"I'M going back to the early 1930s," writes Mr T. Hall, a former Horwich man who now lives in Codnor, Derbyshire.

"There was a big depression, and jobs were hard to come by, and a lot of the unemployed used to congregate at the billiard hall in Lee Lane. It was run by the Princess Cinema: the manager then was Sam Marsden, and the billiard hall was looked after by Peter Kirby. In the winter months it was quite common to take people off the dole to move the snow from the streets.

"Quite a lot of lads on the dole were ex-Loco Works personnel, and they had a rough time finding jobs. When they reached 21, if they were unemployed they were sent all over the country - Barrow's shipyards, Fords at Dagenham, Vauxhall at Luton and many other places. If they refused to go, their dole money was stopped.

"My brother-in-law Bill Bennett went to De Havilland at Hatfield, and is still down there.

"I was out of work at the time, and was approached by Mr Graham Cleworth from Crown Lane, who had just bought a new Bedford wagon for long distance work - there were quite a lot of long distance firms in Horwich, among them Fred Rose with big lorries, and Les Fearnhead with the smaller lorries. They did most of their work for the Vale Paper Mills, Cooke & Nuttalls. The other firms were Wallwork and Gittens, Hulme and Dickinson, Bamber and Chisnall, Boydens, Bleasdale, Cleworth.

"The first trip I did for Mr Cleworth was a load of bacon from Salford to Leith, Edinburgh. We did a lot of work for Harpers of Chorley, mostly oil cloth from Lancaster, and paper from Wiggin Teaps at Withnell - they were all London deliveries..

"There were no motorways then, of course. We took the route A6 to Walkden, then Eccles, over the Barton Bridge on to Sale, Altringham, Knutsford, through the Midlands on the A50 then the A34, and the A5 through Dunstable and St Albans to South Nims. It was about here that a lot of drivers changed over, and a day driver would deliver a load, and return to South Nims ready for the night driver to return up north.

"We used to get return loads from clearing houses in the Tower Bridge area. Fred Rose had an office on Tower Hill, and we got quite a few loads from his office."

"I did only 12 months for Mr Cleworth, then back on the dole."