My Mum was a Horwich lass, Mamalynne, and worked in the industry as a young girl. Everyone in Horwich could lip read - you'd see two women fifty yards apart having a conversation - the called it me-mawing.
Oh yes meemawing is right, my Grandmother was stone deaf due to the mill, my Mother partially so, my Aunt died in an horrific accident.
My daughter lives in Horwich, I sit here on the site of an old mill, where many a child piecer upper would have crawled beneath monstrous machinery. All that remains is the mill lodge outside, now a haven for wildlife.
Mark - seeing the L S Lowry reminds me - I went to Bolton School - a year below
Ian McKellan - and there was a very large Lowry on the wall, titled Cotton Town Pastures. Probably from the Tillotson family, who had the local papers.
As a child I lived a few hundred yards from Bolton School and after she retired from the Mill, my Mum was a cleaner there. My brother in law lives just off Mason St.