The scene I describe is the best I can recover from my memory in my searchings of the Preston I knew as a boy. All evidence of them now gone, replaced by open spaces, modern buildings and just one stone slab giving the name and date of the Stoneygate Primary School I attended as a five year old boy.
In the early 1930’s I attended the Stoneygate Primary School. Just across the road was the parish church built of stone, almost black with grime from all the houses and countless factory chimneys in the warren of streets around that belched out clouds of smoke from early morning to late at night. The resulting grime covered the buildings and filled the air so that the sun could barely penetrate the gloom, and to my mind now, must have similarly affected all humanity in the vicinity. The school retains that effect for me in my mind to this day. Even inside with the lights on the depressing atmosphere prevailed.
There were a few times when we left all that behind, joined hands with fellow pupils and stepped out across the road and into that church. The transformation for me was breathtaking; the depressing grey atmosphere had been left behind, replaced by the rich deep colours of the stained glass windows high above, lifting my spirits and filling me with wonder. Something of that feeling is retained still in my memory which I draw on from time to time.
‘The lamp-lighter’ is a short item I wrote years ago about my early life in Preston (also posted today) describing my journey following the lamp-lighter up the street opposite the school as I made my way back to the Shepherd Street Mission Children’s Home. I lived there then with my big brother and two sisters from 1933 – 1936; I’d just turned two years of age when that happened.
Dennis Crompton © 2013
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