And so William McMasters part in this little tale comes to an end, now I, Alastair Dunsmore will endeavour to try and relate some of my personal experiences, as to Williams I will break it down into different categories that of, Education, Religion, Sport and Leisure, and a general update of the town in my time.
The country returned a Labour Government, and on introducing important legislation, offered us the welfare state and a health service which was then the envy of the world, and legislation which embraced the work of local authorities. It was with this background that Renfrew found itself in 1954 with a Labour controlled council.
The First World War had started and finished and I (William McMaster) still had a few months to go before leaving school and I knew that things would never be the same again as teenage life approached amidst economic and social change.
Saturday afternoon was the weekly event when children would go to the Regal Cinema or what was then called the “Pictures”, and those of us who were better off had another penny to buy our comic paper and a third to be spent on sweets, either at one go, or In portions of two halfpennies or four farthings.
Circumstances demanded that they use their imagination and initiative, if one boy had a toy gun then the poorer one made his own bow and arrow, and if a little girl could not have a nice doll she would then make her own, and when playing “cowboys and Indians” they had ample space to play, with hedges and grassed embankments to offer realism, the game often ending In an argument as to who had shot first and who was dead.
You could take a walk along Glebe Street and up Sandy Road and find fields the whole way to Cockles Loan with the exception of some private houses here and there, in fact every housing scheme in Renfrew was at one time farmland which changed the face of the town and in itself led to many other changes.
Our next walk would be out the Inchinnan Road, and to observe the number of trees on either side, a far cry from the housing estates, the Blythswood Retail Park, and the Normandy Hotel, which now occupy this site.
So I will begin with the view of Canal Street looking down Ferry Road. The Pudzeoch was far longer then and probably came as far as where the old Regal Cinema, now a Bingo Hall stands today, so part of the Pudzeoch was filled in leaving the more spacious part as the Clyde Navigation Trust Dock. But to complete that part of the picture we have to view the Washing Green!, where the burn flowed by and entered the Pudzeoch.
Northern House Clearance undertake house clearance in all areas of Skelmersdale – Ashurst Aughton Downholland Aughton Park Bickerstaffe Birch Green Burscough Digmoor Halsall Hesketh-with-Becconsall Knowsley Moorside Newburgh North Meols Parbold …
House Clearance Carlisle reported last year on a new use for recycled glass as a decorative mulch increasingly being used by garden designers to top plant containers, fill gaps between slabs and similar applications. House Clearance Carlisle reports that demand from the public for their Crystaleis Recycled Glass Gravel has mushroomed thanks to publicity in gardening magazines as well as its use in DIY/Design TV programme, Homefront in the Garden. Consumer magazine, Garden Answers also features the glass mulch as ‘Recommended Product’ of the month in its March issue, predicting that ‘coloured glass mulch is going to be the most sought-after product in gardens this year’.