The Commercial Hotel , now a pub in the town centre , but once a hotel where business men would stay .
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My mother used to be a weaver in one of the town’s cotton mills , but in the 1930s Depression many of the weavers , including my mum , were laid off .
She got a job as a maid at the Commercial Hotel . She was allowed home after tea but had to be back by 10 p.m. to sleep there , ready for an early rise in the morning .
Now my mum had Catholic parents , so she went to a Catholic school and was initiated into the sacraments , but my grandparents didn’t bother going to church , so neither did my mum .
Back to the hotel .
My mum shared her room there with another maid who was a young lady from Scotland .
Sunday was the only day they got a lie in , but this Scottish lass didn’t stay in bed . She got up to walk the 10 minute walk to the Sacred Heart church , the church where I would in time be baptised , for the 7 a.m. Sunday morning Mass .
This got my mum thinking . Eventually my mum decided to go along with her on Sunday mornings to Mass .
That is how my mum became a committed Catholic.
What I would be now without my mum’s committment to Catholicism I don’t know .
This was about 10 years before she married my dad who had always put the Lord first and was committed to Jesus and the Church from his baptism to his death .
I don’t know the name of that young Scottish lady . I have no photos of her . I know nothing of her other than her witness which led my mum to embrace the faith .
But she is a special lady , and i trust that her and my mum are re-united in God’s embrace .
I thank God for her .
( I can hardly read this for the tears running down my cheeks).