HAPPY memories of his early pub upbringing came rushing back for Jack Ashby when he spotted our recent piece about the quaint, old-time Pudding Bag area of Sutton.

Jack, from Beech Gardens, Rainford, was born in the Golden Cross Hotel, Woodcock Street, the social hub of that now vanished little settlement, tucked away beneath a railway bridge and with just one road serving both as access and exit.

"My childhood memories are as your correspondent Edith Carter describes", writes Jack. "My grandmother, Ann Foster, was licensee of the pub at that time. I left the Pudding Bag in 1933, when I was five years old, to live in Garnet Street. But I still regularly visited my gran at the pub."

Two years later, in 1935, his grandmother died and the Golden Cross was taken over by Jack's aunt, Louie Foster, later to become Louie Holland by marriage.

Among the old Pudding Bag family names he can still recall from the 1930s are Roberts, Parfitt, Singleton and Worrell.

"I was very upset to find that the area had been demolished, especially the pub, and was left feeling that part of my early life had never existed."

Jack, however, is hoping to bring his formative years back into focus by putting out an appeal to customers of this column. He'd be interested in knowing if anyone has any old photos of the Pudding Bag area, and of the Golden Cross in particular. "I'm quite willing to pay for copies", adds Jack.

And he signs off with another place name yedscratter to ponder over. "I remember that a piece of wasteland at the junction of Monastery Road and Robins Lane was always referred to as Joe Doff's. Anyone know the origins of this name?"

IF you do, then please drop a line to Whalley's World.