Westhoughton Pretoria Pit Collaboration

The schools in Westhoughton, plus St Andrew’s in Over Hulton, are taking part in a Heritage Lottery funded project - The Westhoughton Pretoria Pit Collaboration. Westhoughton Town Council were happy to recommend this project to Heritage Lottery and were delighted to hear that they’d secured the funding.

Each school has these separate sessions - heritage workshop with historian Alan Davies, research workshop, ceramics workshop making miners boots in miniature, artefacts handling from 1910 era, folk song writing with local musician Corrie Shelley.

The Mayor of Westhoughton, Cllr Gillian Wroe, has attended one of the sessions:

‘On Wednesday 21st January I went along to Eatock Primary School to join Year 5’s folk song session with the very talented Corrie Shelley.

Corrie sang part of one of her songs to the class to inspire them to think about how their song might sound. She accompanied herself on her ukulele and encouraged the children to join in the chorus. She was impressed with how quickly the children picked it up.

Corrie asked the class to choose a person as a focus for their song and they chose ‘A Child left Behind’. The whole class then thought of words to describe how the child would feel before working in groups on various lines. As a former teacher I was absolutely amazed at the quality of the work produced. I can’t wait to hear the final song.

Thank you to the Head Mrs Hickman, class teacher Mr Kirkpatrick and the wonderful pupils of Eatock for your warm welcome. Also Corrie for your fantastic input and Neil West, Assistant Manager, Bolton Playing for Success, Dept. of Children’s Services who is overseeing the project.’