Outstanding!! Tears in my eyes… My nanna Marchbanks and family were well known in the area, Lishman’s too… My dad, Thomas (Merchant Navy) married Brenda (a Watson and a Hettonie) at St Michael’s in 1957… he will be 92 in October 2023… now in a care home… can’t wait to show him this… I remember singing in the choir outside St Michael’s church on a chilly Sunday evening during the Houghton Feast week but that wasn’t until the mid ‘60’s, from the age of 6 upwards. I have pictures of me whizzing round on a ride at Houghton Feast too when I was a toddler!! Eeeh, them wuz the days!!
Very evocative. I was born in 1956 so a little bit too early for me but I certainly walked those streets. One thing that struck me was how easily the men in civvies marched (up church street), all of them former soldiers. We're lucky to have been born in the era we have and those of us that can remember the old Houghton, before the planners demolished it, are the luckiest
