Wigan Album
British/Evans school Ashton in Makerfield
5 CommentsPhoto: Denise Knapper
Item #: 28699
I assume that you attended the British school Denise. I also was a scholar there , but quite a few years previously, so I never knew your mum unfortunately, not that I'm aware of at any rate. I also assume that Ken Pilling ( ex merchant navy ) was still headmaster there during your time. I'm reasonably confident that he was the last headmaster of that place. His lovely wife, who I remember as Miss Anderton worked alongside him up to its closure. I'm not exactly certain what year the place became a care home., let me take a shot at 1980 and await incoming fire, but I acquired permission to access all areas just prior to the school's closure. So with my recently purchased Canon SLR state of the art image replicator, I proceeded to rattle off 36 frames of all the classrooms in the place, only to discover shortly afterwards, there was no film in the damn thing. What a plonker ! ...Sorry Denise, I would have loved to have shown you some pictures of the classrooms. If only, to quote one of the characters in ' The Wizard of Oz ',.... I think it was the straw bloke,..if I only had a brain.....By the way, did they still encourage the kids to collect jam jars down in the basement when you were there ?... Just reminiscing....It's become a way of life these days. Hope you don't mind.
Regards. Ozy.
Sorry, in the interests of historical accuracy, for Ken Pilling, please read Leonard Pilling. My mistake. Apologies.
I was at the British school in the 1950s. Sometimes my granddad walked me to school, he told me that the arches are where deliveries were taken in, by horse and cart in his day.
I attended from 73 to 76 and then moved over to Nicol Mere.
I returned to Ashton from Canada in August 1987 and the school was under construction to be converted to a care home at that time.
I was there from 1975 ish until it closed in 1982. There were almost no Evans pupils left, as most of them had already gone to other schools. It was quite sad to leave, knowing that we were the last pupils ever. If I remember rightly we had some children from a school in Hindley or Ince using the building for a while.