The front ‘parlour’ windows of numbers 1 to 4 inclusive enjoyed an uninterrupted view of Paradise Mill, while the backs of these dwellings overlooked the Paradise Recreation Ground. Those lucky enough to have a cottage in the tiny lane had rear gardens too, long and narrow strips of land whose main feature seemed to be a total antipathy towards anything approaching cultivation, though weeds from what the locals called the ‘Parry Rec’ grew in abundance all the year round. Ollie Blunt and his wife Rosie lived at number 2. This childless couple had moved into the cottage a few years before Ollie’s retirement from the mines, and Ollie Blunt’s battle with barren soil had continued for two decades. Even now, at the age of eighty, the robust ex-miner, who had left Blackburn to finish his working days on the surface of a Westhoughton pit, was wont to express his disillusionment with the town of Bolton. ‘It were nowt like this i’ Blackburn,’ he was heard to say with a frequency that was monotonous.
