Old Leyland Schools
(26-May-2015, 08:37 PM)frank h Wrote: Hello Louise,
I went to St Mary's from 1950 to 1959, when I left to start work.
Mr Coffey was headmaster at the school in School Lane untill the new secondary school opened on Royal Avenue in 1957 and Miss Reddy took over the headship of the new school. The senior teachers are the ones I remember including Miss Holding, Miss Ratcliffe, Mr Dunne, Mr Gore, Mr Harrison, Mr Mercer, Mr Cotteriall.
frank h.
My dad is in his 80's now so he would have gone before you. I'll ask him if he remembers the senior teachers though, he loves reminiscing. He lived in Balshaw Road and worked at Leyland Motors as did his sister Edith. Sadly there are not alot of people left that he knows so I was hoping Bill might have replied.
Thank you for your message anyway.
anacortesdamp
16-Jun-2015, 03:25 AM (This post was last modified: 16-Jun-2015, 03:41 AM {2} by anacortesdamp.)
My wife and I are from long-lasting Leyland families, but we've lived in the US since 1968. My family owned George Damp and Sons hardware store on Towngate and a filling station at the junction of Canberra Road and Turpin Green. My wife's parents (the Nixons) had a green-grocery at 90 Hough Lane. Both families were members of Turpin Green Methodist Church, where Eileen and I got together in Clubland and started dating. We celebrated our Golden Wedding anniversary last August.
I went to Fox Lane schools, since we lived on Beech Avenue and later at 7 Church Road, which became the Raven-McDowell doctor's facility. Eileen went to the Methodist school, as it was so close to their shop. We both went to Balshaws later.
My sister, Jean, still lives in Leyland at Chestnut Court. Our younger brother Colin lives in Plymouth.
We emigrated to the US in 1968 to a job for me at Boeing. I retired from Boeing in 1998 after nearly 30 years (they recruited me from the UK). I also had a second retirement from our county transit agency after a couple of years as a bus driver. We now live in a smallish (18000 population) seaside town in Washington State called Anacortes. Jean reckons it's where "God goes on holiday". We love it here
My Dad's older brother, George, was a test driver at LML. He did a lot of work at MIRA, doing tests on Leyland buses.
By any chance are you my cousin Michael's daughter?
Frank Damp
Frank Damp (wife Eileen, nee Nixon)
Leyland resident 1941-1965, emigrated to the US in 1968,
retired to Anacortes, Washington State, USA in 1999.
Sorry, no. My dads name is Frank Higham, but please let me know if you know him or the family name.
I'll recall your post to my dad to see if he knows you, lovely to hear your memories, I'm sure he will remember the hardware store and garage. Sounds like you're living the dream out there.
I was at Balshaw's with two boys named Higham. One was John who lived in Heskin. The other was Jimmy, a very asthmatic boy who lived in the last street on the left as you go up the Turpin Green bridge.
My mum used to talk about a Frank Higham who she worked with back in the sixties. Mum was a shop steward in the nozzle department and became a member of the strike committee back in the sixties with the likes of Len Brindle, she got to meet some of the top Union names of the era, Jack Jones, Hugh Scanlon etc she never told them she didn't vote labour though.