If you weren’t at Pendle Heritage Centre two weeks ago last Friday then you missed an old naked man and an old naked lady! Now don’t get excited…. they were part of a slide presentation by Jo Midgeley as he delved back into history to present us with a trip down memory lane.  Among a plethora of these images were…. coal barges and coal of course!  Petrol pumps and AA men– do you remember they saluted members, that’s if your family were well off and could afford a car of course.  Mills, inns, youth hostels, the first telephone box in the Yorkshire Dales at Oughtershaw and hikers and bikers too.  You might remember large yellow EWS signs which can still be faintly seen on some houses along with other ‘ghost’ signs on the gable ends of houses although in our day they were fresh and new. Monasteries, milk churns and millstones, the latter can be seen hanging around forlornly in fields (or rivers if you live in Colne) and along with windmills went out of use when the Hungarians designed a steam roller for grinding our corn.

A poignant monument to orphaned Liverpool girls who died in Calverts’ Wainstalls Mill, all under twelve and plenty of room on the monument for more too.

Highland and belted Galloway cattle roaming the moors over Widddup.  Francis Frith postcards, snow that lasted for weeks in the fifties and sixties, dummy WW2 decoy sites off Gorple Rd, Worsthorne along with a huge rusting road roller. Sailing boats at Morecambe, phew, did I mention drift mines and spoil heaps being mined anew for forgotten stone.  There were plenty more evocative and poignant images from the north to stimulate the mind and water the eye.

And ye olde naked man and naked lady? ,Well, their secret is out if you stand in Settle market place and hunt round Langcliffe village.

Did you know? That there used to be a train station at Noyna? The proof of this pudding is in the picture. The base of the old rail track can be seen along with familiar site of Noyna hill in the background.