MillHill by Blackburn College UAL L3 Photography

A Short Photographic and oral history of the urban landscape and shop owners in

Mill Hill Blackburn 2016

Mill Hill Part 1 Order Intro: Mill HIll P1

2-3

Urban Spaces

4-5

Shop Owners Introduction 6-7 IAndy Pratt

8-9

Urban/Mill Hill Flats

10-11

Fiona Andrews

12-13

Urban Spaces

14-15

Mill Hill Chippy

16-17

Internation Aid Shop

18-19

Mill Hill Pets

20-21

Urban Spaces

22-23

The first part of this work, focuses on the a small dense population of the area of Mill Hill, Blackburn, Lancashire and in particular the social housing and shops that make up the area around of New Chapel St. The images and oral interviews of small shop owners, provide not just a business but vital employment for the area. Social housing make up the lifeblood of the people in and around the New Chapel St area. Images that are scattered throughout this small booklet reflect the scattered waste lands that once echoed to the sound of the machine to which 1000â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s of local people worked and walked upon are now lieing empty and abandoned and are now just a window into the past of what was once a busy thriving working community.

Urban

Shop Owners

“I’ve seen massive changes in the area of Mill Hill since I was a child”

My name’s Andy Pratt. I’m the owner of D & J Pratt Sportswear, which is a local sports retailer in Mill Hill in Blackburn mainly specialising in cricket equipment and trophies and one or two bits and pieces of general sportswear. The family business has been going since 1924 at a different location in Mill Hill which was on Parkinson Street that was originally started by my grandfather, George Lesley Pratt who was like a clogmaker and cobbler, shoe repairer that got into doing little bits of sporting footwear, pumps, and football boots and one thing and another which I think forced the business to involve to something close to what it is today. I said this was our second premises.We moved into New Chapel Street or my grandfather and my father did in 1960 when they were still doing shoes, shoe repairs and probably half sports by then. They were doing more little bits and pieces in football boots and running shoes and a bit of athletics wear because that was probably my dad’s main sport that got him into it. He was part of Blackburn Harriers in athletics and then Blackburn sort of changed and we got the birth of Tommy Balls came to Blackburn. I’m not sure what year but probably some time in the 70s which killed off a lot of little shoe shops and I think it was then round about that sort of time that my dad decided go down the line of doing all sports you see moving more into more general sports wear and football boots and football kits and I joined him straight from school in 1982 as a very fresh faced 16 year old and then really we had to find something that I could do alongside my dad. I still do a little bit of passing trade with the people from round here but people will travel from afar to come and see what I got in cricket bats and I get one or two people coming from just over the boundary in Yorkshire so Skipton Way, Barnoldswick, Earby. I don’t know if they’re in Yorkshire or Lancashire these days and I get people travelling down from Clitheroe and Lancaster and Morecambe. They will see a cricket product that I do and travel a bit. Over recent years I’ve developed my own brand of cricket equipment which a lot of the software I bring over from India and I’ve sort of developed that and worked on it to get my own DJP range going which has been a little bit of a slow thing but is getting quite successful these days. It could change a little bit over the next couple of years after Brexit where I’ve heard from a few Indian suppliers that the rupee doesn’t trade as well as it used to against the pound and things are going to go up over the next 12 to 18 months which does scare me slightly as I don’t want the price of my stuff to get up to the prices of your big leading brands. That’s how I’ve built the success with that. I’ve always been under the prices of the big major companies. We’ll just have to see what the result of Brexit brings with it.

D & J Pratt Sportswear

Andy Pratt Sports Shop Proprietor, Queen Victoria St

Urban

The multi-storey flats in Mill Hill have 15 storeys and are approx. 220 feet high. They are built of concrete, house bricks and metal struts.Although they are only seventeen years old the brick cladding is being replaced at a cost of ÂŁ1.5 million. Each of the 3 blocks are serviced by 2 lifts.Most of the residents are from the Blackburn area,and a large number of them have lived in the 270 flats since they were built. The caretaker Mr.Duxbury has the responsibility of making sure that the building is clean and safe. There is a seperate caretaker for each block of flats. Some advantages of living in the flats are that they are compact and create less housework. A disadvantage of living there is that there can be a lot of noise caused by the younger generation who are also responsible for graffiti on some of the walls. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/domesday/dblock/GB-364000-426000/page/4

