It was in the mid 1950s, during a school holiday, I would have been twelve or thirteen years old, although I can’t be sure which season of the year it was. The day was not particularly warm, I don’t recall any sunshine, but then again neither was there rain. It just seemed an ordinary weekday morning, with an overcast sky. I realise now that there must have been some snow on the ground, although I don’t recall seeing any that morning.

The news reached us, through word of mouth, that the Police were searching for a young boy missing from his home in Lower Wortley. We didn’t exactly volunteer to help in the search, because I can’t remember seeing any policemen organising us, or even speaking to us, but everyone around my age set out to look for the boy. The crowd I knew and played with all came from the New Blackpool area alongside Cow Close Road, and we took off into the places we knew well, up in Farnley Forge.

In the Forge were two mines owned by Farnley Fireclay. The mines did not drop into the ground vertically. They were called ‘drift’ mines and they ran along a shallow route under the “Black Hills” past Dunlop & Ranken and in the direction of Morley. One of the mines was still functioning and had a narrow gauge railway with very small trucks hauled by a steel rope, used to carry the mined clay, whatever coal, and the miners themselves. The area also held many abandoned full size railway trucks and broken sanitary pottery. At the highest point of the Forge was a huge cylindrical metal tank, which over years had filled with rainwater and rust. We, New Blackpool kids, were very familiar with this place and we searched throughout the morning until word reached us, around lunchtime (dinnertime), that the boy had been found.

He was a 4-year-old from a family living on the Kirkdale Estate. This was situated between Dunlops and the junction of the Ring Road and Whitehall Road near Ringways Garage. In those days Wortley Beck ran alongside the wall next to the Ringway’s Roundabout. It is now buried under the carpark of Evans Halshaw.

Back then traffic was light, life was slower, and it was not as essential to monitor children as it is now. The boy had wandered off and been playing on the Beck Bank when he slipped on the snow, fell into the Beck and was drowned.

If I remember correctly, the Beck was covered in shortly afterwards.