Chris Aspin

Christopher Aspin (born 1933) is an English author, historian, and a retired journalist. Among his published works are a biography of James Hargreaves, inventor of the spinning jenny, and ''The First Industrial Society: Social History of Lancashire, 1750–1850'', a study of the social aspects of the industrial revolution. Aspin has had a lifelong interest in local history and the history of the Lancashire textile industry in particular.

Life and career

Aspin has spent his life in Helmshore, a small mill-town immediately south of Haslingden, Rossendale. In his 2003 memoir ''Just A Few Words: A Helmshore Boyhood'' he describes a friendly, polite, thrifty and hard-working community "...one half of the village being church and Tory, the other half chapel and Liberal". He writes warmly of his childhood memories, and how his family, friends and relatives were closely integrated into the discipline of the textile mills that provided most of the population with employment.

Aspin attended Helmshore Council School and, after a period during the war when he was often seriously ill, he passed a scholarship examination and started at Haslingden Grammar School in 1944. At school his passion for cricket developed, and Haslingden Cricket Club's ground was just a short walk away. Here he was able to see the international professionals who played for the club as part of the Lancashire Cricket League, which gradually became an important part of his life. He has written on league cricket for Wisden for the past 40 years, and has acted as the Secretary of Haslingden Cricket Club for more than 40 years; he has a suite named after him at the club.

After school Aspin undertook National Service in the RAF and, on completing this, he formed Helmshore Local History Society with his friend Derek Pilkington. In 1949 Aspin started work as a journalist, including the ''Lancashire Telegraph''. Most of his working life was spent at the ''Manchester Evening News'' where he wrote on business, finance and music. He also acted as local correspondent for ''The Times'', ''The Guardian'', and ''The Daily Telegraph''. He retired from journalism in 1993, but has continued to research and write books. During the 1960s, with Derek Pilkington and others, he helped with the transition of Higher Mill, Helmshore, into its role as Higher Mill Textile Museum.

Writings

Throughout his writing Aspin has returned over and over to the ways in which Haslingden and Helmshore have changed and developed over the last century. Both places grew enormously during the Industrial Revolution, and were famous for the production of woollen and cotton goods. Many of his books record the rise and fall of the mills, which once dominated the skyline; the move away from railways to motorways; and the overall changes of the last half century, in which time Haslingden and Helmshore have become large residential areas for people commuting to Manchester and other nearby towns. His ''The Water-Spinners, A New Look at the Early Cotton Trade'', records his search for the sites of mills that used Sir Richard Arkwright's machines. ''The Golden Valley'' describes Rossendale's most important years. Aspin has also been concerned with the civic and spiritual life of the community, as well as with sports (especially cricket) and other pastimes. His second book was a history of Haslingden Cricket Club in the Victorian Era, which was reviewed by John Arlott in Wisden. Aspin also wrote the popular Shire Publications guides to both the woollen and the cotton industries.

Aspin's research in the 1970s on poverty in working-class Salford, Manchester and elsewhere in Lancashire led to the journalist Stanley Graham's writings on cholera and sanitation in the slums. Aspin has contributed articles on cotton pioneers James Hargreaves, James Thomson and John Bullough, to the ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography''.

At the age of 70 Aspin wrote, ''Just a Few Words: A Helmshore Boyhood'', remembering 50 years of thoughts and feelings of living in Helmshore throughout the 30s and 40s. He has also authored, sometimes in partnership with another local historian, John Simpson, several books of historic photographs of the district. Since retiring Aspin has written over a thousand light verses, published by Royd Publications and Carnegie Scotforth.

As well as his writings on local and textile history and heritage, Aspin has written a number of short books for children and young people. During his later years he has also has written booklets of ghosts and hauntings (typically taking place within Rossendale), and is a member of the Society for Psychical Research.

