The cramped and unhealthy courts where people shared space with pigs
TO accommodate the growing number of families needing homes in Ormskirk during the second half of the 19th century, property owners letting out the small cottages in the yards behind the main streets started to build more and more small dwellings in these cramped narrow spaces.
Every street in the town had court dwellings, the courts being given alternate even numbers on the even numbered side of a street and alternate odd numbers on the odd numbered side.
Within the courts the houses were numbered consecutively though, instead of alternate.
The old yards lost their names and each was given a number and a street sign at the entrance to each court.
Court 8, Aughton Street, was originally known as Blundell’s Yard.
To the south of the entrance there was the old Oddfellows Arms, a common beerhouse. On the north side, in the next court up, was the old Presbyterian Chapel, or Fogg’s Chapel.
The entrance to Court 8 was between number 52 and 54 Aughton Street.
There were five small houses built in the court between 1861 and 1871.
Unlike many other s in the town, Court 8 was not overbuilt.
Court 24, running along the side of The Greyhound Inn was by far the largest court in Aughton Street.
Originally known as Aughton View, it grew quickly as the gas works became a large employer, then when Coronation Park was built in the early 1900s, it was renamed Park Avenue.
The lower part of Aughton Street on both sides had court areas which by the 1880s predominantly housed Irish families.
Second generation Irish settlers had married and were raising their Ormskirk-born children in often cramped, unhealthy and poorly constructed court dwellings.
Number 5 Court on Moor Street, known as Prescott’s Yard, was very tightly packed with small three and four room dwellings in which families would share their home with one or more boarders to make ends meet.
The shared outside toilets created an unhealthy environment and the practice of keeping pigs and chickens in these courts made them even more unsanitary.
John and Ann Connor started their married life in the late 1870s in Court 5, renting out their spare room to boarders and John, a farm labourer, supplemented his income as a lodging house keeper.
The crowded court will have been noisy and dark as well as smoky from dozens of chimneys, which will have meant there was little fresh air to be had.
John moved his family to a five room house in Court 8, Aughton Street by the early 1890s.
He and Anne already lost several infants by the time they moved and they remained in Court 8 for another 20 years or more. Only three of their 11 children survived childhood.
Compared with Court 5, the relatively open spaces behind Court 8 and the fact that there were less houses all crammed in will have contributed to slightly better health.
James and Mary Ann Pinnington had lived in Court 8 for several years, in 1911 they and their three daughters aged 13, 10 and five and their two sons aged 27 and 20 shared their four room house with Mary Ann’s sister.
James and Mary Ann had also lost infant children before moving to Court 8.
Justin and Mary Lynch brought up their six surviving children in a three room house in Court 8.
After his wife died in the early 1900s, Justin was left with the six children but will have relied on the older daughters to look after their younger siblings.
By 1911, five of his grown-up children were in employment but the had wages would have been perhaps seasonal and erratic and with seven people to feed and clothe, it would have been a struggle to move to a larger home.
Cooking a meal for that number of people in what would have been a living room with kitchen must have been a well planned daily routine.
Washing of clothes would have been a huge task and day to day living in such a small area with neighbours so close must have been lacking in privacy.
Attempts by the council in the 1890s to reduce the overcrowding and poor standard of court housing did not make enough difference to improve the health of the children growing up in these areas.
It was after WWI and into the 1920s before the plan was decided upon to build new estates outside the town centre to rehouse the dozens of families.
The Tower Hill estate was first in the late 1920s followed by the plan to build a large community on the East Side of the newly constructed County Road after WWII.
Scott Estate – named after the leader of the council and local butcher, Scott of Church Street – was to include 30 acres of housing, 5.9 acres for a school, 5.6 for playing fields, and 3.2 for a public park.
In total the housing would accommodate up to 1,000 people.
Decades of greed by property owners and neglect for the health and well being of those who were unable to get out of the appalling conditions in the 19th century courts in the town was finally ended.
The old courts were demolished, only Park Avenue housing remained which was always better situated and of a higher standard, perhaps that can be attributed to the Gas Company. Court 7 Chapel Street has also survived.
All traces have gone from the town centre apart from the Court 5 sign which is still in its original site in Church Street.
Thanks to local resident John Shaw, the original sign from Court 8 Aughton Street is to be returned to its original location.
John’s father, who worked for the gas company, rescued the sign during the demolition of the gas works in the early 1960s.
Thanks to Morrison’s supermarket, which has paid for the restoration of the sign, Ormskirk & District Family History Society have organised the return of the sign.
On Sunday, April 29 at noon, the Mayor and Mayoress of Ormskirk, Cllr Neil Furey and Julie Furey, will unveil the sign.
Anyone who would like to come along to join the society members at the unveiling is welcome.