Looking Back, with Eric Leaver

THINGS at Burnley are so tough money-wise that the council might even have to sell off assets like its markets and car parks - which makes it all the more surprising to recall that the town hall still managed to afford a page boy even in the pre-war era of real hard times.

Yes, a page boy - complete with a tight-fitting, high-necked jacket with shiny brass buttons up the front, highly-polished shoes and, on ceremonial occasions, white gloves as well.

The lad in question was the "Buttons" of Burnley - messenger boy, errand runner, door-opener and profferer of crisp salutes and "Good morning, sir" greetings to crossers of the town hall threshold.

Invariably, he was a 14 to 15-year-old and, until 1940, when the council decided the job of municipal doorman and messenger should go to an older person, he was a veritable institution in the town - not just because he was civic pride and correctness personified, but also because he stood out as a lad most likely to succeed.

For that is precisely what most Buttons did. The job was the first rung on the stairway to top jobs in local government.

Among past Burnley page-boys were a knighted town clerk of Plymouth, the chief officer of Chesterfield and a borough treasurer of Burton-on-Trent. And the top posts in many of Burnley's own town hall departments were often held by men who began as Buttons.

As a result, it was one of the most sought-after jobs among Burnley's school-leavers. But not an easy one to get. A 1958 Northern Daily Telegraph article looking back at the page boy post, recalled that the tradition of the messenger boys going on to much bigger things "gave Buttons in his dealings with high officials and visitors a sense of dignity and an air of self-confidence quite out of keeping with his mere 14 or 15 years".

It added: "Hundreds of Burnley boys clamoured for this position.

"But there was a stiff written examination and a fearsome interview with councillors, the Town Clerk and even perhaps the Mayor standing between them and that gorgeous brass-buttoned uniform."

Indeed, though the job entailed arriving at the town hall well before the rest of the staff and leaving after they had all gone and strict daily smartness inspections by the Chief Steward and Mayor's Attendant, one successful applicant recalled that there were 102 other lads who wanted the job as well that year.

The big lure, of course, was the virtual certainty that after two or three years on the town hall's lowest tier, Buttons would be offered a junior clerkship in one or other of the council's departments.

Little wonder then that this liveried page-boy minion was "proud as a peacock". For said the NDT: "He was the symbol of the times when council jobs carried great prestige, better-than-average salaries and security of tenure - so important in those days of chronic unemployment."

Second Premier w-oz here!

HARD on the heels of Looking Back last week uncovering Labour pre-war Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald's having lived in Accrington comes the disclosure of another Premier's links with Oswaldtwistle. Ah, yes, Sir Robert Peel, some of you say. But, no, not him - for though his ancestors did live at Peel Fold at Stanhill, the Prime Minister famous for his repeal of the Corn Laws in the last century was actually a Bury boy.

Rather, it is a more recent resident of 10 Downing Street who, during the war, was a frequent visitor to Ossy. None other than Sir Edward Heath.

Oswaldtwistle reader Mr Cyril Yates tells me of the Heath connection his with home town - and of confirmation of it by the former Premier himself.

Mr Yates, of Hawthorn Avenue, had heard in the past that Sir Edward was no stranger to the town and a couple of years ago wrote to him to ask if it was so.

And he replied that, yes, it was true - as at the time he was the adjutant of the 107 Heavy Anti-Aircraft (Royal Artillery) Regiment which was headquartered at Preston and since some of its troops' were stationed with their guns at Oswaldtwistle - at the spot at Stanhill which later became a prisoner-of-war camp - he was a constant caller.

Miners make a clean get-away

BACK on the surface after working a night-shift underground, mucky-faced miners emerging into the daylight at Calder Pit, Altham, 56 years ago this month, were set to be heading home all spruce and clean just 20 minutes later. Their pit possessed a luxury that, a few years earlier, was unknown at many other collieries - pithead baths.

That was because, in 1933, Calder Pit, owned by Hargreaves Collieries of Burnley, became the first coal mine in East Lancashire to be equipped with baths under a welfare scheme for miners in Lancashire and Cheshire.

Money for the baths was raised by a levy of one old penny on every ton of coal wound up from the pits covered by the scheme and those at the Altham colliery were large enough to deal with 250 miners in an hour.

Another facility the new baths provided was a machine with a revolving brush which cleaned the miners' boots as they went into the "pit-clothes" entrance of the building from which, according the management's reckoning, each man emerged washed and scrubbed 20 minutes later.

Calder Pit closed in 1958 after its reserves were exhausted.

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