Alan Whalley's World

But that mansion-sized detached dwelling, dominating a dark and forbidding crossroads was, in fact, a home fit for heroes.

For the last occupants of Peasley View, as the six-bedroomed house was properly titled, included a father and son with the unique distinction of both having won the Military Medal for gallantry during wartime action.

James Henry Lomax, old-time railway employee and father of 12, gained his award during the first world war, while his son Frank,was awarded the MM during world war two.

As a young private with the South Lancs Regiment, in the thick of the 1916 close-quarter warfare, James displayed his conspicuous gallantry during a daylight raid on German trenches at the Somme.

The citation reads: "On his own initiative he took a machine-gun up a communication trench into the German trench and annihilated a party of enemy which was holding up our bombers."

James, who later rose to the rank of sergeant and became a lieutenant in the Home Guard during the 1939-45 war, survived to his 67th birthday.

More tragically, his son Frank died from a heart attack at the relatively early age of 46. He gained the MM in 1944 after dismantling a bomb under a bridge. It was a highly-dangerous mission in which the bomb might have exploded at any moment.

I've gleaned this fascinating information from Frank's sister-in-law, Lilian Lomax, of Springfield Road, Grange Park, who also provided pictures of the so-called 'Psycho House' and of her heroic father-in-law and his wife. She was responding to readers from around the Parr and Peasley Cross boundary who earlier recounted memories of that old house of their childhood nightmares.

Lilian (63) admits that Peasley View was a very forbidding sight when standing empty and neglected, its darkened windows staring blankly as late-night passersby scuttled past on the opposite side of the road!

She recalls being taken by her late hubby, James, to see the old family dwelling, with its six bedrooms, two attic spaces, a collection of ground-floor rooms and with cellars below.

That was around 1951, when the couple were courting. "It was awaiting demolition," recalls Lilian, "and I can remember being puzzled by finding old bell-ropes down in the cellar." She's no idea where they came from. Perhaps being stored for a local church?

By then, James Henry Lomax and his wife Elizabeth had flitted to a smaller, more-manageable dwelling in nearby Baxters Lane - a great relief to Elizabeth. Peasley View was a railway company house and despite their outsized family the Lomax's also took in lodgers.

"I think my mother-in-law was glad to move to a place she could really call her own," says Lilian. Mother-of-four Lilian and her eldest daughter, Ann Halsall (36) showed me an impressive collection of family photos, memorabilia, documents and snippets of information, used in researching their well-branched family tree.

Ann, however, is stumped for details about two old Sutton families (Berks and Bowden) connected with her own forebears. Anyone able to help can contact Ann on St Helens 24962.

Mention of the 'haunted house' certainly struck a chord with a large number of readers. Many buttonholed me in the street to reminisce about that eerie Victorian dwelling. And among those who wrote in were a couple of Haydock fans, Deryck Rimmer of Park Street, and Colin Critchley from Clipsley Crescent, along with Mary Meara of Parr Stocks Road, Parr, whose granny once lived in the big house.

Deryck writes: "My father was an engine driver during the steam age, at Sutton Oak Engine Sheds, Baxters Lane (now the site of Morrisons supermarket) and years later I followed him on to the footplate."

Deryck recalls his dad telling him that an old engine driver named Jimmy Sweetlove had lived at the 'big house.'

Jimmy kept goats and sold milk to anyone wanting some. "I understand that goat's milk was a pick-me-up in those days."

Mary Meara tells us: "My granny, Agnes Moran, her son, Tommy, and his wife lived there at a time when the house was separated into flats occupied by a few families." She has a few vague memories of the place.

"When I was a child, living at the old Blackbrook pre-fabs, my mum took ill and had to go into hospital. So every morning my dad took me to my granny's on his push-bike which had a child's seat fixed to the back."

In those days her father was a rag-and-bone man named Tommy Carter who had to make his way to Hindley's scrap yard (behind Beechams factory) where her uncle Tommy was employed.

Mary remembers the dark cellars and creaky staircase at the big house and also a large, church-type organ kept there by her uncle Tommy. "If he played that during the night-time it's no wonder the place seemed so ghostly!" she says.

Colin Critchley has a toe-curling tale to tell.

"I lived near the old Stinking Brook in Gaskell Street and during those early 1950s everybody used to shy away from the haunted house.

"I attended St Joseph's School, Peasley Cross, and had to go past that big house every day. It had been built to house railwaymen working the London-to-Scotland trains. They were known as 'double-trip men' and this was their sleep-over quarters.

Colin, too, worked at Sutton Oak loco sheds. "And my particular terrifying experience concerned not that old house, but a journey home from work early one morning."

It was 4am as Colin was walking down Dark Lane. "I saw this dark mass moving across the road. Getting closer,I could make out that this was an exodus of rats moving from clayhole to clayhole, on either side of the roadway. "Needless to say, I doubled back and stayed at the loco sheds until daylight."

And Colin signs-off poignantly: "This letter is in memory of my old school-chum, David Thomas from Somerset Street."

I'VE also received a follow-up letter from correspondent Rigger who set our 'haunted house' pot bubbling, and with it a fascinating sketch showing the old adventure haunts of his 1940s boyhood.

More on the subject soon.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.