Nostalgia from Wednesday, July 2nd, 2025

If only there had been a football cup for dogged determination, West Park United’s keen young players would have won it by a clear mile. 

A well known local businessman who started his engineering business in a row of converted cottages in Hyde with just £50 in the bank had landed a £40,000 contract with Shell Mex BP Ltd to design a safer hatch for petrol tankers.

Towering above the prize winners at Glossop and District Amateur Football League’s annual dinner in June 1950 is the man they called ‘Big Swifty’.

It was a full house at Dane Bank Primary School, Denton, for the first of two festival evenings involving every child in every class.