EIGHTY-year-old Neville Cordingley has many vivid memories of growing up in the south lodge of Darwen Cemetery.

He lived there with his father, Wilfred, who was the cemetery registrar and mother May, until 1943 when his father died.

He remembers the times when he and his pals would play there, climbing trees and he used to play tricks in the three chapels in the Church of England, Nonconformist and Roman Catholic sections.

“Each of these chapels had a small reading desk where I would hide and, when my pals came looking for me, I would press the bell push on the underside of the reading desk to scare them,” he recalled.

“Perhaps that is when my family ‘christened’ me Neville the Devil. Sadly, these chapels no longer remain.

“I also remember, when we had severe snow, helping the grave diggers clear the main roads within the cemetery so that burials could take place.

“I received a wage packet, just like the rest of the men.

“In those days all the graves were dug by hand – and I used to sneak up on the grave diggers and kick soil and clay at them.”

He added: “My most vivid memory happened on Monday, October 21,1940, the day that a German bomber flew directly over the cemetery lodge.

“I remember this because I was off school this particular morning, though why I cannot remember.

“Because the sirens had sounded I was instructed to ‘get under the table’ with my father and mother.

“Being nosy, I crept out and looked through the living room window when I heard the plane overhead.

“It was so low I could actually see the pilot,” he recalled on the website Darwen Days. Later that same day ambulances arrived, bringing the bodies from the Crown Street bombing. The Nonconformist chapel was used as a temporary mortuary.

“My vivid memory was seeing the grave diggers hosing down the entrance to the chapel and sweeping blood with stiff brushes.

“The only other occasion bombs were dropped in Darwen had been on Saturday, October 19, 1940 when the top house in Alice Street took a direct hit.

“It was completely demolished, apart from the outside toilet in the back yard, which was untouched; there were no casualties.

“My wife, who lived across the road in Jepson Street tells me that her mother had made a jelly and left it to set on the mantelpiece in the front room. She was very concerned that the jelly was OK.”