In Failsworth on the trail of Benjamin Brierley ........ and other self taught men

It will have been in the winter of 1973, and my friend Rod Whitworth would often recount lines from the work of Ben Brierley which were rich in the Lancashire dialect of the 19th century.

The plaque, 2019

Now there was nothing surprising in that, because Rod had been born in Waterloo in Ashton-Under-Lyne which is not that far from where Benjamin Brierley had been born in Failsworth in1825.

At the time I would smile indulgently, and reflect that what was quoted, was quaint, had some historic interest but was miles away from the speech rhythms of south east London where I grew up.

Decades Iater, I came back to Ben Brierly, partly because of the book I was writing on Chorlton-cum-Hardy* and because of a renewed curiosity in those working-class men who were self-taught and went on to have a career in journalism, literature and the sciences.

Richard Buxton was one of these, who was self-taught, and became an expert on botany, wrote books and struggled against poverty before dying obscurely. “I am well aware” he wrote “that a narrative of the life of a poor man like myself .... is anything but interesting.” and yet it has proved to be so and sits with beside the story of John Horsefield, hand-loom weaver of Whitefield the President of the Prestwich Society; and now president of the General Botanical Meeetings and the amateur insect collector Robert Cribb, who  collected a series of about fifty small yellow and brown moths which turned out to be a previously unknown species of moth.**.

His birthplace, 2019

All of which takes me back to Ben Brierly, whose father was also hand-loom weaver. Mr. Brierley started life in a textile factory, educating himself in his spare time.

At about the age of thirty he began to contribute articles to local papers, and the republication of some of his sketches of Lancashire character in A Summer Day in Daisy Nook (1859) attracted attention.

In 1863 he published Chronicles of Waverlow, followed by a long story called The Layrock of Langley Side and in April 1869 began the publication of his Journal.

It started as a monthly magazine and later came out weekly.

In 1875, Brierley was elected a member of Manchester City Council, and served six years.

The pub as was

In 1880, he paid a short visit to America and in 1884 a longer one and wrote of his impressions in his Ab-o'th'-Yate in America.

He gave public readings from his own writings, and his various Ab-o'th'-Yate sketches and his pictures of Lancashire common life, were very popular, and were collected after his death.

Now I freely admit the research was done from several sources including Wikipedia, and one of his books which I downloaded this morning.***

This is his stories of Treadlepin Fold from Tales and Sketches of Lancashire Life which from the start conjures up the place of his birth, with a description of some of the houses and in one particular one, “against a kitchen wall abutting on the sink some local artist half tried his maiden powers by sketching a full-length figure intended for a man, but whose frying-pan trunk, turnip head and pump handled legs and arms suggest a model of other than biped species.  

Doors are grey and furrowed with age, windows are sunken like hollow cheeks, and looked bleared and dim, as if they had ceased to admit what little light of day the Fold could spare them”. ****

The pub now a community centre, 2019

Now, that I like, and rather reminds me of the pictures Andy posted of the buildings connected with Benjamin Brierly.

They come from his Failsworth series, and include Mr. Brierley’s birthplace, the plaque, and the pub which bears his name on Moston Lane, which closed in 2011 and is now a community centre.

Location; Failsworth

Pictures; Benjamin Brierley, 2019, from the collection of Andy Robertson

*The Story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Andrew Simpson, 2012,

**Richard Buxton, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Richard%20Buxton

***Benjamin Brierley, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Brierley

**** Treadlepin Fold from Tales and Sketches of Lancashire Life, Benjamin Brierley, 1884, page 10

That Carnegie Library in Failsworth ……

Now yesterday I revealed that dark secret that Andy Robertson collects police stations, and today I offer up another of his collecting passions.

These are Carnegie Libraries, which were the libraries paid for by the steel magnate Andrew Carnegie in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

For those of us in south Manchester, we have the one in Chorlton, opened in 1914, Didsbury in 1915, and Withington in 1927.

They were three of the 660 he funded in Britain, 1,689 in the United States, 125 in Canada and more elsewhere between 1883 and 1929.

From humble beginnings he had built up a huge steel business before selling out for an estimated $500 million in 1901 and devoting himself to philanthropist projects. Even before he retired, he had been spending money on all sorts of projects of which the establishment of public libraries was just one.

But there are those who would argue the money was not his to give away, having been made by the men who toiled in the steel plants and who were denied the right to organize collectively in his workplaces. But that is another story.

There will be someone who can offer up the history of Failsworth’s library but so far, I have drawn a blank, leaving me to give them a ring later today.

But that won’t stop me from starting the story, and taking these from Andy’s collectors’ album, which he produced on a walk through the township last week.

I do know that it gained an extension relatively recently.

So, I await Andy to pass over his research notes.

And in the meantime I add this which was contribyed by Mark Gutteridge, "the library moved out of this building in to a then modern building around the corner in the 60’s/70’s and the library was used as council offices for many years and became a bit dilapidated. 

Then about ten or fifteen years ago the council saw sense and it was refurbished, extended and they moved the library back in".

Location; Failsworth

Picture; Failsworth Public Library, 2019, from the collection of Andy Robertson

Police Stations Andy Robertson has known ………….. Failsworth

Now Andy Robertson collects police stations, and especially those stone clad ones built by the Lancashire Constabulary in the late 1880s and 1890s.

Failsworth, 2019

To date he has bagged the one in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, 1885, the one in Patricroft 1892, and now the one in Failsworth which was also built in 1892.

And I have no doubt that lurking somewhere is the Didsbury Station which dates only from 1900 and lacks the fine stone facing.

I suppose they beat Dinky Toys and cigarette cards in both grandeur and the stories behind them and are not so easy to keep in an album in the spare room.

a vacant Police Station, Failsworth, 2019

But I am being daft, because while Andy does photograph them, they are usually part of a bigger project recording the changing character of bits of Greater Manchester.

And all four were long ago vacated by the constabulary and turned to other uses.  The Chorlton one has been a restaurant and bar since the mid-1990s, Patricroft was being marketed as luxury apartments back in 2016, leaving me with Failsworth which appears to be empty.

Patricroft, 2016

I did once go looking for the story of Lancashire’s expansion of its police stations and was rewarded with some interesting correspondence from the Greater Manchester Police Museum and Archives, but alas I was sidetracked and never returned to the project.

But I may now do so, confident that Andy will offer up some examples and out there will be an expert on Lancashire Police Stations.

We shall see.

Location; Failsworth

Pictures, Failsworth Police Station, 2019, and Patricroft Police Station, 2016, from the collection of Andy Robertson