MY DAD and ME
PHILIP PARKINSON
Corporal
Reconnaissance Corps
6
TH
NOVEMBER 1919 – 16
TH
MAY 2010
Daniel Parkinson lived in the toll house on the old A590 in the village of levens in the then
county of north Lancashire, he worked as a farm labourer and moved to Carnforth in 1880,
he had aquired a job on the new West Coast Railway, base in Carnforth.
He settled into a small terrace house with his children Sydney Samuel and Mary in
93 North Road Carnforth. As a train driver in the early days of steam, promotion came in
the form of how big your engine was and which line you worked, Daniel soon became a
driver on the main line; it was London in the south or Glasgow in the north. The money
was better than the family was used to. 1914 saw Sam called up to serve in France with the
cavalry, after a gas attack he returned to Carnforth and was confined to bed for months so
his lungs could recoup, He returned to the front just as the armistice had been signed.
Sam a veteran of the First World War a man of great courage returned to Carnforth in
1918, Philip Parkinson was born 6
th
November 1919 in Carnforth Lancashire His father Sam
and mother Nora had nine children Philip had six sisters Ann Barbara Margaret Nora
Florence and Joyce and two brother Sam and Michael. Phillip attended the Church of
England school and left school at 14. He started work at Coopers of Beetham, a paper
manufacturer based next to the river Levens beside the A6 trunk rd.
Dad told of how he would go to work eight miles away on a bicycle He would wait
at the cross roads on the A6 for one of the slow moving trucks, he would then hang onto
one of the rope down the side and be towed to work at 12 mph. His entertainment those
days was to go shooting and fishing with his elder brother Sam. The fishing was good with
Morecambe bay at the bottom of the street. His dad Sam was also into fishing; there were
lots of fishing rods in the house he fished for salmon with flies.
One of his favourite ways was without rods, he would go out into the bay and
treed flook ; a place like fish, as they were feeding on the bottom. As a boy I remember
going with granddad, the idea is you walk slowly and stand on the flook, the skill was to
get your finger and hook it though the gills and lift it out of the water without it wriggling
away, this and shooting of rabbits and ducks helped with the feeding of his large family.
Coppers was a very large paper works, dads job was loading train wagons and
cutting paper on a large steam guillotine. Trucks those days were new to transporting