond the odd date and location, so we cannot easily identify all of the individuals in the pictures, including the servants and their specific roles.

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Holidays, both overseas and in the UK, were clearly something of a regular occurrence for the Clark family. The majority of the photographs have been taken whilst on holiday although, as mentioned above, it isn’t always easy to identify locations because most of the pictures don’t have captions. Confirmed locations for holidays include: the Isle of Man; South Devon (Dartmouth, Dawlish, Teignmouth and Exeter were all photographed); York; Fountains Abbey, Ripon; and Paris. Holiday photography provided Mr. Clark (and any other unidentified photographers) with the opportunity to try their hand at landscape images and many of these are very interesting as compositions in their own right and for the wealth of historical information they convey. Despite this, however, the camera’s gaze is still normally focussed on the family and friends’ enjoyment of their time together and the varied activities they involved themselves in.

This photograph was probably taken somewhere in South Devon, c. 1899

An enthusiasm for sport and other leisure activities, including hunting, is evident from Mr. Clark’s photographs. There are pictures that have been taken of friends and family taking part in sports and images of sporting events, such as show jumping and cricket matches at Aigburth Cricket Club, Liverpool (including a match between Liverpool and District and an Australian team). In other pictures, people pose with golf clubs or croquet mallets, and there is a whole series of photos of people with their hunting guns.

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Children in Paris, c. 1899-1900

One of the other notable things about many of the photographs is their spontaneity and creativity. The photographer[s] tried to capture events and moments as they saw them, often resulting in some dynamic and impressive images, such as the photo (right) of children running along a street in Paris. Experimentation is also evident in some of the photographs. In particular, there is a photograph (below) that is a double-exposed image of Norwegian naval cadets in Dartmouth combined with a picture of a lifeboat in Teignmouth.

Double-exposed image, Dartmouth and Teignmouth, Devon, October 1899

The people in almost all the images in Mr. Clark’s photograph album always seem to be enjoying themselves, often laughing at some unknown joke or antic. Perhaps Mr. Clark, or whoever else was taking the picture, has said something to make everyone laugh or pulled a funny face. Whilst we will never know, I believe that seeing faces from the past showing their enjoyment of their environments and each others company is somehow more powerful and resonant than a formal photograph taken in a studio. It reminds us that whilst our surroundings, haircuts and clothes may have changed, when we’re snapping pictures of family, friends and holidays on our smart phones and digital cameras, we’re not really all that different from the people taking photographs over 100 years ago.

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The exhibition of images from Mr. Clark’s photograph album is currently on display at Kirkby Library during its normal opening hours.

Christmas Delights!

Christmas trees are being decorated, cards are being sent, and the sales of Baileys are suddenly soaring. Not wanting to be the humbugs hiding in the archive, we’ve decided to put together a small display in Kirkby Library of Christmas related documents from our collections.

Some uncomfortable looking Christmas robins

Included in the exhibition are four Christmas cards, all from during, or shortly after, the First World War. The earliest of these is a card sent by a man serving in the Royal Flying Corps to his daughter back home in Huyton. The straight-forward monochrome design of the card, featuring an image of fighter planes circling that must have intrigued the young girl when she opened the card, contrasts with a more saccharine image of three robins sent shortly after the end of the war in 1918; although the fact that the robins appear to be stuck within a parcel filled with jagged holly leaves does add a peculiar note to the picture. The third card is one that incorporates a strangely blurred image of a cottage surrounded by a decidedly un-Christmassy summer garden. The nature of the blurring is reminiscent of 3D pictures, but could be the result of some kind of production error. Either way, a father at some point, probably in the 1920s, selected the card to send to one of his children. The fourth card is a Christmas message sent from the Huyton Vicarage in 1949 with the “heartiest” greetings from the Rev. W.H. Lewis and his wife and would probably have been received by many Huyton residents at the time.

Huyton’s Parish Magazine was keen to share some household tips with its female readers in 1959. Alongside recipes (Chunky Cake, anyone?) on the page we have scanned for display, readers could also learn how to remove soot fall from carpets (presumably after Father Christmas had dropped down a tight chimney); solve the “problem” of toddler’s shoe laces; and discover how to stop pans boiling over (smear the top edges with butter apparently*). There were also some “Christmas Specials;” and if you’ve ever wanted to add “glamour” to your Christmas parcels then you need to read this!**

A high-tech Christmas message from Cross International

The offices and factory of Cross International in Kirkby were very keen on Christmas in the 1970s and our exhibition features three documents telling the story of their Christmas celebrations in 1971. As well as a photograph showing the children of staff members working their way through mountains of cake and wearing novelty hats at a party, we’ve offered a taste of what their parents were up to with the menu for their impressive looking Christmas Dinner Dance (if anyone’s ever had Cranberry Peach Boats, we’d love to know more). Cross International were a cutting edge company and they knew how to show off to colleagues and fellow companies across the globe. Why send a boring old Christmas card (that was so 1960s) when you can send a state of the art message where the very letters of the words are made up entirely of the word ‘Cross’? It’s a wonderful document that hints at the excitement that new, rapidly-evolving electronic technology offered, as well as the confidence of an international business.

School logbooks can make fascinating reading, providing a revealing insight into the daily troubles, successes and challenges of school life. For this Christmas themed exhibition, we’ve included copies of two pages from the logbook of Whiston County Infants School. The first is from the Christmas period of 1938-39 and, as well as notes on the impact of snow fall (“attendance 52%”) in the New Year, it records that children were sent home for the Christmas break with milk vouchers. The second page, from 1953-54, features, alongside an alarming number of staff illnesses, an entry regarding the Christmas party to which, we can all be reassured to know, “Father Christmas arrived in good time.” Knowing Santa’s usual method of arrival, we’ll have to hope that school staff were already aware of how to remove soot fall from carpets, as it would be another few years before the Huyton magazine published that gem.

The exhibition will remain up at Kirkby Library until at least the 8th of January 2016. The library’s opening hours are Monday, Tuesday, Friday: 10am-5pm; Thursday and Saturday: 10am-1pm. The library is closed all day on Wednesdays. During the Christmas period, the Library is closed from the 23rd December 2015 until the 4th January 2016, with the exception of Tuesday 29th December, when it is open as normal.

*If someone gets the chance to test this, please report back with results!

**For those of you too far away to visit Kirkby, its all to do with ribbons saved from chocolate boxes…