Hatton
Growing up in Hatton in the 1970’s was a world away from now. A sporadic bus service connected the village to the nearest town but some of the residents had never ventured outside the village. The village pub where I grew up was the central focus where everyone gossiped, drank and smoked if not daily on a regular basis. Some of these people were like my family I saw them so often in and out five or six times a day. My mum and dad were tenants but still paid rent to Greenhall Whitley, lord Greenhall lived in the next village and rode with the hunt.
Everyone knew everyone and all their business, if you told Gwen some “news” in the village shop at 11 it would be round the whole village by 5. Sadly I don’t have any photographs of Gwen’s shop as it has now closed and has been converted into a house.
Many people have visited the pub over the years, including a lot of famous faces.
Gerry and the Pacemakers, characters from Brookside, Alan Bleasedale and his wife who acted as Gail in Coronation Street, Ken Dodd, and some others I need to update you on.
The photographs below show the pub when Ken Dodd visited with Miss world in the 1970’s, my brother David is in the background on the left. In another he is beind the bar with my mum having a joke with the “regulars”.
In the 1970’s the village committee started a Rose Queen, where the whole village would get together and celebrate being a village. Below is the fancy dress competition I was a royal bugler as it was the year of the Queen’s silver jubilee. Other events included the greasy pole, three legged race, dog show and afternoon tea in the tent followed by a dance in the evening where we would crawl under the tarpaulin and spy on the adults getting up to all sorts of high jinx before the age of social media.
