A FORMER Lancashire Evening Telegraph journalist has published his memoirs of growing up in Pendle.

Ernest Dewhurst, 79, was moved to write A Pennine Childhood after discovering his great-grandfather's obituary which told how he had been put on a train from Bolton to Colne wearing a label which read 'Anyone can have this lad that wants him'.

The harshness of his great-grandfather's childhood led him to reflect on his own and the book started out as a project for Liverpool-based writers' circle The Inklings.

Ernest, who now lives in Lathom, near Ormskirk, said: "My great-grandfather Simpson had such a harsh background and I thought it would be worth exploring my own against his rather tragic childhood.

"Mine was so much happier and cosier. It gave me a starting point, taking the story through the generations, my grandparents and parents through to me."

Born in 1926, Ernest grew up in a farm on Tum Hill.

He writes with fondness of a childhood between the two world wars revolving around the farm, the social sphere of chapels and tales of the Home Guard and when the body of infamous American train robber Jesse Jackson was displayed in Nelson as part of a travelling fair.

The book ends with Ernest's apprenticeship as a junior reporter on the Northern Daily Telegraph, now the Lancashire Evening Telegraph, where he worked for 21 years with a three-year gap for service in the Royal Navy after being called up in 1944.

He went on to work for the Manchester Guardian for 11 years until the paper moved to London.

The Nelson of Ernest's childhood has changed immeasurably and his childhood home is now surrounded by Marsden Park Golf Club.

He said: "My old chapel with 900 seats has gone, a lot of the shopping is different now, the Arndale Centre's there, there is a large Asian community, but the country-side roundabout has probably changed very little, and the places I used to cycle out to.

"Although I don't live there, my heart is still in that part of the world and we go there when we can to visit friends and relatives."

A Pennine Childhood by Ernest Dewhurst is published by Sutton Publishing and costs £12.99.