Newspaper article dated
1924
A ST. ANNES
PIONEER
Reminiscences of Mr. George Lord
WHEN THE TOWN WAS YOUNG.
Mr. George William Lord is
one of St. Annes pioneers. No one is more competent than he to recount the
story of the town's earliest days or the history of its development since the
'seventies. The memory of those early days come ever fresh to Mr. Lord and to
those like him who knew St. Annes when it was little more than a rather
ambitious hamlet set in a waste of sandhills.
Memory speeds back quickly
over the fifty years' period of St. Annes’ development, when one compares the
St. Annes of 1875 with its little cottages and great ambitions pictured by Mr.
Lord with the St. Annes of 1924, the modern holiday resort, with its pier,
hotels, cinemas, gardens and all its other attractions, one realises in how
great a degree the town owes its present proud position to the undaunted
efforts of its pioneers.
Once the potentialities of
St. Annes were recognised, it grew with the rapidity of an American prairie
town, and, passing through more than one period of slump, attained its present
proud position among English watering-places within a comparatively short time.
Mr. Lord is one of the few who have seen the town grow from insignificance to
fame, and it is an interesting story that he can tell of that
development.
Mr. Lord was about twenty
years of age when he came to St. Annes front Bacup in August, 1875. For live
months he worked on the making of the old St. George's Gardens—the site of the
present Ashton Gardens —travelling between St. Annes and Black- pool each day,
until, on January 3rd, 1876, he went to live with the late Mr. Clement Rawstron
(the father of Mr. Arthur Rawstron), at Alpha House, which is, of course, still
situate in St. Andrew's Road South, and which was the first Post Office in St.
Annes. Then Mr. Lord served his apprenticeship as a painter with the late Mr.
Frank Lomax, whose workshop was close to the Parish Church, and with whom Mr.
Lord worked for five or six years.
Meanwhile, St. Annes had been
steadily developing. Then the first building slump came, and, as there was no
work for painters, Mr. Lord joined his fortunes with the late Mr. John Diggle,
whose workshop was next to the Church Road Wesleyan Church, and learned the
slating trade. A few years later he was busy one day repairing the roof of the
Drive Church Schoolroom, when the late Mr. Daniel Leach, newly arrived back
from America, came past. “That’s not your job, George," said Mr. Leach, and
front that day Mr. Lord's activities were re-transferred to the painting trade,
and he worked for Mr. Leach for many years in Blackpool, St. Annes, Lytham,
Bury and Preston. In those days Mr. Leach worked for Mr. William John Porritt,
and when he returned to America Mr. Lord took over his contracts and was in
charge of all the painting and Slating work for Mr. Porritt for eleven years.
Subsequently he confined himself solely to the slating business again, anti so
worked until the outbreak of the war, when he, went back once again to the
painting trade.
It was shortly after the end
of the war that for Mr. Lord the light failed. Previously he had seriously
injured his right eye at cricket, and about live years ago his sight was lost
to him. He bears his great affliction with a brave philosophy. It is still his
boast that, given a friend to guide him across the busy roads, he could find
his way anywhere about St. Annes. For has he not seen practically every street
laid and every house built, and, even denied his sight, can there be any
strange place for him in the town of his adoption? In his memory alone he has a
happy companion.
PROSPERITY, THEN
SLUMP.
The St. Annes Hotel was in course of
construction when Mr. Lord first set foot in the town. There were a number of
fishermen's cottages in Church Road, but on the front there were two residences
only—a house adjoining the site of the present Southdown Hotel and Miss Davis's
School. A short time passed and then Claremont Villas, at the corner of
Eastbank Road, were erected, with six houses—including Kilgrimol School, then
in charge of Mr. John Allen on South Drive. A few more houses nearer the centre
of the town sprang up on the Drive, and then more houses were erected in Park
Road and Wood Street.
An era of prosperity for St.
Annes had apparently set in, but the promise of success for the town's
promoters was not yet to be fulfilled, for shortly afterwards, and while the
gas works were in course of construction, the first building slump came and put
it check to all progress. It was then, said Mr. Lord, that the late Mr. W. J.
Porritt, a director of the Land and Building Co., first came prominently into
the field. Mr. Porritt was a man of great faith and sound judgment, and by
building property of good quality and enduring substance, he paved the way for
a renewal of prosperity.
It was about this time that
disaster befel Mr. John Ogden, who had obtained the contract for the
construction of the gas works, for during a gale one winter's night in the late
'seventies the wall on the railway side of the new buildings was blown down,
and so much damage was caused to the properly that the work of construction had
to be recommenced. Mr. Porritt took over and completed three houses on
Summerfield Terrace in St. Annes Road East, which Mr. Ogden had commenced, and
proceeded to build extensively on North Promenade and in other parts of the
town. That was the real starting-point of St. Annes’ prosperity.
