The Shop in Billinge Road
Life as a Baker and Pieman (Part Time)
I really enjoyed the life outdoors especially in the summer, but the winters could be real swines! One day, when I was in Sellars Bake house, picking up the pies for the shop, Arthur Sellars called me over. "Don't think that I'm being cheeky," he said, "but would you like to earn a bit of cash on the side?" He carried on, "I need someone to pack pies in the mornings, from 6.00am till 9.00am, so how would you like the job?" I was a bit taken aback and I told him that I would have a talk to Edna about it to see what her reaction was. The upshot was that I started to work for Sellars and Arthur paid me £9.00 for 6 mornings of 3 hours each. No strings attached and no tax to pay. It may not seem much today but then it was quite good and it made a difference to our standard of living at that time.
I soon got used to the job and I was working with old George Rayner, who had been a bread van driver for Halls during his working life. At that time, Sellars were still in the old bake house, as the new one still had to be built and we were packing pies in an old shed, attached to the main building. The drivers from Rathbones came for pies, as well as a lot of other bread rounds men, and it was quite busy. I was still going out on the round and working in the shop with Edna, when I had an idea. Why not ask for more hours and get rid of the outside round?
I decided that this was the best course of action to take, so I asked Arthur about it and he agreed. I worked until dinnertime and got £20.00 per week, this was still cash in hand and not declared for tax purposes. Edna's mother and my mother helped out in the shop, and I went in during the afternoon after I had finished in the bake house.
Arthur Sellars about this time had a heart attack and had to start taking it a bit easier. He was told to stop drinking spirits and to stop smoking, but to no avail. We were given the option in 1971 to buy the bungalow in Bold St. from David Woods, for £4,250 but when I wanted a mortgage, I found that my earnings from the shop weren't big enough to get one, so I had to start declaring my earnings from Sellars. I can see the accountant's face now, when I told him that I had been working at Sellars and not declaring my income! "I don't want to know about anything like that!" said Mr. Beaver, looking startled. "Don't tell me anything about it!!"
Anyway, we got the mortgage without any more problems, and we moved into the bungalow in August 1971. It wasn't long after this that Arthur died suddenly. It must have been around November of that year. Not long before, I had been loading one of the ovens with pies and he came across giving me a hand. I tried to stop him doing it but he insisted, and afterwards he said to me, " Just put your hand on my chest" His heart was racing like an express train!!
The day that he died is one that I'll never forget. It was about 6.00am and we had been in the bake house for an hour or so when the phone rang. There was a hysterical voice on the other end of the line "Help me! Help me!" It was Arthur's wife, Stella. Arthur had just given a groan and had died by her side in bed. He was only about 53 years old at the time of his death. What a waste!!
The other two brothers were thrown in at the deep end as it were, Arthur was the brains of the outfit, and Eric and Roy, although good at what they did, i.e. making pies and confectionery, were no match for Arthur's business knowledge and expertise.
About a couple of years previous to Arthur's demise, it was decided to modernise the bakery. The premises had evolved gradually from some out buildings in the open yard behind the properties which comprised Billinge Rd, /Bold St. Sellars retail grocer's shop rear entrance was in this open yard, and the bakery buildings were adjacent to it. There was a glass lean-to where the potatoes were peeled and chipped ready for boiling. As you progressed into the bakery, there was a sink and worktop where the gravy and thickener was prepared. Here the building opened out into quite a large work area, which had been rebuilt before I started there. The gas boilers for the potatoes and the meat, the Ohmatic pie and pudding blockers and the pudding steamer were all in this area. Just round the corner from this was the bank of ovens and a walk in fridge. The pie trade with Rathbones had started to increase quite rapidly, so more oven space was needed.
It was decided to build a complete new section at the top end where the old shed was and have an exit there into Mable St. We had to carry on working in the shed as the new building took shape around us. Bill Finch and his gang were the brickies on this job. This extension, when completed gave the much needed space, and in there a new bank of ovens were built, 3 decks which each could hold 10 trays of pies. With the other bank of ovens holding 6 trays in each of its 3 decks, we had a good capacity and it was needed too. There was also another walk in fridge built in the new section later on.
