Pilkington Memorial Houses, Manchester Road Clifton

A BETTER OUTLOOK FOR CLIFTON’S LION. THE PILKINGTON MEMORIAL HOUSES. - For some time the inhabitants of Clifton have been distressed by the uncongenial surroundings of their war memorial. This is a fine monument with couchant lion facing the Lancashire moors, but he gazes with eyes averted from Clifton, and till lately with reason, for the adjoining land was unkempt and forlorn, a waste of cinders and slag heaps about abandoned pit shafts. This reproach to Clifton has now been removed. A few months ago the offending shafts were filed up and the council decided it was an opportune time to make a more effective surrounding for the monument. Then also the neighbouring memorial houses were planned. They have been built and endowed by Mr Lawrence Pilkington in memory of his brother Edward who lived and worked at Clifton for 44 years and found there the main interests of his life in an intimate knowledge of the neighbourhood and a close bond of sympathy with the people living there. The houses are to be let at a nominal rental to the old folk of the neighbourhood who have been resident there for many years and are in needy circumstances, or who have rendered long and faithful service to the Clifton and Kearsley Coal Company Limited. ......

The four houses of bungalow type, have been designed and carried out by Professor J Hubert Worthington, a well-known Manchester architect, who was also called in by the council to advise on the layout of the memorial surround, and so a concerted scheme for the site has been possible. They stand back from the main road, low buildings built round three sides of a garden square, with grass plots and flagged path which leads through a central archway to the back. Over the arch the coat of arms of the Pilkington family has been carved. The houses consist of kitchen with larder, bedroom, and at the back a convenient scullery, in which a bath is fixed, as well as a gas boiler and cooker. All the rooms are lit with the electric lights, and each house has its strip of garden. A framed photograph of the late Mr Edward Pilkington is hung over the mantlepiece of each of the four living rooms. [Manchester Guardian 3 December 1925 page 13]

Reference           Manchester Guardian 3 December 1925 page 13