Bob Vant had his memories stirred by the 1946 British Council Film, We Of The West Riding. It’s available to view on the internet.
It tells the tale of a typical family working in textiles and was made in Halifax and Huddersfield.
The 21 minute documentary features the Huddersfield Choral Society and Holme Valley Male Voice Choir singing the Hallelujah Chorus. It is a nostalgic look at working class life, work and play in the immediate post-war period.
Bob grew up as a member of a textile family in Milnsbridge in the late 1950s and 1960s.
“I worked in John Crowther’s in school holidays as soon as I was old enough. Someone accurately worked out my skill-level and gave me a brush to sweep just about everywhere. That included the dispatch area: pieces of cloth in heavy brown paper came down this shiny, well-worn chute, to go on the wagons to Samarkand, Fiji, Valaparaiso, Sydney, New York ... all over the world. Truly amazing. Where did it all go wrong? Could it have been lack of investment in new machinery?”
He recalls making a heri-cart and wonders at the folly of youth.
“Did me and our Billy really fly down Bankwell Road and Factory Lane on a contraption made of odd bits of wood and a few dodgy nuts and bolts, steered by string and braked by pumps (remember them, before trainers?) as, all while, huge red Hanson and blue Crowther’s wagons came and went? I have a theory. Boys are born with nine lives, like cats. The thing is, they go through the first eight by the age of 16.”
Bob knew the cart they made as a heri-cart but wonders where the word comes from.
Can anyone help?
