FIFTY Steps has always been, and still is, a fare stage on the buses, says Richard Hirst of Linthwaite.

"I remember as a young boy travelling on the trolley buses in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the conductor would shout out the names of stops - Fifty Steps, Factory Lane, Bargate etc - usually when the weather was really foggy."

Recently, Richard and his wife Marion had their seven-year-old grandson William visiting them from Kent and they rode to Fifty Steps so they could count them.

"This we did, walking up the newly repaired steps from Manchester Road to Park Road West. To our surprise, we found there were 67 steps."

He says: "Since then the thought has crossed my mind that perhaps there was once, or maybe still is, a flight of 50 steps on the opposite side of Manchester Road leading down into the valley bottom. A lot of these paths were used regularly in former times for mill workers to quickly get to their work."

Does anyone know the answer?

Were the Fifty Steps always 67? Or are the real 50 across the road?