John making history whilst teaching it too!

JOHN FIDLER (seated, centre) takes his 600th lesson at the Oldham Local History Community Group

LOCAL history teacher John Fidler has chalked up his own historical milestone.

He has taught his 600th class after taking the Oldham Local History Community Group for 30 years.

John (77), a former head of history at Counthill School, originally attended the class as a student for years, taking over in 1986 when the teacher left.

Since then he has covered an impressive 150 topics - from agriculture in Oldham and his most recent a murder in Hollins Road. Others have include the Bankside Riots of 1834, the start of the telephone service in Oldham, the Poor Law and workhouses, Dr Kinder Wood and the First World War.

He has only repeated topics occasionally at the request of students and had just one year off when he and his wife, Dori, spent several months visiting relatives in Australia.

John's dedication and enthusiasm earned him a Pride in Oldham Award nomination from his students in 2015.

He has no plans to give up and said: "I thought about it after 25 years but they prevailed upon me to carry on and I am still finding new and interesting topics to do."

John is planning to travel to France to photograph the war graves of Oldham soldiers and is also interested in conscientious objectors from Oldham.

He does much of his research at the National Archives in London and Oldham Local Studies and Archive centre, and also gets a lot of information from past editions of the Oldham Chronicle.

Stuart Paulley, a long-term member of his class at Werneth Park Lifelong Learning Centre, said: "John spends an awful lot of time doing research on our behalf and disrupting family holidays so that he can visit foreign sites relevant to Oldham, especially the First World War graveyards.

"We can't imagine how much paper there must be in John's house. Dori is very tolerant of the disruption John's enthusiasm must cause, so the class is very grateful to her as well."