gobbldegoop

I wonder if everyone who lived on Archer Road as a kid when Thorntons were there have a sweet tooth, I certainly do. I regularly got the fluidity check from the chocolate delivery tanker (bags it on the way home for lunch, then picked it up on the way back to school) which was about 2lb of chocolate in a slab. Combine that with lots of friends mums who worked there and got misshapes every week, it was a veritable sugar rush every day for us.

My dad worked there in the inspection department (Gordon Dent) - he is still just alive and kicking living in Scotland.

Correct Grinder. I lived opposite what was the shoe factory for 28 years, including working in it for 10 years when it was a TV workshop (I phoned 999 when it caught fire one lunchtime!). I have a series of pictures taken of the large Pickford Holland chimney being blown up with my little 110 Agfa motorised camera, which is where the Sainsburys store sits.

The S&E coop did have a very large bakery on its site on Archer road. It was the first building on the right as you went down the cobblestone drive. As well as the Bakery the site had the milk processing and bottling plant, grocery warehouse, butchery and transportation depot for all S&E vehicles including milk floats, hursts, removal wagons and general delivery vans, it also had its own 2 pump petrol station and full mechanical repair garage. Many other departments existed to support the coop on that site, but they were the main ones. A bit before my time, but it also had stables for the horse drawn coal deliveries once the coal was offloaded on their railway siding! Apart from the entrance just off the bend (near Ulverstone Road) there was little indication that the site was so big, apart from the single building which was originally a shoe factory (almost opposite the Laycock sports ground) which is now the only building standing from the whole complex. The site stretched from the back yards of the houses on Archer Road to the rail lines, and as far along Archer Road as the Shoe factory so it was probably as large in area as Laycocks.