Rare invitation to Colne celeb’s party

This week’s column brings a rare slice of Foulridge history with an almost 60-year-old surviving invitation to one of local celebrity George Whittaker’s famous Foulridge festivities.

George was, for many years, managing director of the mighty Glen Mills cotton manufacturers and during the 1940s and ’50s would, with his family, throw wonderful parties at his palatial Foulridge home, “Kirk Rise” in Skipton Road.

Back in the early 1960s I was employed as a ledger-clerk at L. Threlfall and Son, the wine and spirit merchants in Market Street, Colne, and my late boss, the sartorial Harry Holmes Smith arrived in the office one day at mid-morning looking not his usual immaculate self, saying as he flashed by: “Please don’t disturb me, I’m recovering from George’s beanfeast!”