PENSIONER Enid King, of Feniscliffe, who went to school in the early 1900s, paying 1d a week, told of life and growing up in Blackburn at the turn of the century.

Back in 1964 she told the Telegraph: “In the classroom everything was precise, even down to the small detail of hand writing – we were taught a very flowing hand and we had to use our right hand.

“We used slate and slate pencils and had to take pieces of cotton cloth from home to clean them.

“We learned multiplication tables, spelling, poetry and geography by rote.

“Boys and girls could apply for their days at the age of 12.

“If they had enough attendances marked in the register, they could just go half time and work the other half day.

“At 13 we could go to work full-time.

“For many that was in the mill and it meant early starts – the knocker up would usually start his round at 5am.

“At that time in Blackburn and other local cotton towns, a tenter in the mill was paid 2s 6d a week for helping mend weavers’ looms.

“Girls went to school in white pinafores, while the boys wore stiff white Eton collars and corded, fustian trousers and jackets.

“Those of us who didn’t wear clogs with iron caulkers, wore buttoned boots.

“It was a great day in the life of a boy when he wore his first pair of long trousers and for a girl when she put up her hair and began to wear long skirts.

“When low necklines first started to come in, the older people used to call them ‘pneumonia necks’.

“Though girls and women wore a lot of petticoats and big white cotton chemises, all at once, they did not have many new outer clothes.

“We would have a new frock in the spring and a new coat in the autumn, which were kept for church and Sunday School and had to be looked after as they were ‘best’ for a year and then ‘second best’ the following year.

“There were no electric irons to, just flat irons and there would usually be two on the go at once; one in the fire and one in the ‘slipper’, gliding over the starched garments.

“Then came box irons, which had a compartment to put in embers from the fire, then the big and clumsy charcoal irons, which were quickly followed by gas irons.

“Except when a tall silk hat was needed for church, funerals and weddings, men wore bowlers in the winter and straw boaters in the summer.

“In our home the parlour was only used on Sundays and in the kitchen the black enamelled fireplace, with an oven at one side, would take half a day to clean.

“Amusements were simple. Festivals such as Christmas, birthdays and field days were anticipated, enjoyed and remembered with great zest.

“At Christmas we used to hire a phonograph, with a vast horn and cylindrical Edison Bell records.

“On Christmas Eve, whole families used to troop round the town to look at the decorations in the shop windows – there would be whole pigs in the butcher’s window and pink and white sugar candies in the sweet shop.

“As well as Bonfire Night, we looked forward to Pace Egg Monday when we would sing rhyme so the the butcher and baker would reward us with a shower of pace eggs – which were like ginger biscuits.”