PLOUGHING through deep snow to deliver the milk by horse-drawn sledge was all in a day's work for Arthur Phillips and his dedicated dairy

workforce.

And the remarkable 94-year-old remembers the glory days at Hindsford and Atherton Co-op just as if they had happened last week.

Now living in Chanters Nursing Home, a short distance from where he once worked underground at Atherton's last coal pit, Mr Phillips was born in Samuel Street, Hindsford in November 1907.

Searching through his souvenir photographs he recalled his schooldays at St Anne's School and how he was one of the last "half-timers" there, sharing his schoolwork as a 12-year-old with a part-time job in the spinning room at Caleb Wright's mill in Tyldesley.

He recalled: "There were so many of us there nobody had the chance to get on. We got two bob a week. Then, at 13, I started work on top at the Nelson Pit in Tyldesley and worked there 18 months. Then I went to work at Chanters Pit, Hindsford -- down the Arley Mine.

"While working at Chanters I used to deliver milk in the Hindsford area on my Sundays off. But trade increased and I was offered ten bob more than I got at Chanters to finish at the pit and go full-time on the milk. I took it, but it meant working seven days a week."

Nowadays most people tend to think of the milkman as somebody who gets up in the early hours and is back home for breakfast.

Roundsmen started at 7am -- they had to wait for the cows to be milked -- then had to fetch milk from the Co-op farm which was at Hulton Hall, now demolished, up Firs Brow on the road from Atherton to Bolton.

Mr Phillips continued: "We had stabling for 18 horses at Hindsford and if we had any more horses we had to take them to Teddy Crook's farm."

"The horses had to be clean and Alf Ince and later Norman Massey saw to them in the stables.

He recalled the great days of the Co-op movement having worked there from 1923 to his retirement in 1967.

"At one time we had 22,000 members and £7,000 in our reserve account," he recalled.

"Hindsford and Atherton Co-op had 10 shops, a shoe shop, a butcher's shop with three vans but when Bolton took over they sold everything. During the war I had 12 women working under me -- as the men were called-up for service their wives were given the option of their husband's job.

Arthur rhymed off the Co-op branches: Central stores in South Street, number 1 store at the top of Tyldesley Road, No 2 Shakerley, 3 Stanley Street, 4 Douglas Street, 5 Hamilton Street, 6 Nelson Street, 7 Hag Fold , 8 Leigh Road and 9 Holt Street.

He remembered how in 1948 H & A switched to bottled milk instead of ladling it out to appreciative customers.

"Horses were the best choice for delivering milk," said Arthur, who has fond memories of his gleaming 'vanners' such as Prince and Dolly, familiar figures in the Atherton area.

And he recalls how the H & A Co-op team overcome the winter worries of 1940 when snowstorms halted movement on local roads.

"We hitched a big sledge to our horses and carried on delivering," proudly remembered the man who worked "44 Christmas Days on the trot".