Hi Alan, I think that it is fair to say that the house that belonged to your family is no longer there. Whilst there are a lot of very old buildings I doubt them being quite that age, although I do know most of the people that own the property at that end of Townley Street and I will go and see if any of them actually know the answers. They are certainly not dwellings now they are all shops even our Mill was a shop when we bought it, but I do know that some of the properties before ours were single units at some stages and then knocked together at other times. The reason I remember it so well was because at one time I had to send an Invoice to the first shop on the street but the door is positioned right on the corner of the building and the shop then continues down Lodge Street, so I walked down to the door to see what the number was only to find that it did not have a number on the door at all, so I looked at the next door (a Newsagents) and that was number 3, the next shop was number 5 (a Motorparts shop) next was ours number 9. So I asked the Post Office what had happened to number 7, and was told that the Motorparts shop had at one time been two properties and was actually both 5 & 7. The strange thing is that we sold our Mill to the Motorpart shop and then their old landlord has now split the propertie back into two again and now the numbers are correct. However whilst I am certain that your family would not have lived in the Mill mainly because it is a typical Mill structure square with three floors and hoists and things that were used in material manufacturing, where we had the staff rest room actually looked out over the backs of the other shops and they have many signs of very old property. I will do my best to find out a bit more for you but what I think is. At the back of the Mill there are what used to be weaving sheds and at some point these weaving sheds were sold seperately from the main Mill, I can remember that on our deeds there was a red line showing that the land between our door and the shops I have described above had been sold as the access to the rear property ie. the old weaving sheds. Another thing that makes me wonder is the original door to our property was at the side of the building and not on Townley Street at all. I will see if I can get a copy of the old photograph so that I can send it to you, the gentleman that has it is a very well known local historian so it is also possible that he will have the answers. I will be back when I have more information. Ivy Middleton Manchester

----- Original Message ----- From: "Ivy Murphy" <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, December 17, 2003 1:00 AM Subject: Re: [ENG-LAN-MIDDLETON-L] 9 Townley Street Hello Ivy I'm just getting round to reading my e-mail from a few weeks ago and notice that you have an interest in 9 Townley Street. I was born in 1942 at 17 Townley Street, the shop on the corner of Spring Vale opposite Yates chip shop and is now 'The Full Monty'. The shopkeeper, Mrs Tregellas was my grandmother. From what I remember of the street, there was a very small public garden across Spring Vale and I believe that there had been houses on this land in the early 1900's. These houses were between Spring Vale and the river Irk and would be opposite the 'electricity works'. As number 9 was probably only 4 doors from number 17 it is possible that it was amongst this small group of houses. On the other side of the Irk was at least one mill, which I believe is still standing and further towards Lodge Street was a group of 3 or 4 shops, which were at some time a newsagents and Alan Taylors motor bike shop. I don't suppose that this helps much but it may just jog someone's memory. Vernon Parry