ALAN WHALLEY'S WORLD

ANY kid born in th'Indian Village (as a hemmed-in pocket of old houses was once known) suffered from an identity crisis. Being perched at the meeting of three district boundaries it left them puzzling over whether they were Parrers, Peasley Crossers or Suttoners.

One who wrestled with this problem is a regular contributor to this cobwebby page who chooses to hide under the pseudonym of 'Rigger.'

In his case, he fell in league with the roving Sutton gangs and had a whale of a time during the ragged-trousered 1940s and 50s of his boyhood. But only after he and the other Indian Village urchins had put up stubborn resistance against the marauding hordes from over the borders!

For years there were weekly raids ("we called them charges") by rival gangs. "Parrers to one side of the Bruck- us on t'other. Suttoners on one side of the railway track with us the other side. Crossers to one side of Dark Lane while we battled from the other."

Adds Rigger: "It all sounds a lot worse than it really was. But it was nothing too serious - just chucking a few stones at one another with very few injuries on either side."

How Rigger's old home patch (taking in Egerton, Gower and Bentinck streets) came by its Indian Village nickname remains a mystery.

The closest explanation is that an old Romany campsite was set up every year, from May to September, on spare land in that locality. And the deeply weather-beaten faces, the dark eyes and long black hair of these true gipsies, occupying traditional horse-drawn caravans, reminded the locals of the Red Injuns featured in B-film westerns at the Sutton Empire Cinema ('Sutton Bug' as the kids dubbed that old fleapit).

Rigger promises to enlarge on the theme of these genuine old Romanies in the near future. "You just had to see that summer camp to believe it!"

The vast expanse of worked-out industrial land which extended from Peasley Cross to the Bulls Head at Parr, and to Fingerpost, Blackbrook and beyond was, claims Rigger, "the biggest adventure playground in the land." And to illustrate his point, he sketched and forwarded to me a sort of alternative district map.

This pinpoints the cluster of water-filled clayholes which once pock-marked the area, together with mountainous chemical waste heaps (most famous of them The Kimmicks just off Jackson Street). Also shown in this splendid free-hand map, which I intend to file for future reference, are features such as the Stinking Brook, Sutton Bonk, the loco turntable off Baxters Lane, Nanny Goat Park, the Parr pitch-and-toss gambling arena, th'owd biscuit works, the Willow Plantation, Sutton Bond with its network of brick-lined tunnels, the Rezzer stream and the 'Little Vee' (a V-shaped allotments site bounded by two old railtracks). These and the many others on this map of childhood will stir the memories of countless of our readers who will never see their 50th birthday again.

"It was a brilliant place to grow up in," enthuses Rigger, "and you can also throw in a few stick ranches." These were rough-and-ready firewood plots where lots of local kids used to earn a couple of bob a week bundling sticks.

"It was hard graft," says our long-memoried correspondent, "but at the end of the day those coppers earned would enable the kids to buy their supplies of toffee, pop and (whisper this!) maybe five Woodbines for those who enjoyed a sneaky smoke."

Rigger believes that there is still a wealth of stories to be told about that old adventure territory. . . "some good, some bad, some funny and some sad." And he exhorts his old contemporaries: "Grab a pen and paper and write to Whalley's World."

A SENTIMENT I heartily endorse. And the address to drop a line to is: Whalley's World, St Helens Star, YMCA Buildings, Duke Street, St Helens WA10 2HZ.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.