Sutton Times Have Been A-Changin' !
A view north towards St.Helens with Sherdley Park in the background.
St.Nicholas's graveyard and the old cub hut are in the foreground.
I'm indebted to Martin Gauckwin, who describes himself as "born and raised in Sutton", who has kindly forwarded two photographs taken from St.Nicholas church tower during the 1960s. The picture above was taken in April 1964, just a few weeks after Bob Dylan had released his third album entitled 'The Times They Are A-Changin'. I expect that Mr. Zimmerman wasn't necessarily thinking of house building in St.Helens, but he could well have been as Martin's extraordinary pictures remind us of how much the area has been developed in such a short span of time.
As you can see in the photograph (above) which looks north / north-west of the New Street church - with Marshalls Cross Road and Sherdley Park in the background - there's nothing but fields past St. Nick's graveyard and the burnt out cub huts in the foreground. Sherdley Park's old entrance gates can just about be made out at the top of the picture. In the days prior to St.Helens Corporation acquiring the park in the late '40s, these were locked at night by the Hughes family.
If memory serves (I need to check this with the local history library) the land was sold in 1966 for around £250,000. Apart from Sutton Cricket Club and Sutton Park at the picture's top right, the fields have all now gone, metamorphising into Balmoral Avenue, Stathmore Grove and Sandringham Drive etc. In fact if you click on the pictures you'll see Google Earth's impression of how the area looks today.
Looking south towards Mill Lane - Sutton Manor Colliery in the distance.
In the second photograph taken in July 1963, which is a southerly view towards Mill Lane, there is a similarly desolate landscape, apart from the houses on one side of Mill Lane and with Sutton Manor Colliery in the far distance.
The pit was then in its heyday, annually outputting over 300,000 tons of coal with over 1,000 miners and ancillary workers employed. Within a couple of years it would undergo a recruitment drive but despite the National Coal Board's adverts in the St.Helens Reporter in 1966 promising "permanent employment and a secure future", it would close 25 years later. I suspect that many who lost their jobs felt that another track on Dylan's seminal album from 1964, "Only a Pawn In Their Game", would also apply to them!
Sutton (St.Helens) in Snow!
This explains my excitement when it does snow and desire to share pictures of Sutton in snow as it gives such a different look to all the sites featured in Sutton Beauty. It's not easy to capture interesting snow pictures through issues of exposure and contrast, although I'm quite pleased with how some have come out. Strangely a build-up of condensation on the lens has given a few images oil painting-like qualities. I did fall through the ice into the Sutton Mill Dam and slipped down a bank at the Clock Face Country Park in my desire to get the best possible pictures, so I do hope you enjoy them!
Not alot of fun being a duck in the Sutton Mill Dam during a blizzard!