These three novels, written by local author Allan Smith and published by Ampersand Books, are now available online for the first time.
They tell the stories of the lives of the ordinary people of Haydock, still in the 19th and early 20th centuries a small and unremarkable mining village in South Lancashire.
Although the people of Haydock are witnesses to, and sometimes participate in, great historic events, their own stories have seldom been told. No great men or important people lived in Haydock: just everyday families getting on with their own unregarded lives.
For the first time, these novels give them a voice.
Fatal Spark
The first novel in the trilogy tells of the devastating impact on the village of a huge explosion in 1878 at Wood Pit, which claimed the lives of over two hundred miners. Barely a street in the village was unaffected. More about Fatal Spark »
A Swarm of Bees
The second novel gives a voice to five members of the author's family, ranging in time between 1611 and 1927. They tell of the way their lives are affected by the great sweep of historic events in which Lancashire was caught up, including the English Civil War, the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, and the General Strike of 1926. These are ordinary people with extraordinary stories to tell. More about A Swarm of Bees »
Mr. Mott's Madhouse
Mr. Mott's Madhouse, the third novel, tells the story of Haydock Lodge, which in the middle years of the 19th Century was used as a pauper lunatic asylum. The callous treatment of the inmates, and the cavalier approach of the extraordinary owner, Charles Mott, a self-made man whose fortune was based on the miseries of others, led to a major national scandal which nearly toppled a government. More about Mr. Mott's Madhouse »