EARLY CHURCH
LIFE.
Mr. Lord has always been
associated with the church and musical life of the town. He remembers when
people of all denominations used to meet for worship every Sunday in a hay loft
over the stables then owned by Mr. Ogden and now the property of Messrs. T.
Whiteside and Sons, off Park Road, and he can recall the first Free Church
services held in the town—it was actually the United Methodist Church, although
in those days Nonconformists of all creeds had, perforce, to sink all their
little differences and worship together—in a bakehouse in Church Road—a
building which stands to-day.
That was in 1876, and a year
later the Drive Wesleyan School Chapel (as it was then called) was built. Mr.
Lord attended the opening ceremony, and he remembers that, among others, there
were present Mr. and Mrs. W. H. Nutter and their three daughters, Mr. and Mrs.
John Ogden and their three daughters, Mr. Thomas Ormerod (the first
superintendent of the school), Mr. and Mrs. Edward Walmsley and their son (Mr.
Harry Walmsley), and daughter, and Mr. Edward Hargreaves. It is interesting to
note that Mr. Lord, Mr. Hargreaves and Mr. Harry Walmsley attended the services
held recently in celebration of the 46th anniversary.
FIRST MUSIC
SELLER.
Mr. Lord held the position of
organist at the Drive for 16 years, and was secretary of the Sunday School for
14 years. Always has he lent his talented services as an organist willingly. He
has played, at some time or other, in every church in the town with the
exception of the Roman Catholic Church. After his long term of office at the
Drive Church, the held a similar position at the Church Road Church for four
years and at the Primitive Methodist Church for twelve months, while at the
Congregational Church, where he also played occasionally he had a singing class
at one time.
He did not take any part in
the construction of the Drive School Chapel, and it was with a few misgivings
that he consented to associate in his business capacity as a slater painter
with the erection of the places of worship which followed the Drive, for the
last thing he wanted people to think was that he went to church with any idea
of promoting his business interests. Rather would he sacrifice those interests
than that people should think that of him--although, really those who knew Mr.
Lord were never likely to think of him as anything but the Christian gentleman
he always proved himself. Mr Lord, it should be mentioned, was the first music
seller in St. Annes, and there was a time in those early days, when the front
room of his house in Church Roach, was a Mecca of all local music
lovers.
CRICKET
CLUB.
Mr Lord was a devotee of the
King Willow in the days before the Palace Shield came into existence, and when
the St.Annes team used to play "friendly” games with Blackpool, Lytham,
Kirkham, and Fleetwood and when the home games were played on a field which
stretched at that time from the present Oxford Road to Highbury Road. As
members of the team he can recollect the Rev. W. G. Terry (vicar of the Parish
Church before the Rev. H. F Butler), George and William Howarth, Sam Parkinson
and Peter Moore. Mr. Lord was also one of the first members of the present
Ashton Institute when it was situated in Wood Street—before it was transferred
to the St. George's Gardens entrance.
WRECK THE
“MEXICO".
The night of the "Mexico"
disaster still lives vividly in Mr. Lord's memory. It was while he was in
residence in Church Road, and he remembers that he had just returned from a
music lesson and was having his supper before the fire when the alarm was
sounded. Everybody, in those days, whatever the time of day or night, rushed
down to the shore to help in the launch of the lifeboat immediately the gun was
heard. Accordingly Mr. Lord was soon on the scene of action. It was a glorious
moonlight night, following a day during which a gale had raged furiously, and a
heavy sea was running. The boat was launched and the watchers on the shore were
able to follow its course for a long way in the bright light of the full
moon.
They saw it vanish in the
distance, and though they did not know it then they saw the brave men who
manned its going to their death. No news had come through at 12-30, and Mr.
Lord, with many others, went home fully expecting that by morning the boat
would have arrived safely back again. The morning, instead, brought the
terrible news of the boat's loss. That ill-fated craft was the "Laura Janet,"
and in the summer before the disaster Mr. Lord had painted it with no little
pride.
HOBBIES.
One of Mr. Lord's pet hobbies
for twenty years was the breeding of collie dogs, and with his son, Mr. Fred
Lord, who left England in November last, and who now holds the position of High
Sheriff of New Jersey, America, he gained many successes at shows in various
parts of the country. In his new home across the Atlantic Mr. Fred Lord has now
some excellent kennels.
Mr. Lord is 68 years of age,
and he has been married 40 years. He is one of the old brigade who played a
worthy part in the building of the town, and now he "looks on” with the few
others who are left, proud of I the work's culmination. It is right not to
forget the patient, ever-hopeful labours of the pioneers in the era of
subsequent prosperity, for those men of the early days builded well.
Newspaper article dated
1924.
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