From rubble to a garden

One corner of  St James' Church Collyhurst 1966

Crossing the Line - part 6

Collyhurst was a bit of a shock.

When dad was a teacher in Rochdale, we lived in a cul-de-sac of bungalows at Hollingworth Lake, each with a front garden and no fences.  It was a great place for the children of the Merlin Close to play.  I remember having a tricycle there and riding it up and down the pavements and driveways with other children while mums sat and drank tea and chatted – I was three years old.

But when dad returned to the Church of England, I think that the Bishop who allowed him back wanted to test his commitment – and so we were sent to St James Collyhurst, about a mile from the centre of Manchester, in the middle of a slum clearance area.

The rectory was right next to the church and surrounding it for hundreds of yards in every direction there was just rubble.  The layout of the old terraced streets was still there, but where the terraced houses had once stood were simply piles of broken bricks left by the bulldozers when everything else had been wiped from the map.

We lived in the rectory which was a solid Victorian house with a small back yard that smelled of piss, and a big brick wall.  There would be no playing outside here and there were few children to play with.  My father’s role there was to minister to the dwindling congregation until the church to would close and be demolished too.  In the end, that didn't happen until 1971 but after a year there, I think the Bishop had got the assurances he required.

There are two memories which are still vivid in my mind from the year we spent there.

The first was being burgled.  While we were out one day, just before Christmas, a man broke into the house by climbing the large brick wall at the back and then breaking one of the large kitchen windows to get in.  The only problem was that he cut himself on broken glass on the way in, so we came home not only to find the house turned upside down but also find trails of blood in drops and smears, ranging all over the house.  The police were called and within a few hours they had caught the burglar trying to sell mum’s jewellery to passers-by, in a street half a mile away.  I remember how mum was deeply upset with the sense of violation which often follows such an experience, but also remember how I simply accepted it as part of life in a place like Collyhurst. 

We were told of a vicar nearby who was moving to a new parish.  A couple of days before he moved, he was sat at the desk in his study when the shattering of glass heralded the arrival of a house brick, which landed on the desk in front of him.  He got up to look out of the broken window only to see a young boy whose face instantly changed from triumph to acute embarrassment.  “Sorry Father” he shouted, “I thought you’d gone already”.  The triumph was being the first kid to lob a brick through one of the windows. The embarrassment only came because he had miscalculated and Father was still there!  That was Collyhurst.

The second memory was of bonfire night.  To mark the 5^th November, dad had put together a small bonfire in the rubble by the church and we were standing there with sparklers watching the gentle flames when we heard bells and sirens.  Looking up, we realised that there was a much brighter orange glow in the sky.  We walked around the outside of the church to investigate and immediately saw that the old derelict cotton mill on one edge of the clearance area had been set alight.  I guess someone thought it would make a really spectacular bonfire and sure enough it did, with flames shooting into the sky from this four-story building.  It was certainly the biggest bonfire I have ever seen!

So when the Bishop asked dad to look at another parish a year later, we were all curious to see what he had in mind.   We travelled north about 20 miles in our Morris Minor to the old Lancashire mining village of Blackrod.  The name allegedly came from the description ‘Bleak Road’ which aptly described the windy hill on which Blackrod was built.  The church was right at the top, standing resolute against the bleak wind.

Blackrod Vicarage, painted by my father.

But when we came to the vicarage, I couldn’t believe my eyes.  Surrounding this substantial Victorian edifice was almost an acre of gardens, complete with bluebell wood, tennis court, orchard and rose garden.  I remember just running round and round the garden trying to take it all in.  There were terraced rockeries with staircases and paths built in, rhododendron bushes big enough to make dens in, and the grass in the orchard was so high that it was above my 4 year old head!   I felt like an intrepid explorer in the jungle as I cut a path through it.

The contrast with Collyhurst could not have been greater.   I felt like a caged bird being set free to fly for the first time.

When we were leaving I remember asking mum and dad, “Is that going to be our house?”

“Yes” they said.  I went to sleep that night with all the excitement of a child and sheer exhaustion from all the running I had done.

At the time I didn’t know the Bible verse where Jesus promises that those who have given things up for him will receive 100 times more in return but that is how it felt that night, and I have seen that principle at work more than once in my life.  Dad and mum gave up that safe, cosy home in Hollingworth Lake and stepped out into the unknown because they trusted where God was leading.  On that first visit to Blackrod, I think he kept his promise.

Click here for an Introduction to Crossing the Line

Click here for Part 7 - Not an easy village