INTRODUCTION TO ‘MY FAVOURITE QUOTATION BOOK’

This little book came to light only this week (July 2024) having been rescued from a house clearance. As stated on page 1, it is a souvenir of a bazaar that was held in 1911 or perhaps in late 1910. I rather think that it would have been printed and sold for a few pence in order to raise money for church funds. Tom Gillett mentions a bazaar held in the 1890s and we also have photos of one held in 1906 when it appears that the theme was ‘The British Empire’ so this one in 1911 was nothing new. The booklet of quotations was almost certainly the idea of John Wilson, himself a writer of poetry, especially about Chorley, and also writer of the words to the Weld Bank song. He had come to Chorley from his native Pontefract in Yorkshire in 1888 to work Chorley’s postman here. His early letters home, written in verse, indicate that he found our town very much to his liking so he settled here permanently and married a Chorley lass, Sarah Rostron. They lived at 243, Pall Mall and had two daughters, Mary and Helen. Mary Wilson later became a teacher at Weld Bank school and Head of the Infant’s Department. Helen became a milliner and dressmaker and had a shop in town.

I think we all have a tendency to imagine that our ancestors, especially in a small town such as Chorley, would not have had much access to literature and perhaps we assume that their education was very limited. Certainly it was different from the education of today but literature was an important part of it. (I can recall an aunt of my mother’s, when in her 70s, reciting the entire ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ which she had first learnt at school.) This little book indicates that the Weldbankers of old were indeed not the country yokels one might imagine. Their names and even addresses are given and, if your ancestors were Chorley folk at the turn of the last century, you might come across one of them here, sharing their favourite quotation. I certainly did; my grandmother, one of seventeen children and working as a weaver in a cotton mill, has submitted a quote about friendship. As her mother had died when she was only six years old and her stepmother was rather unkind to the children of her husband’s first wife, I imagine that friendship was something she valued highly.