Hello everybody, hope you have a nice trip

If you enjoy your guide, be sure to leave a tip

Or review – if you liked me, me name’s Tocky Tom

If you didn’t then its Damion, a very different mon. 

 

Come listen to my story, all! 

Of the Mill Beneath our Feet

And of the many folk who lived here 

On a humble Heywood street. 

 

It’s a tale of triumph and tragedy

Great fortunes rise and fall

Industrial Revolutions and Slavery

This story has it all…

 

Now waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay way back in Century 12

The Heywood’s staked their claim

From Heywood Hall to St Luke’s Church

Shaped the town that bore their name. 

 

Remember, remember the 5th of November

A time when History walks

When Peter Heywood of this Parish 

Helped arrest Guy Fawkes

(Do we thank him or condemn him?

The choice, my friend, is yours….)

 

From their ancestral pile they saw changes

In surrounding hamlets and farms

Heard the future come calling and spinning

Mingling with the sound of the psalms

 

Spinning and weaving

Weaving and spinning

The plentiful sheep

Help make us our living. 

 

Weaving and spinning

Spinning and weaving

These people we celebrate 

We also are grieving. 

 

Cottage industry, round ‘ere for years and years

We did it all at ‘ome,

Round the hearth we earnt pennies

Kept the vicious wolf from door. 

 

We are what we make 

And we make what we are

Each one will teach on

And take us all far. 

 

Until. Until the mid-18th Century. 

When mechanised processes saw

Spinning and weaving. Faster. More!

Weaving and spinning. Faster. More! 

Ushered in the Machine Age. 

The Age of The Factory. 

That’s when we all…clocked on. 

Tick-tock. 

The Mancunian Way. 

Busy bees. Heywood heyday. 

Within 50 years the town was transformed

Those dark satanic mills ushered in another norm. 

The noise, the gloom, the bobbins, the widgets, 

The fines, the screams and the piecers counting digits

The never-ending hours,

The smokestack lightening towers,

Important enough, by 1881, to assume a range of government powers. 

The world transformed by industry, imperialism, Civil War

An Empire needs to feed, to grow, or what else is it for?

Seems to me the world bent knee in homage to the King

Cotton was his name, he ruled, and here’s the thing:

The Liver bird back then, set prices round the globe

Determined values, lives and worth, when Slavepool was in vogue. 

(We built that city on more than rock and roll…)

 

Well, Peel Street Mill was built by a man named Kay

Who had a vision and a mission and he did it his way; 

Employed a whole chunk of the town

At threepence an hour, fair pay when chipsdown,

Take your life in your hands in this dangerous work

No choice but to go where the shadows lurk; 

The Cotton Famine came, solidarity was the cry

Poetry was written on the Famine Road up high

‘Just a cotton-picking minute’ said the workers to the world

Support our kin in bondage, freedom flag upfurled

The people’s empathy was plain to see

It could have been you, it could have been me

In ’39 when the chimney fell 

10, 000 witnessed the death knell

Of Peel Street Mill, they came from all around. 

If you listen carefully you can still hear the sound. 

 

Now not a cotton mill spins in the town, 

From here to Gracie Fields

The only thing that survives is love 

And that Carnival ritual that heals.

 

So to Charley Dean’s where we tested our eyes

To the Aspinal’s Confectioners undercounter surprise

To Franklin and Heywood’s Music Shop 

Made our spirits rise

And Jackson’s Grocers jingle which always made me sigh:

 

‘Now then for our Groceries, necessities of our lives

Go right away to Jackson’s shops, I advise all working men’s wives

For butter, bacon, hams and cheese, he always has the best

I am sure with me you will agree, if you put them to the test.’

 

To summarise how I firmly feel 

About the Street and the Mill called Peel

You are the Mill Beneath our Feet

The wind beneath our wings

The breath in the billowing sails

Of our ship of precious things. 

 

So don’t forget, when loneliness hits

And you’re feeling cold and friendless

Come with us along the Peel Mill Trail

The PossAbilities 

Are 

Endless!

X

 

With Eternal Love from Tommy Calderbank, aka Tocky Tom

5th August 2023.