Website keeps memories alive

Paul Anderson (left) and grandson of the company founder, Barry Scott (centre), check out the Pine Mill model with Gallery Oldham’s Sean Baggaley

WEBSITE dedicated to a well-known Oldham haulage company has scored 16,000 hits after it was featured in the Chronicle.

In its heyday, Scott’s of Oldham operated from the Pine Mill at Westhulme with a fleet of 70 lorries, and the memories are being kept alive by the www.scottsofoldham.fotopic.net  website — created by former employee Paul Anderson.

He said: “We have had a lot of feedback thanks to the Chronicle and the website has had 16,000 hits. I also got 137 e-mails on the first weekend after the story appeared.

“I have had loads of phone calls from ex-drivers. It has been amazing.”

The firm was founded with horses and carts around the time of the First World War, and closed in the 1980s having earlier moved to the Mona Mill in Chadderton.

There was more nostalgia for Paul, now living in Ramsbottom, when he met former colleagues Jack Kershaw and Barry Scott in Oldham.

Gallery Oldham’s social history curator Sean Baggaley took them deep into the storerooms to view a detailed scale model of Pine Mill, now part of the gallery’s collection.

Barry, from Austerlands, who is the grandson of the company founder Sammy Scott, and Jack from Hollinwood, one of Scott’s former drivers, viewed the model with Paul, who recalled how it used to be displayed under a perspex dome in the reception at the company offices.

Barry added: “Eric Sykes’s brother, John, used to work in the offices as the accountant.

“During the war, the basement under the engine room doubled as an air raid shelter because the stone floors were so thick.

“The whole of the mill was used for storage and warehousing it was so vast.”

Jack said: “I am very nostalgic for those times after seeing this. We worked hard but we enjoyed ourselves.”

The model has been on display twice recently at the gallery’s Millscapes and Superstructures exhibitions.

Sean added: “It is very popular and people can really relate to where everything was in 3D. The mill is long gone but this is of great historical record.”