THOUGH it was demolished earlier this year, the old Accrington Grammar School re-emerges this week in a capacity few would expect of an academic institution - that of helping to defeat Hitler.

For thanks to the recollections of 81-year-old reader Miss Olive Middleton, triggered by the tale here last week of how East Lancashire industries switched to helping the war effort 60 years ago, we learn that part of the Blackburn Road school became a workshop producing parts for warplanes. It was soon after passing her driving test in 1939 and still with little experience at the wheel that Miss Middleton was sent by the Labour Exchange to become the driver of a two-ton Fordson van with a V8 engine for the Ministry of Aircraft Production, based at the huge Bristol Aeroplane Company factory - nowadays the GEC Business Park - at Clayton-le-Moors.

Her job entailed driving an average of 100 miles a day - while wearing a uniform of RAF blue, although she was not a member of the armed forces - to collect and deliver parts at "dispersal" factories serving the giant aircraft works.

Among them was that at the Grammar School - in whose playground Olive loaded up with the parts made from long bars of metal that lorry drivers from the Clayton works had delivered earlier.

"I never went inside where the parts were made but, although they were only small, there were lots of them," says Olive, of Wellfield Road, Blackburn. "The lorry drivers liked going because they always got a tip." Only the second woman driver to be recruited for the work, but one of about 10 when she finished, Olive also recalls going to dispersal factories at Turner Street, Blackburn - to what originally was the works of Chris Holden's boilermakers - and at Albert Mill, Rishton; Carlton Mill, Clitheroe; Waverledge Mill, Great Harwood; another mill at Huncoat and to Rolls-Royce at Barnoldswick.

"Eventually, I went on long-distance and travelled all over England and as far as Glasgow." Dunkenhalgh Hall - now a hotel - was taken over by the ministry and drivers like Olive were on call to chauffeur visitors and officials.

"The VIPs who came - mainly from Bristol, I suspect - stayed at the hall. There were about six staff cars, the best of which was the 'Bristol Buick' for the very top nobs," Olive recalls.

Another flashback to the visits of air ace Sir Alan Cobham's "Flying Circus" to East Lancashire in the 1930s comes from 85-year-old Mr John Fowler, of Nares Road, Blackburn, who remembers going to the show staged at Billington in 1932.

"I went with a workmate on his 'New Imperial' motor bike. I don't know whether it was the sight of the flimsy-looking planes or lack of money which kept our feet on the ground," he says. "I also remember a similar event while on holiday with my parents at Blackpool in the early 1920s. Planes were taking off from the South Shore beach on 'five-bob flips' to circle the Tower.

"Much to my father's consternation, Mother insisted on having five bob's worth."

And adds Mr Fowler: "The plane took off with Mother on board but returned shortly afterwards due to a fuel shortage - depriving her of a trip around the Tower. And she did not receive any refund."

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