Bill’s living proof that there has to be something special in the air up Crank way (From St Helens Star)

Bill’s living proof that there has to be something special in the air up Crank way

9:22am Thursday 9th August 2012 in Coffey Time By Chris Coffey

MY friend Bill Highcock is in his eighties and is still very active. It must be something in the air around Crank.

He has been the Chair of the St Helens Heritage Network for quite a few years now, and is a member of the Community Empowerment Network panel, like me.

He is a Rainford Parish Councillor, a member of SCARS (the Sankey Canal Restoration team) and an active member of the Merseyside Archaeological Society, and that is particularly valuable to our Heritage Network, having someone so knowledgeable about local archaeology.

I found this in my storage box of items for future issues: “Stanley Bank Archaeological Project. ‘Copper House Row’ by Bill Highcock. “The town map for the Blackbrook District of St Helens showed a terraced row of 17 workers cottages ‘Copper House Row’ with an inclined rail track along one side of the site.

“These cottages dated from the 1770s and Historical Society notes reveal that this part of the site had been cleared in the early 1900’s and returned back to farming. In May 2004, with the assistance of members of the Historical Society a dowsing survey was carried out.

This confirmed the site of the seventeen cottages, the site of a larger building slightly to the north of the cottages, also the course of the rail track. The measurements of the ground floor rooms of the cottages were found to be 14ft 10ins x 17ft 3ins and 14ft 10ins x 17ft 8ins.

The excavation got under way on July 6, 2006 with the cottages. Topsoil was then removed. This was then followed by trowelling down to the demolition horizon. The site was then enlarged to the size of one of the rooms.

“On completion it was found that everything had been robbed out, bricks, paving stones, the lot.”