THESE days dressmaking is made simple with shop-bought patterns and modern sewing machines that virtually do the thinking for their users.

But when Muriel Rooney was a young girl she worked as a tailoress at the high class gown shop Pamela Frank, from the age of 16 before joining the Women's Royal Land Army during World War Two.

Prices at the smart shop were displayed in guineas not pounds and elegantly displayed alongside the splendid outfits and dresses.

Gowns were made to measure at the shop owned by a German Jewish man who had fled the Nazis and spent the war trying to help other Jews escape from the clutches of the enemy — Fritz Solomon.

When Muriel took the job in the Bradshawgate Arcade (where Crompton Place now stands) she did not know how to sew and had to learn the skill.

But she soon mastered the art and became adept at alterations and dress designs.

She recalls working with a woman who "always wore long sleeves" and would drape a model in fabric.

"She was able to see, by doing that, where she needed to cut it. She was absolutely brilliant and never needed to use a pattern," recalls the spritely 93-year-old Muriel, who works tirelessly for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution.

Recently Muriel was going through some belongings at her home in Great Lever and discovered this pattern made from a copy of The Bolton Evening News.

The fascinating part of this discovery was that the pattern — most probably for a dress sleeve, says Muriel — was on a newspaper dated Wednesday November 29, 1939 which was, of course, the year World War Two broke out.

Stories on the front page included a description of how a German raider was shot down as it approached the Northumbrian coast on that day as well as a report that Germany was "openly admitting that she intends to "sew England up in an impenetrable ring of mine fields" it was reported from Amsterdam". Not only will the North Sea and the Channel be made unsafe for shipping, but the whole West Coast of England and Scotland is to be cut off, neutral correspondents in Berlin have been told".

Stuart Gordons was offering spectacles for just five shillings in a sale and you could buy the house at 174 Green Lane in Bolton — with its three bedrooms, bathroom, kitchen, sitting room, wash house and even its own air raid shelter — for £800 or nearest offer.

You could learn to dance with Elsie Chorlton and George Taylor, based in Manchester Road, and there were advertisements for films being shown at more than 17 cinemas throughout the Bolton borough — unfortunately the "sleeve" is cut around some of the cinema adverts so the number is several more than 17 (a far cry from today).