Back to Oral Taping Menu
The transcript is an interview with Lorna Mcintosh as transcribed by Microsoft Word and summarised by ChatGPT and subject to errors.
Early Life and Family
- Interviewee: Lorna McIntosh, born 1 January 1940 in Newchurch at the Valley.
- Her father worked for the gas board (an essential wartime job, so he was not called up). The family later moved to Ramsbottom.
- They lived in a large double-fronted house near Jerusalem Church, which had a cellar used as a shelter during bombings.
Wartime Memories
- Recalled air raids and bombs falling at Stubbins and Tottington.
- Father was often on duty during sirens; she remembered being taken to see bomb damage in the fields, everything blackened.
- Described a doodlebug incident: the blast shifted her bedroom wall but spared their windows, while others in Bridge St. shattered.
- Her baby brother had a special gas-protection carrycot with bellows that terrified her mother.
- Laura used a Mickey Mouse-style child’s gas mask, practiced with it under the table.
Transport
- The family had a gas-powered car during the war (a Ford converted to run on coal gas stored in a bag on the roof). It looked like a mattress on top of the car and was vulnerable in the wind.
- Petrol was unavailable, so the car was essential for her father’s on-call duties.
Schooling
- Attended St Paul’s School (C of E) in Ramsbottom from about age 4.
- Early schooling involved naps on camp beds, milk and biscuits, and learning the alphabet.
- Teachers remembered: Miss Hassell, Miss Whitaker, Mr. Lindley (headmaster), and Mrs. Cook.
Post-War Rationing and Daily Life
- Rationing: Small amounts of butter, sugar in blue bags, limited meat, occasional bananas.
- Some foods (like pork offal, pig tails, bones) were off-ration and used in cooking.
- Community spirit was strong during wartime—doors left unlocked, neighbors helped each other.
Ramsbottom Community
- In the 1940s–50s it was still very much a village with strong family networks.
- Shops: plentiful and specialized (butchers, greengrocers, drapers, outfitters, tobacconists, chemists, etc.). Now, she noted, far fewer remain.
- Employment: mostly mills, factories, shop work; also paper mills at Stubbins.
Leisure & Youth Culture
- Two cinemas: Theatre Royal and the Empire.
- Dance halls in the Liberal and Conservative Clubs—formal dancing (waltz, foxtrot), jive frowned upon.
- Jive club in Bridge St.; music provided by records.
- Temperance bar (popular with young people, serving dandelion & burdock, soft drinks).
- Teddy boy gangs sometimes caused trouble in the 1950s when diesel trains brought outsiders.
- Bought her first guitar at the local music shop, joined a church youth group.
Health and Remedies
- Common remedies: goose grease for colds, camphor cubes, butter rubbed on bruises.
- Brother had scarlet fever as a baby.
Work and Careers
- Left school at 16 in 1956 after grammar school.
- Wanted to work in a laboratory, but was told “girls don’t work in labs.”
- Eventually got a lab job through a family contact at a research laboratory (though treated as unusual for being female).
- Later studied further with day-release and night school.
- Married in 1961.
Later Changes in Ramsbottom
- From village to town atmosphere; overspill housing from Manchester brought new people and social changes.
- Vandalism increased in later decades (not in her youth).
- Loss of local autonomy when Ramsbottom was absorbed into Bury Metro—services centralized.
- Shops declined as out-of-town shopping and transport improved.
- Criticized modern developments, especially the “monstrosity” structure in the town centre, which she felt didn’t reflect Ramsbottom’s textile/paper mill heritage.
✅ In essence: Laura McIntosh provided vivid memories of growing up in wartime and postwar Ramsbottom—community resilience, rationing, gas-powered cars, village life with many shops,
Back to Oral Taping Menu