Over the past four years, Saddleworth Voices have recorded almost 70 interviews to preserve fond memories and anecdotes of all things local.
With the support of Saddleworth Parish Council, Delph Community Association, Delph library, Saddleworth Museum, and the North West Sound Archive in Clitheroe, the team of volunteers has created an oral record of our times, with the added advantage of capturing accent and dialect.
Here, Martin Plant looks at the life of Gerry Royle.
Gerry Royle was born in Mossley in 1943. Before retirement, he was in charge of teacher training in Oldham. He and his wife Barbara have lived in Delph for over 45 years.
Gerry’s father, Gerald, was away during the war, in the RAF medical corps so his mother, Annie, like thousands of others, had to cope on her own.
Gerry attended primary school in Mossley where some of the teachers had been “emergency trained”. He remembers regular use of the strap and the ruler on pupils. One teacher (later sacked) threw board dusters and even jam jars at children!
After attending Ashton Grammar School, Gerry chose Liverpool University to study geography “because they had a mountain hut in North Wales and my friend and I had taken up rock climbing” (on one occasion using his friend’s father’s tow rope!).
He loved being in Liverpool – it was the time of the Beatles, the Cavern, and “Merseybeat”. He was also able to watch matches at Goodison Park and Anfield.
Whilst still a student he met Barbara at a party in Mossley when “because I was hungover, I asked for a sip from her glass of lemonade”.
His first teaching job was at Chadderton Grammar School and he and Barbara moved to Delph where they brought up their two children, Nick and Katie.
Gerry says: “I love Saddleworth – its gritstone buildings and dry stone walls, the hills, and its industrial heritage”.
He is also a great fan of Ammon Wrigley, the local historian and dialect poet, “who had a feel for the local environment and the moorland”. Gerry could amuse a class at the end of term by reciting some of Ammon Wrigley’s verse!
In the 1970s, his friends Tony Mather and Bob Tait reintroduced him to the hills and mountains, and Gerry joined the recently formed Saddleworth Runners.
His first ever race from Marsden to Edale “was horrendous! It nearly finished me! But it was too late, I’d been bitten by the fell-running bug! To be able to run on rock and peat gives me a great feeling of spirituality, of being near the earth.”
Gerry was, at one time, the only Labour councillor on Saddleworth Parish Council and was a Greater Manchester County Councillor for six years, including being Chair of Finance.
He is a governor at Delph School and was Chair of Governors at Glodwick Infant and Nursery School for many years.
Barbara, his wife of 50 years, developed early onset Alzheimer’s disease several years ago and is now being cared for “wonderfully”, says Gerry, in Stoneswood Care Home.
