True Stories: Trapped in the Barn (Part One)

If you want to learn about True Stories, it’s tag and what it represents, then please see my previous post.

What you are about to read is a True Story. Some names have been changed to protect me from these individuals or their family members.

...July 1979...

Less than a year ago this had been my home. The village of Newchurch-in-Rossendale is where I had lived since I was two. It was all I knew and my few friends lived here.

During November the previous year, my parents had moved away taking me with them, far enough to make it a long cycle journey back to see my old friends. It sucked but I tried to return as often as permitted.

As close to the Dungpile Farm as I want to get. It was just off of this road. Doesn't it look delightful?

The Dungpile's ran the village farm. Jack Dungpile was an ageing fat red-faced man with bulbous eyes that looked like they were going to come out of their sockets, but it is his son Mark who is the focus of this story.

Mark Dungpile was a mini-me of his father. Big and stocky, he was a renowned fast runner despite his wobbling belly that flopped up and down like a quivering jelly. He was also a year older than me and a bully.

For most of my tortured young life, I had avoided the bigger Dungpile kid, not going near the farm as he was liable to at best taunt or jeer, and at worst use his renown sprinting skills to catch me for his own nefarious reasons.

That particular day, he was with some other kids who I had grown up with. They were hardly what I would call friends, more ’the kids who you hang out with when there’s nobody else around’.

Yet I found myself close to that farm that I had avoided for most of my younger life. Some things simply cannot be explained.

How or why I was enticed into the farm grounds, past the house, and into a barn, I cannot tell you. Perhaps Mark had noticed I was gone and was making some effort to be friendly.

Me being rather naive welcomed the change of attitude and went with the flow. We were both a little older and I figured he had grown up a little.

No sooner than I was in the barn, the door was locked behind me and I heard the chilling words, ‘We have you now’, followed by an evil laugh.

…'So nothing had changed at all, and I had fallen into the trap. What a bloody dumbass'...

I looked at the other kids for support and couldn’t understand why they were there. Later it dawned on me that some of them had slight or even valid vendettas against me.

They all lived on ‘Staghills’, a rather rough council estate that I had been forced to use as my playground due to me living right next to it.

Wayne Benlin and his older brother Simon Dawson came from one of the roughest families. They had around 8 kids and both had different fathers, hence the different surnames.

They were a couple of years younger than me and slighter in stature.

Simon’s Vendetta

Years before I was climbing up a huge tree with Simon who slipped, fell 30 feet and was knocked unconscious. I hurried down the tree to find him lying there unmoving.

In shock, I left him there and ran to his parents' house which was a good 15-minute trip, informed his mother who freaked out and followed me back to the tree.

Top Barn Lane, February 2011. Little has changed around these parts.

In less than 5 minutes a sobbing tear streaked Simon came stumbling up Top Barn Lane wailing, ‘I’ve split my head open, and he pushed me out of the tree’, pointing at me.

Credit to his mother, she just took him home, didn’t give me a second look or even a casual thanks. Was this kid a serial pathological liar?

...FACT: When you’re a kid you can’t fall out of trees, you are invincible, if you do someone pushed you…

That was to be my last interaction with Simon and he was now firmly off my, ‘auxiliary friend list’.

I knew of Wayne who was another year younger than Simon, but that was about it. He was too small for me to hang around with. One couldn’t be seen cavorting with the little kids.

The bigger lad in the barn was David Egghart and was one year younger than me but had filled out somewhat since I had last seen him.

He now resembled a human bulldog complete with pug nose but lacked the drooling gait.

Scowling at me, I could see he was on some kind of grudge mission. I had mostly forgotten about our past encounter several years prior.

David's Vendetta

As kids, we had bonfire's and created makeshift ‘gangs' to collect wood usually in October, the month before the big event on November 5th.

These were the days before all the organised events of today where fewer people are burnt and disfigured by fireworks.

Then there were no barriers and the enormous fires were held in fields usually without the permission of the owners, and every year there were countless accidents.

If you survived it all unscathed like me you will remember the lack of order and formality with fondness.

A modern day Brow Edge. The roughest part of Staghills estate. It doesn't look much better now than then.

The gangs of mostly teenage and pre-teenage lads would ‘raid’ each other’s piles of wood in an attempt to make their bonfires bigger and better than their peers.

It was never knives or guns (which did not exist then), just some light fisticuffs at its most extreme.

One such incident that happened several years before was our raid on the ‘Brow Edge' bonfire. Brow Edge was a particularly rough part of Staghills and was looked down upon on the local inhabitants.

Walking east on Newchurch Road, we planned to head down Priory Close, sneak on to Brow Edge and steal all their wood, adding it all to our pile.

Newchurch Road, February 2011. It's like the land that time forgot.

We never got past Newchurch Road as their gang was already heading toward us.

One look at our superior numbers had them legging back to their base but I managed to grab David and kick him around a little before he sloped off crying.

It wasn’t a cool thing to do, and I regret all these things now as an adult, but that’s what happens in a deprived shit-hole with little else to do when you have no guidance.

'These lads want to have a word with you', said Dungpile in a nasty tone.

I backed into a corner literally shaking with fear and watched the bully advance flanked by his mixed army of accomplices.

This one, I wasn’t going to be able to get out of easily.

To be continued...

All images are my own.