The tale of the Angler's Rest

Here is one about the Angler’s Rest that I hope you will find interesting.

“Carr Mill station, on the St Helens to Wigan line, was shut down in 1917 as a first world war economy measure, along with many other small stations in the United Kingdom.

"It was among the few that never reopened after the 1914-18 hostilities ended.

"It stood just about where Woodlands Road passes under the railway line. At the time, Woodlands Road was known as Back Lane and on it were a school and a pub, the latter officially titled the Angler's Rest but better known by its odd nickname, The Blind Ass”.

It was back in 1974 when I bought Rick Wakeman’s classic live concert LP, ‘Journey to the Centre of the Earth’.

It was in January of this year that I went to the ‘Slapstick’ Festival in Bristol and saw him play live keyboard accompaniment to a Laurel and Hardy silent classic. Last month I bought the new re-recorded extended CD version of Journey to the Centre of the Earth.

So what has this to do with local history? Well, the book ‘Journey to the Centre of the Earth’ was written by Jules Verne.

I was recently glancing at a Journal produced by the Liverpool History Society in my pile of books not-yet-read, when my eye caught the word ‘Verne’.

It seems Jules and a friend visited Liverpool in 1859. After an omnibus ride up the dock road, they returned to get their bags and take the train to Edinburgh. Again the money to pay for the tickets confused them but they eventually left on the train which pulled them away from Liverpool through the Edge Hill tunnel and headed north via Wigan and Preston.

Now the line via Prescot, Shaw Street, and Garswood had not then been built, so his train would have passed through Rainhill, under New Street bridge (a couple of hundred yards from where a live), the Junction, Earlestown and Newton, on its way to Wigan and Preston and the north. Now, in the 1959 film, but not in the book, the hero of Journey, James Mason, is an Edinburgh Professor…