My Family |
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HOMEMy Family
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This is the My Family page for Bernard KeoghSo to begin....Christmas Day 1945 was probably the most different Christmas Day for my Mum..... and 60 years later I experienced my most different Christmas Day of my life, but lots of events have taken place in between. (There will not be many photos of me as a child - I have found only 3 so far of my early years) I will need to rely on my older sisters for much of the early part of what is written here as my memories of very early childhood are few - my earliest memory I can recall is being in Crowwood Isolation Hospital with Scarlet Fever for the first time - I was two years old. I have a vivid picture of a large dark room with cots and beds, I was in a cot with iron sides and most of my vision was upwards - I assume because I was on my back most of the time I was there. I do remember someone visiting me, sitting at the side of the cot. That is the earliest but a vivid memory, and ironically I went to live in Crowwood later on and at the age of about 9 I contracted Scarlet Fever again and ended up in Peasley Cross, St. Helens Isolation Hospital - it was like travelling to another country......... I remember well the life and times of growing up in number 8 Grenfell Street, in Simms Cross in a 2-up 2-down terrace where I and most of my siblings were born. The Simms Cross area, I have discovered, was the place where most of the Irish immigrants who came to work in the chemical industry settled, the Welsh settled in West Bank in the area where the industry predominated in it's early years. And so, as I discovered in the search for my family roots, my great grandfather, also Bernard Joseph Keogh, lived at numbers 41 and 38 Grenfell Street and my Grandfather and his brothers were also born in Grenfell Street. My grandfather, Marney, later married and moved to Frederick Street, a stones throw from our Grenfell Street home, where my Dad and the other Keogh children were born. The Simms Cross area was a typical, working class, northern industrial town, living quarters for the masses of workers employed in the once booming chemical industry - for those of you who don't know, West Bank (and Widnes) was the birthplace of the UK chemical industry and still suffers the blight of those early years in the legacy of the pollution left behind by the early industrialists. The other legacy is the worlds first Museum to the Chemical Industry called "Catalyst" - and as the chemical industry was born in Widnes so it is now dying here - to the cheers of many of the "younger residents" and outsiders who have failed to grasp the significance of our heritage. Well, my Dad worked in the chemical industry for most of his working life - and in my later years I was to follow him into the industry but to take a very different route. |
Anyway, back to my early years and my memories of life and growing up in Simms Cross. My early memories of my Mum are of this white haired lady with beautiful skin who was always busy looking after the house and the children (varying in number between 5 and 10) and I then was given a photo of Mum, taken in about 1943 ish, with 3 girls and SHE HAD DARK HAIR and was very pretty. I had the disadvantage of not knowing my mum when she was younger so I need the older girls to fill in what I did not experience. What I have been told, but have no recollection of, is that as a youngster I was spoiled (well I was the first "Keogh" grandson - I think and Dads first son after 4 girls). I am told that to get what I wanted I would throw myself on the floor and kick and scream and cause a fuss - not like me at all from what I remember, wonder what happened to change me at such a young age? I remember going to St Maries Nursery (in the concrete building behind the church in Lugsdale Road) and being given a small bottle of milk and going to bed in the cots for a sleep during the day - was this because we were so small and tired that we needed to sleep in the day OR to give the staff a break from the hoard of screaming kids?? Who knows......... I vividly remember my first day at St Maries Infants school. I was dressed in my school clothes, short grey pants, white shirt and coat. It was possible that my socks were darned and my shoes had cardboard in them to cover the hole in the sole, but in the summer and autumn that wasn't a problem normally, it was only the very wet weather that was problem - it made the carboard soggy and your feet then got wet - then you had to cut out more cardboard to use next day. Anyway, I had no problem going to school that first morning, many of the kids were taken there crying and not wanting to leave their mums - but I went willingly and enthusiastically, possibly because of my going to Nursery in my earlier years. My Mum duly arrived at lunchtime to take me home for dinner as promised (a shortwalk from St Maries to Grenfell Street) and I went home to eat then hoped to go out playing......... then I found out the bad news! I had to go back for another session in the afternoon, and I was not happy... I then remember having a tantrum because I thought I'd finished for the day - so a mixed first day for me at "proper" school. Those of you who are turned 50 or so will no doubt have grown up in the many communities of Widnes in the same kind of conditions as me and my older siblings. Terraced houses, two up-two down (3 down when you include the toilet down the bottom of the yard), no locks on the doors, gas lamps in the street that the lamplighter would light up at dusk with his long pole, great neighbours who were like family and people who looked out for each other and helped each other. I remember having a Ration Book for sweets and going to Knox's toffee shop (around the corner in Widnes Road) each week for our "treat" - when we had some spare money to buy sweets........ There are some memorable names from that area when we lived there, the Lomax's next door ( I think the womans name was Rosie), The McGuires, Garnetts shop on the corner, Mrs Hattons shop in Travis Street (Syl Hatton was our bridesmaid when Irene and I married - small town Widnes!), the Naughtons, (went through school with Mike and became friends after), Pat Dearden, the Whites from round the corner, ............and more to recollect later. Vivid memories of growing up in the Street, Simmies Pub, the local watering hole for Dads, The Telephone Exchange at the bottom of the street where we would sit on the steps to talk (still there despite the many changes around Simms Cross), the Cinder field where we would play (and get grazes on our legs, knees and elbows when we fell over)- this is the site of the Magistrates Courts, Police Station and Kingsway Leisure Centre. On Sunday when the dads were in the pub and the weather was kind, the Sunday dinner would be on the go and the mums would get the skipping ropes out (wagon ropes that is) and, stretched across the width of the street and in a line down the street, all the kids would be skipping while the grown ups turned the ropes. Pheysey's Newsagents, Knox's Toffee shop and Bradburn's Jewellers & Watchmakers, Burkes Butchers, Abrahamsons store and all the other "local shops" that served the community well before the advent of Supermarkets. A personal service where the shopkeeper knew all their customers.......happy days, poor, but content with our lot............... Update May 2007 Those wonderful memories of the Simms Cross community ended for us in the middle fifties when the "new estates" started to re-house the old communities from the old two-up/two-downs..........we moved to Barnes Road into a FOUR bedroom house which was huge by comparison. We had a garden (back AND front) and a huge playing ground known as the Bongs....... a miniature river to jump across (the River Lug according to Dad-- the effluent outfall frorm Peter Spence Chemicals in reality), a quarry, a field of tall grass and one of fairy grass, hills for sliding down in summer and winter, a railway line (where we could collect coal for the fire), lots of room for camping out in summer and playing football on. The place was a natural playgound for us and we needed not much else to entertain ourselves during the middle and late 1950's. During the summer months I remember the american airman from Burtonwood Air Base riding their motorbikes across the Bongs, riding down "The Spoon" and jumping across the brook (River Lug - is that where Lugsdale came from I wonder?). Update - September 2007 We increased the family size with the births of Christine, John, Cathy, and Jacquie. Not sure which one it was but I vividly remember going to the hospital to see mum after the birth and we were not allowed into the hospital. So the younger kids would stand outside the ward window and wave to Mum through it.......not ideal but I remember it being an exciting time. The move to Barnes Road opened up new and exciting opportunities for us kids, making new friends, new places to play, new games to play with the abundance of things to do on the Bongs. Most kids of the area, whatever age group, had things to do. Jumping the brook, climbing in the quarry, swimming in the "lake" in the quarry and swinging from the rope across the lake. Hiding in the "long grass" (maybe not that long but when you are little............), chasing the trains up the railway line for coal, camping out in the summer and the local "fights" using stones from the railway lines (and they hurt when they hit you - usually drawing blood as they were quite sharp edged). There was rivalry and friendship between the street gangs which was an interesting mix looking back and there were usually one or another sporting event taking place there, especially at the top end behind Bancroft Road as the ground was flat and well grassed. There are lots of my peers who I still see from time to time, are still in Widnes and who I still hear about or are in touch with - this, I think is the uniqueness of the "old" Widnes and especially the kids of the 1950's and 1960's. I may be wrong, but I think that after these decades the opportunities for teenagers with education and travel became so great that moving away from the place of their birth was no big thing. Anyway, just some names to remember of those early days from Halton View, Blackmore, Youd, Bradburne, Eyres, Arnold, Connor and O' Connor, Bright, Rathbones, White, Jackson, Porter, Russell, Kennedy, Ellis, Timperley, Muskett, Rigby, Patch, Ellis, Condron, Brady, Woodrow, Whitty, Tague, Gerrard, Philbin, Lomax, Pinnington, Albiston, Taylor, Foran, Graeber, Hunt, ..............................any many more to come.
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