“it’s was such a local community they don’t think to travel out of their area”

Fiona Andrews

I’m Fiona Andrew. I own Hop Skip & Jump on New Wellington Street in Mill Hill. We’ve been open 14 years now. When we first opened the shop Mill Hill was quite a thriving shopping area with designer ladies shops, cricket shops, very specialised area gifts and chocolate. Mill Hill has changed over the 14 years that we’ve been here. Factories have been knocked down which obviously the local people that worked in them, they didn’t have employment after that time because it was such a local community they don’t think to travel out of their area so a lot of factories have gone. Some have been replaced. A lot of foreigners now work in this local area. Hopes for the future are the development across from us.We are hoping that houses will be put on there. At the moment it is an eyesore but that’s all you can hope for isn’t it?

Hop Skip & Jump

Shoe Shop Proprietor New Wellington St

Urban

“ On the odd occasion when they went on holiday I ran the shop but no I’m a joiner by trade” Darren : Fish Shop Owner

I’m a joiner by trade. I’ve been involved since my mum and dad had the other shop at Galligreaves. I used to go out to school and do potatoes, serve in shop. On the odd occasion when they went on holiday I ran the shop but no I’m a joiner by trade but when the opportunity arose and my mum and dad decided to retire I sold the other shop for them and I decided that I was going to take this on. I think the demographic of the people is changing in Mill Hill. There’s still the old Mill Hillers, the old generation of Mill Hill knocking about. You can tell that over there its Angela Street. We always call it Angeela Street. You can tell somebody whose been brought up round here. That’s Angeela Street and Hertford Street not Hartford Street. You can tell just little things like that that people have been brought up with. But certainly as the older generation die off there are people coming in from out of area and different places, Shadsworth, Higher Croft but I think Mill Hill is unique to Blackburn. There is no other area left like it. Unfortunately Mill Hill gets left behind. It never gets any money spent on it.

I don’t think that Brexit has affected us to be honest and I don’t think it will do. I’m hoping that because we have a lot of fisherman straying into our waters, if we can stop that happening, which is pushing up the price of fish cos there’s less and less stocks, that can only be good for myself. Whereas we’re governed on what we can and cannot fish supposedly by the European Union but other European countries are overfishing but aren’t abiding by the rules as us Brits. In Fleetwood I think there’s only one trawler left.

Mill Hill Chippy

It’s like a little village in itself isn’t it? You know Mill Hill. I like Mill Hill. I think it’s brilliant you know although I’ve never actually lived in Mill Hill. We don’t get as much trouble but we still do get a lot of trouble at night with kids and that. Nobody’s open at night except the Spar now and the betting shops and the takeaway shops down the bottom end. I think its making a big comeback is fish and chips. A lot of Asians now are eating fish and chips cos it’s classed as halal isn’t it. Yeah we get plenty of Asians coming in. I’ve been here since 16 August 2012.

“when we first moved into the area, it was very different to how it is now” Mark Pickering Local Florist

Mill Hill, when we first moved into the area, was very different to how it is now. It was unbelievably busy because there were lots of factories. There was Netlon, there was MDA, ProMad. So many factories and businesses around here have either relocated, some to Scotland because there was some initiative to re-direct business up to Scotland and Netlon, they’ve all gone up to the industrial areas which are at Guide and around those areas so the number of people in the area has dramatically decreased.

Shops have indeed changed. There was the Togerry Inn. People tell me there were lots of butchers and bakers and fruit and veg shops which have all sadly gone and there is a lot of food shops that sell food now, I think these days people are all for fast food which even when you go into Spar and you see the sort of food that they sell it’s changed. A positive thing is that there’s building going on down the road. I think it’s going to be an old people’s home down at the bottom of the road that’s being built at the moment and there is spare land next to my shop which hopefully they’ll build on at some stage so we just hope that things will get better and that footfall will increase and that’s it really.

