KNOTTINGLEY IN 1967

That green bottle found at the bottom of Pontefract Park Lake, featured in these columns a fortnight ago, has certainly drawn the cork on reader’s memories.

The bottle, it may be recalled, bore the name "Brown and Knight." From Friarwood Lane, Pontefract, M. Crossland tells me: "Mr. Brown was my great uncle."

The family, the letter continues, lived in the Square at Ferrybridge and the works were down the yard behind the house, which is now a butcher’s shop. After Mr. Brown died, Mrs Brown retired during the First World War and went to live in Bridlington, so, as M. Crossland observes, the bottle must be nearly 50 years old.

Miss Joan Fletcher, of Chelsea House, Aire Street, Knottingley, tells me she has a bottle of the same type but made when the firm went under the name of W’m Brown. Hers was found under the floorboards at her home - deposited by some bygone thirsty workman, perhaps?

The item started a whole chain of recollections for Mr. and Mrs Willie Thompson, now living at Abbey Road, Blackpool, and still getting their ‘Express’ every week.

Mr. Thompson writes that his wife was born at the Lock House just behind Brown and Knight’s works - he himself started work at Poulson Bros. Ltd., "one of the three potteries," in 1912. He recalls that one of Mr. Brown’s two sons married Miss Daisy Sefton of Sefton and Brown, now T. Brown and Sons. Ferrybridge Foundry in those days belonged "to a Mr. Ashley and from that firm workers left and started Shaw Bros., Tranmer and Jagger, Lightowler and Sons, and I think. probably Hunters. Mr. Thompson ends "your mention of Brown and Knight has given us an interesting half-hour of remembrances."

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