Heritage weekend

The 1970’s AEC YellowaY coach

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The borough’s Heritage Open Day Weekend started to come together yesterday with the arrival of the YellowaY coach museum on The Butts and also a preview of the still incomplete Rochdale Pioneers Museum on Toad Lane.

The Heritage Open Days will see the opening of 25 buildings across the town ranging from the Fire Service Museum on Maclure Road to a rare glimpse upstairs at the Regal Moon pub where it is still possible to see evidence of its former life as the Regal and later ABC cinema (Booking essential).

It is disappointing; in this United Nations Year of Co-operation that the Pioneers Museum on Toad Lane is still far from completion despite an amazing £2.3M revamp and the only accessible parts are the two ground-floor rooms which contain nothing apart from a few mundane picture-boards outlining some historical facts about the early Pioneers. The rest of the museum is a hard-hat area with no public access.

However, the two full-time guides are extremely enthusiastic and massively informative about the early history of the movement, including its then determination not to become involved in politics. A far cry from the present day when it gave birth to its own political party and the modern Labour Party has sought to claim the whole Co-op movement as its own.

The 1970’s AEC YellowaY coach houses a small but suberb collection of memorabilia from the company’s long and proud history. It is normally housed in Bury’s Transport Museum but will stay close to its Rochdale roots.

The company survived from its birth in 1932 until 1988. It has now been assimilated into Courtesy Coaches of Chadderton who now trade under the YellowaY name.

The quirky museum on wheels drew several inquisitive visitors yesterday. One of them, Dave Garrick who now lives in Todmorden worked as a driver from 1972 to 1986 and remembered the days when the coach depot on Weir Street was packed during the first Saturday of the Wakes Week as holiday-makers headed off to Southport, Blackpool and the North Wales coast.

“There was such an air of excitement about the place,“ recalled Dave, “And everyone was spruced up in their best new holiday clothes. All the Dads seemed to smell of Brylcreem and the mums of Eau de Cologne.”

The Open Day Heritage weekend continues until Sunday 9 September.

http://www.rochdaleonline.co.uk/news-features/2/news-headlines/72935/first-glimpse-of-rochdale-pioneers-museum-following-multi-million-pound-revamp  

http://www.rochdaleonline.co.uk/news-features/2/news-headlines/72663/britains-only-mobile-museum-rolling-into-rochdale-next-month