There was one funny story to be told about the time when the new extension was being built. It was when the floor tilers were in putting red quarry tiles down on the floor, between the old building and the new one. Fred Lee, who had a shop in Larch Ave. was going out with a trayful of pies and, as he always had a mouthful to say, wasn't watching where he put his feet, and he skidded into the batch of newly laid tiles, scattering them like chaff. I thought that the tiler was going to lynch him.
The Pie Eating Canines
There are a couple off funny stories to be told about two dogs that used to frequent the bake house, looking for handouts. One of these dogs was a yellow haired Labrador by the name of "Mandy". She belonged to Arthur Gaskell who lived in the house facing the Mabel St. entrance. Mandy had a very amiable disposition and would look at you with such soulful eyes, begging for a pie! If given one, she would carry it off in true retriever style and deposit it in her kennel. This done, she would be back across the road for another. She must have had a fair old hoard of pies in that kennel. Finally, Arthur had to beg us to stop giving her any, as she was getting really gross.
Another dog that begged was a large Airedale, which answered to the name of "George". He would be around at the other door waiting for sustenance. One day, it was in the days before the demise of Arthur Sellars, Arthur said, "I wonder how many he can shift?" We had a tray of meat pies that had been scorched so Arthur started to feed them to the dog. He put away the whole tray of 23 pies! I don't know to this day where he put them.
In 1972, we decided that the shop was doing nothing, I was working at Sellars from 5.00am until after dinner, going into the shop until closing time and then twice a week, going to the cash and carry and, on our return, having to mark up the prices on the goods for sale the next day. This had to be done because inflation was so rife that if the pricing wasn't done straight away, goods were being sold at a loss. The final straw was when we got the accounts for the year1971-2 back from the accountant and found that we had made a loss. I thought to myself, "What's the point of it all, working all these hours and seeing nothing for it."
Around that time, Streeters were renewing the sewer in Billinge road and although there was access to the shop. There was no through traffic and all our passing trade dried up. I asked Eric Sellars if I could come to work for them full time and we agreed on a wage of around £45 per week, this was taking in all the overtime that I was working. I had to go on emergency code at first and I had a third of my money stopped for tax. Edna in the meantime had managed to get a start at Rathbones Pemberton shop and we closed down our shop finally sometime in 1973.
The New Sewage System
Around 1972, there was a contract awarded to Streeters of Stockport to renew the sewage system in Wigan. They had to put a new main drain in from the Saddle junction up to Tunstall Lane. When the job first started, it brought us a bit of trade from the work camp, which was set up in the opening between the two rows of houses, higher up from the shop. The job involved open cutting where possible and tunnelling elsewhere. From the Park gates up to where the Delph was, it was an open trench, and in this trench was built a pipeline constructed from concrete segments. The finished pipe being some four feet in diameter.
On the junction of Little Lane/ Tunstall Lane and also in Victoria St by the Prince of Wales pub, shafts were dug, some thirty feet across, and it was into these that the pipe work ran. From the Delph to the shaft at Little Lane it was a tunnelling job and whomever they had got for a shotfirer wasn't up to much, as they had to pay out a considerable sum in compensation to house owners for cracked plasterwork and spoiled decorations. The holes were over drilled and overpowered. It was sandstone that they were going through at this point, and it was extremely hard.
I was in Newtown one day and having a look at the shaft, when I saw a man working there who was at Parkside when I was there, It was Peter Laurikeitis, and he was digging out with a jigger and fixing concrete segments to the shaft wall. I was passing the time of day with him, when the site boss came up and asked if I had been a miner. When I told him that I had been one, he offered me a start!
As the tunnels progressed toward the Saddle they went into coal measures, and because the workmen were allowed to smoke at the tunnel face, the gas that had seeped out ignited. It didn't do a lot of damage, but it stopped them from smoking at work!!
As they were tunnelling through clay, the workmen used a sort of shield affair that was fixed to the front of a small tub on rails, laid down the centre of the pipe. This gave them cover at the tunnel face as they excavated. When the pipework was completed, a concrete wash was put on the inside surface of the pipe to fill in the segments and make a smooth surface for the effluent to run along.
Continued...