Before the motor car became available to the ordinary working man, visits to the seaside were few and far between, so trips to the local countryside were the answer. Crime Lake, with its boating, and Daisy Nook with its dancing boards, became major attractions. Refreshment facilities, beautiful countryside, and at one time the opportunity to get there by boat along the canal, popularised. an area that fits snugly between Oldham, Ashton, and Manchester. I was brought up on stories of the flooded valley at Crime, with the romantic accounts of how a village had been swallowed up, and how church bells could be heard ringing under water at various times. That, of course, was sheer romance. The truth is much more mundane, though no less interesting.

In the list of dates I have collected is the bare note that on “August 31st 1796, Crime Valley filled. with water eighteen yards deep. Two houses immersed.” Such is the skeleton of a tale.

The occupants of the two cottages had ample warning that their homes would be covered, and they moved to new houses in good time.

James Wolstencroft, known as “James o’ Crofts,” occupied one of the threatened cottages, and his grandson, Thomas Wolstencroft, was once Minister at Chain Bar Methodist Chapel, Moston.

The late John Walker Nelson, who was the Hollinwood correspondent for Oldham Chron for many years, wrote about the pleasure boats which sailed (steamed) the canal from the Hollinwood wharf at Balmoral Street to Crime Lake.

He told. of a man who found a card which gave the timetables for the Steam Ship Pioneer, which steamed. from the basin at Hollinwood (Bradley Basin) to Bardsley Bridge.

There were five sailings on weekdays, starting at noon, with an extra one on Sunday mornings. (Six journi~ per week).

The notes, written in 1941, named the proprietor as Mr S Axon, who also leased boats on Crime Lake, and who operated rowing boats on Hollinwood reservoir one summer.

About the time of Queen Victoria’s jubilee, people could ride on the Pioneer from Hollinwood to the Crime for a few coppers. Many times boys on deck chaff ed passers—by, and often the passengers were subjected to a fusillade of stones and sods from the canal bank.

The Oldham Chron of September 7th, 1946, in answer to a correspondent, gave the information that the SS Pioneer had a regular sailing in the Jubilee year, 1887, but operated. for no more than two years. After the novelty of the steamer trips wore off, takings fell off, until they did not cover wages, so the sailings were abandoned.

The Chron of 23rd. September 1939 gave an even better account of the

Pioneer: Mr Daniel Ford kept a wooden—built shop almost on the bridge by the lake. His father—in—law, Joseph Mellor, who kept the Waterhouse lock on the canal, for 52 years, knew the Axons, who hailed from Stockport, and it was a chance remark by Mellor at Hollinwood reservoir which led Axon to set up boating on Crime Lake.

Four Axon brothers, Sam (eldest), Oliver, Tom, and David, started the scheme, and a Mr Ford gave up his job at Platt’s to work for the Axons. He helped to build the Pioneer, which he skippered later.

The pioneer seated sixty people, and the penny stages were Cutler Hill and Crime Lake. One could go all the way from Rollins Road Bridge to Bardsley Bridge for three old pence.

As the steamer neared Cutler Hill, an order of two beers for Mr Axon was given by a couple of hoots on the boat’s whistle, and sure enough, when they arrived at Crime Lake, there were two beers ready at the Crime View Hotel.

Sam Axon married and left the firm, and Oliver went into partnership with Arthur Pollard in a decorating business in Hollinwood. Tom and David. had quit much earlier. One of the brothers was the first manager of

Alexandra Park (Oldham) boating lake, and he held the job for many years. Later the Hollinwood Boating Company was formed, the prime movers being

Mr Axon’s father—in—law, a Mr Benson, who was postmaster at Hollinwood, and. a Mr Gartside, and they appointed Ben Wicks as manager at Crime Lake. Wicks and a man named MacFay were drowned.

Before the outbreak of WWII in 1939, there were twenty or more boats on Crime Lake. Within weeks there was only one decrepit flat—bottomed punt, a weighing machine, and a try—your—strength device still at the lakeside. Fortunately the creation of Daisy Nook country park is already bringing boats back to Crime Lake.

Crime itself was in Audenshaw, and part of the ancient parish of Ashton—under—Lyne. Crime was right at the extremity of Audenshaw, and would have had very little contact with the old village.