Bibliography

*''Haslingden 1800 – 1900'', 1962, Helmshore Local History Society (HLHS)
*''james Hargreaves & the Spinning Jenny'', 1964, Helmshore Local History Society
*''The Turners of Helmshore and Higher Mill'', 1970, higher Mill Museum Trust
*''Gone Cricket Mad: The Haslingden Club in the Victorian Era'', 1976, HLHS
*''Mr. Pilling's Short Cut to China and Other Stories of Rossendale Enterprise'', 1983, HLHS
*''Surprising Rossendale'', 1986, HLHS
*''Dizzy Heights: Story of Lancashire's First Flying Men'', 1988, HLHS
*''Surprising Lancashire'' 1988, Royd
*''Memories of Village Life'', 1992 with John Simpson, HLHS
*''Haslingden and District in Old Picture Postcards'', 1992, Europese Bibliotheek
*''The First Industrial Society: Social History of Lancashire 1750–1850'', 1998, Carnegie
*''Helmshore'', 2000, with Derek Pilkington and John Simpson HLHS
*''The Spirit of Haslingden'', 2002 with John Simpson, Landmark
*''Just a Few Words: A Helmshore Boyhood'', 2003
*''The Cotton Industry'', 2003, Shire Library, Bloomsbury
*''Smile Please'', 2004, Tor Press
*''The Spirit of Haslingden and Helmshore: The 20th Century in Photographs'', 2004, Landmark
*''How Now Brown Cow'', 2005
*''The Woollen Industry'', 2006, Shire Library, Bloomsbury
*''The War of the Roses'', 2006, TOR Press
*''Fabrics, Filth and Fairy Tents'' Angus Bethune Reach, Ed. Chris Aspin 2007, Royd
*''What Happened to the Iceberg'', 2007, Tor
*''The Jingle Book: Nonsense Verse and a Diabolical Story'', 2007, Royd
*''A Cotton-Fibre Halo: Manchester and the Textile Districts in 1849'', Angus Bethune Reach, Ed. Chris Aspin 2007, Royd
*''A Load of New Rubbish'', 2008, Royd
*''The Fastest Man: Steeple Jack's Adventures in Lancashire'', 2009, HLHS
*''Albert, the Lion and the Monkey'', 2009, Royd
*''The Owl and the Pussy-cat: New Light on an Old Legend'', 2010, Royd
*''Haslingden and Helmshore Through Time'', 2010, with John Simpson, Amberley
*''The Unfortunate Philanthropists'', 2010, HLHS
*''The Pied Pipe Man of Haslingden'', 2011, Royd
*''The Decoy: How the Portuguese Learned to Spin Like Arkwright'', 2012, HLHS
*''The Stair Lift Olympics: A Farrago of Nonsense'', 2012, Royd
*''The Tuneful Foghorns: Light Verse for Lighthouse Keepers'', 2012, Royd
*''The Water-spinners: A New Look at the Early Cotton Trade'', 2013, HLHS
*''Treasure Island – the Sequel: and Other Ludicrous Lines'', 2013, Royd
*''Strange Stories from a Lancashire Village'', 2014, HLHS
*''More Flights of Fancy'', 2014, Royd
*''Out of This World – Cricket as You've Never Known it'', 2015, Royd
*''A Nosegay of Nonsense'', 2015, Royd
*''True Stories of Our Local Ghosts'', 2015, HLHS
*''Strange, but True: More Stories of Curious Encounters'', 2016
*''What the Butler Saw'', 2016
*''Brush up Your Shakespeare'', 2017 Carnegie Scotforth
*''More Strange Encounters'', 2018
*''Nessie in Wonderland'', 2018
*''The Golden Valley: When Rossendale Led the World'', 2018, Carnegie Pub.
*''Just a Few Extras: A Few No-balls and Wides'', 2018, Carnegie Scotforth
*''A Day at the Races'', 2018 Carnegie Scotforth
*''Who Burnt The Cakes'', 2019 Tor Press
*''The Road to Ruin'', 2020 Tor Press
*''Lockdown Lyrics'', 2020 Tor Press
*''Virus Verses'', 2020 Tor Press
*''Strange Things Happen'', 2021 Helmshore Local History Society
*''A Lighter Look at Life'', 2021 Tor Press

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Aspin, Chris
1933 births
21st-century English writers
21st-century English historians
English journalists
Living people