Anna’s Flowershop

Hi my name’s Mark Pickering. I’m the owner of Anna’s Florists in Mill Hill, Blackburn. I’ve been here for 16 years. I’ve owned the shop for 9 years. When we first came here I came from a garden centre in Clitheroe called Barkers with a lady called Helen Aspden so we sort of moved into the shop together and we bought it off a gentleman called Mick Kennedy and previously this was a florist shop and they also owned next door which was a fruit and veg shop. They bought it from a lady called Anna who started the original shop off and this shop has been going for the last 35 to 40 years as Anna’s I believe and we’ve all kept the name because it’s first in the directory, it’s well known, it’s got a good reputation so that’s why we’ve kept it as Anna’s.

“I came to work here for an hour about 10 -15 years ago. I love it. I left for six months at Christmas but came back because I missed it. “

When I came here, when I came to live in Mill Hill. Well I used to live in Workington then and the steel works closed down so me and my husband moved to Blackburn because he was from Blackburn and he worked at Café Europe and we’ve always lived in Mill Hill on Bonsall Street so yeah I like it round here. We’ve moved away once. That was for about two years and because I missed it that much we came back on the same street so I like it round here. It’s changed a lot. The community centre has changed. It was an old stone building then like an ark thing and we had about five or six butchers and now we haven’t got any. We haven’t got any butchers. We’ve just got the spar. Yeah I love it round here and when I retired I had the dog but took the dog out too many times and then I came here. I came to work here for an hour about 10 -15 years ago. I love it. I left for six months at Christmas but came back because I missed it. Yeah we get some characters in. People have come and we’ve known and then they’ve gone and you know you remember them. I always remember them. Erm. What about the changes now do you think you know people coming into the area. Yeah people moving into the area they don’t seem to stay for long. The young people that move in they don’t seem to stay for long. I think because it’s tight knit and everybody knows everybody and you can get what you want in Mill Hill. They’re always going further afield. They like to go to town and things like that so you don’t see them and when I moved in Bonsall Street everybody owned their own house. You could talk to people and say “How’s this Mary” and “how’s that Ada” but they all seem to have gone now. They’re all young. They’re mothers with young children and they don’t seem to stay. What do you hold for the future of Mill Hill? Well I hope it lasts a long time cos I love it here. I don’t go to town for anything. I can get everything that I want in Mill Hill. There’s the school but there used to be the banks and you had to go to town for the bank if the banks broke down. I don’t know whether that’s closed down. We had Barclays and that closed down but that’s just you know so yeah I get everything here. I like it in Mill Hill.

International Aid Trust

Volunteer: Work Internatioanl Aid Relief

Shop Assistant : Mill Hill Pets Started here on a YTS about 30 years ago. Pretty much been on and off here since time having children and stopping and always come back here. Always been good to work for. It’s been sort of in the family. It was in the family at the beginning. I left to have my children and I was asked to come back so I started off just helping out an odd day which ended up being a bit more.Think I’m part of the fixtures and fittings. Mill Hill itself it has changed a lot over the years.When I started it was just a little tiny shop which just did pretty much bird food, dog biscuits, and stuff like that. Proper old fashioned with a little brass bell on the door and everything now is like are pre-packed.We don’t do a lot of weighing up of stuff and labelling on foods, ingredients and stuff. It has expanded such a lot the shop. People come in they don’t realise how big it is inside. It is a bit of an Aladdins Cave.Mill Hill has changed quite a lot really over the years. It went a bit rough at one time with a lot of shops boarded up but again now a lot more shops are opening up. They’re building new houses down the bottom. There is a lot of new buildings gone up around in the area and English people’s pets a lot of things have changed. At one time we used to sell a lot of reptiles and thing like that and they’ve sort of had their time. Nowadays it’s a lot of fish which is easier for people to keep because the majority of people are now working. A lot of small animals, hamsters and things like that with the children and rabbits.You know the fluffy things are always quite popular. A lot of people recognise me when I’m out and about. I was in Darwen last night and just in a local supermarket and they say “I know you. Where do I know you from” and I just leave them to guess. They usually get there in the end.

Have you always been involved with animals. Pretty much. Left school and wanted to be a vet but was never clever enough for that. I couldn’t go back to all that but yeah I’m pretty much hands on with the animals. I enjoy doing it.

Mill HIll Pets

“When I started it was just a little tiny shop which just did pretty much bird food, dog biscuits, and stuff like that. Proper old fashioned with a little brass bell on the door and everything now is like are pre-packed”.

Urban

All Images (c) to S.McAllister 2016 not to be used without permission