GENERATIONS of Sutton folk have pondered over the intriguing Pudding Bag nickname bestowed many decades ago on a small terraced backwater within their district. That settlement is long gone.

But 94-year-old Miss Edith Carter well remembers it as having been a thriving, close-knit community and she also solves the mystery of its strange title. So, too, does another clued-up Suttoner, Denis Brown.

First over to Edith who explains: "Puddings, like jam roly-poly and other treats, were once made in muslin bags; and the houses in Woodcock Street were built into a cul-de-sac with a single opening which served both as access and exit. Thus, the little area was enclosed, as if in a pudding bag with an opening at only one end".But 94-year-old Miss Edith Carter well remembers it as having been a thriving, close-knit community and she also solves the mystery of its strange title. So, too, does another clued-up Suttoner, Denis Brown.

First over to Edith who explains: "Puddings, like jam roly-poly and other treats, were once made in muslin bags; and the houses in Woodcock Street were built into a cul-de-sac with a single opening which served both as access and exit. Thus, the little area was enclosed, as if in a pudding bag with an opening at only one end".

Edith comes of old-time railway stock and can provide interesting local details from the great age of steam. Those Pudding Bag houses were built exclusively for railway men at a time when the Liverpool to Manchester line operated close by.

The railway's engine sheds were located at the top of Penlake Lane in 1859, adds Edith, and they had a section of track connected from there to the main line by the unique intersection bridge.

Later, replacement engine sheds were built down Sutton Road, near Peasley Cross, and St Helens Junction's sheeting and oil stores took over the old engine premises. As an increasing number of men and women were recruited, the railway company of that time built a bridge over the track, from Woodcock Street and into Penlake Lane, providing easy access for their workers, drawn from near and far.

Demolished

"And so, the old Pudding Bag, as such, was then no more", adds Edith from Mill Lane, Sutton. During the 1960s, the sheeting sheds closed down, and the bridge, together with Woodcock Street houses, were demolished. Ironically, this meant that the location reverted to a 'pudding bag' formation once more!

Now, it's the site for small firms. And Edith adds another snippet of local history: "I think Mr Woodcock, who gave his name to one of the terraces there, was an engineer for the railway".

Denis Brown, from Gerards Lane, adds a couple of other historical points, explaining that the Pudding Bag settlement had a Railway Terrace and a pub called the Golden Cross, as well as Woodcock Street. The location was once totally hemmed in by railway tracks, the sole fully operational survivor being the main Liverpool-Manchester line.

Denis is intrigued by unusual local place names and would like to know the origins, among other places of the 'Strappers' - formerly farm fields, accessed via Hawthorne Road and Abbotsfield Road, but now having given way, in common with the Pudding Bag, to factories and various industrial units.

He also picks up on an earlier bygone theme in which reader Gill Edwards wrote in about her girlhood experience of pea-picking at a farm in the Moss Bank area whose name had now eluded her. "It was Bibby's farm", says Denis, "and the pond she mentioned, where a young lad fell through the ice, was on Cabbage Hall farm, belonging to the Forsters who also had Shoots Delph farm at the top of Moss Bank brow".

MANY thanks, Edith and Denis for those welcome contributions. Now, can anyone solve that Strappers place name puzzle?