SADDLEWORTH VOICES: Local people’s lives, memories or stories are captured in this special feature.

By Martin Plant

SADDLEWORTH VOICES: Local people’s lives, memories or stories are captured in this special feature. In this latest edition, taken from a recorded interview by Martin Plant, Julia Dawson discusses a life well-travelled.


JULIA Dawson may be Uppermill-based but her story takes her well beyond Saddleworth’s borders.

Here, she discusses where her career took her, her memories of growing up, x-raying a former Prime Minister and her connection to a more familiar name.

“I WAS born in 1938 and was brought up in Grotton. I attended Lydgate Primary School and Hulme Grammar School for Girls.

Julia Dawson

”My father, Hartley Schofield, who had a rather Victorian childhood (after attending St Andrew’s Church on Middleton Road in Oldham with the family on Sundays, they were not allowed to play music on Sunday afternoons) had a garage in Oldham, H. Hughes and Bolton, which was the local Rootes Group agency for Humber, Hillman, Singer, and Sunbeam cars.

“Oldham Motor Company now has the premises on Manchester Road for their commercial vehicles.

“My mother, Marion (nee Freeman) looked after the family home.

“One of my memories is of Mumps bridge with “Oldham, Home of the Tubular Bandage” on the side, though before that it had a picture of a toucan with “Guinness is Good for You”!

“I always wanted to be a radiographer and when I left school I trained at Oldham Royal Infirmary as a diagnostic radiographer, learning how to use complex equipment to produce images using x-rays (as opposed to therapeutic radiographers who treat cancer and tissue problems).

“After completing my training, I spent a year at the hospital. It could be very busy, for example after a car accident or when you’re called out during the night because, on one occasion, someone has swallowed a needle in a pork pie!

“You have to learn to distance yourself from the awful things that sometimes have happened.

Julia with John Warburton in his 1922/5 Aston Martin in 2013

“I decided to join some friends in a London flat and I worked at Charing Cross Hospital for four years. I enjoyed working there and we had some excellent parties in the flat!

“One summer. I was given leave of absence to go for six weeks to a little orthopaedic hospital in Lausanne, Switzerland covering for staff on holiday.

“I had to learn to use an x-ray machine that I’d never seen before and to brush up on my French! (I still go to French discussion classes.)

“In 1964, I successfully applied to spend a summer in America as a counsellor for Camp America at Plymouth Bay, Massachusetts.

“It suited me because I had been a Girl Guide for many years. I sailed from Tilbury and was met in New York by my aunt Hilda who lived near there.

“She was delighted to have a visit from someone from the family and she invited me to stay with her when Summer Camp finished.

“After the summer, I travelled around the country by Greyhound bus with other people from Camp America before I found a job as a radiographer at a hospital in Boston.

“Whilst I was there, Sir Anthony Eden (Prime Minister 1955-1957) came for an x-ray. He’d been on holiday.

“He was absolutely charming and promised to write a letter to my parents telling them how well I was doing, but the letter never arrived!

“I also saw Ted Kennedy, who had just survived a plane crash which killed two people. He was elected as Senator for Massachusetts while in hospital and his brother, Robert Kennedy (assassinated in 1968) came to the hospital for a press conference.

“I took a picture but I don’t know where it is.

“When my mother came to stay, I found her a room in the nurses’ home so she had to pretend to be a nurse!

“I gave up my job and we stayed with my aunt before visiting some places including The White House on a guided ”Congressional tour”, the Amish in Pennsylvania, and a trip to Niagara Falls.

“In 1967, after another locum post in Switzerland and whilst working at Oldham Royal, I married Martin, a successful engineer, at Saddleworth Church.

“We regularly sailed off Scotland. We had a Moody Eclipse 33-foot yacht. We would drive up to Scotland just for the weekend!

“We also travelled a lot, including to Japan and America on trade missions which I wasn’t supposed to go on, so Martin stayed in five-star hotels and I stayed in the local YWCA!

“My uncle by marriage, Shaw Williamson, was manager of the NatWest bank in Delph (now a popular wine/cafe bar).

“He was much loved and was a member of Saddleworth Cricket Club. In the summer, if the bank wasn’t busy, he’d say to his friend 10 minutes before 3.30pm when they were due to close, “Let’s shut up shop and go and watch some cricket!”

“Of course, there is no bank in Saddleworth now and Saddleworth itself is so busy compared to even a few years ago.

“I’ve always gone to church. I was christened in Oldham at St Andrew’s, which has since been demolished.

“My father was in the Merchant Navy during the war and when he came home he was like a stranger to me. He hadn’t seen my brother, Christopher, who was born while he was away.

“My twin sisters, Barbara and Celia, were born eight years after me. My father attended Saddleworth Church which is traditional whereas St Thomas’ in Delph, with which I am very involved, is more evangelical.

“The original St Thomas’ was on Heights Lane above Delph. It closed in the 1960s and church services transferred to the village church formerly called St Hilda’s.

“I met John Warburton, who subsequently wrote a book about the Rothwell company of Oldham.

“My father’s grandfather, Fred Rothwell, and great uncle Tom Rothwell founded the Eclipse Machine Car Company of Oldham which made knitting machines, sewing machines, bicycles, then cars, until 1923.

“Fred’s widow, Frances, had two pairs of stained glass windows made for St Andrew’s Church. When it was demolished in 1982, it needed detective work by me to find them.

“I managed to recover two of the original four panels and had them placed in blank windows in St Thomas’ Church.

“Frank Rothwell, who rowed the Atlantic Ocean twice, is now building a replica of the 1910 20 hp Rothwell car that is currently on display in the foyer of Gallery Oldham.

“The chassis for the replica has been supplied by Toyota car company.”


*MORE details of the Rothwell Company can be found in the book Rothwell of Oldham, which can be purchased for £10 at Gallery Oldham, Saddleworth Museum or Dr Kershaw’s Hospice. All proceeds go to Dr Kershaw’s Hospice.