How on earth did charlemange15, her husband and six children fit into the bunglow. As I remember it, the front bedroom (at the side of the road) was about 12 feet long and very narrow. It had been my father's bedroom until he joined the Royal Navy in 1937. I slept in it every time I stayed with my grandparents. The two back bedrooms (facing the canal) were about 15 feet by 15 feet. The kitchen used to have a coal fireplace with a side oven (slightly smaller than the one in the living room) which my gran used for all her baking and cooking. Between the fireplace and window was a large "copper" enclosed by a brick wall. Coal was lit under the "copper" which served as a boiler for laundry. My grandfather used to "mash" his chicken feed in it, as well. - The pylon and cable mentioned by Alan nearly gave me a heart attack one day. I had been playing in the nearby sandpit and was standing next to the pylon, watching a passing ship, when the cable was snagged by its high mast. It snapped and let the heavy weights drop. The noise put the fear of God into me and I ran screaming into the bungalow.

The bungalow was built in about 1930. Prior to that, the sluiceman's accommodation was a two-storey building immediately adjacent to the sluices. My grandfather "inherited" the sluiceman's position from his father-in-law, William Parry. My grandparents, Leonard and Emily Johnson retired to Thelwall, near Warrington, in April, 1954; my grandfather dying two months later. Like my cousin Alan, my sister and I spent many happy school holidays there in the late 1940s and early 1950s. I have similar memories of the place as Alan does. My father used to serve aboard the MSC tug Arrow and would drop me off/pick me up, my grandfather ferrying me to and from the jetty in his "cockyboat." I learned to single-oar scull my grandfather's "cockyboat" at "the sluices." The MSC train acted as an unofficial taxi for my grandmother on shopping days. She would ride in the guard's van and I on the footplate. Then we'd walk over Old Quay Bridge into Runcorn. On the way back we would stop off at the house (in Trinity Place) of Mr and Mrs McGrail for a cup of tea. He was a shepherd who often had a new-born lamb lying next to the fireplace. He herded his sheep from Astmoor Marsh to fresh pasture between the Sluices and Bob's Bridge. The small red-bricked building near to the bungalow was the entrance to a tunnel under the River Mersey. It contained a huge pipe that carried water from North Wales to Liverpool. Mr Riley, a cheerful, chubby man was the pipe's maintenance engineer. With him and my grandfather I once walked the tunnel, from next to the pylon to Norton Tower, which houses the pump that lifts the water over Runcorn Hills.

hi there stranger we meet in funny ways

It is the boundary stone for Smithills Country Park

Thanks again for putting the history to the photo. I've just taken a photo of this building myself and it looks as if it has recently been used as there is a shiny new padlock on it. The wooden decking at the back of the concrete plinth is in a bit of a state as I found out when I stood on it yesterday!

Ahahaha! Great stuff, Rick46 :D

great shot,fantastic use of the light.

heaven

Longridge Fell