Pub Sign Study The Edwin Waugh Heywood Manchester

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Edwin Waugh (1817-1890) was one of Manchester’s best loved poets and story tellers, capturing the life and soul of the cotton mill industry in dialect verse and short stories. He was born in Rochdale, serving much of his life as a journeyman printer, but always keen to return to Rochdale and nearby Heywood. His poetry was often political, but just as likely to be funy or sad. He was known as the Lancashire Burns, after the Scottish poet Robert Burns. He was a good friend to other Manchester raical poets Ben Brierley and Sam Bamford. I was thrilled to get one of my own poems in a collection of Lancashire verse which mixed new writings with those of Waugh, Brierley, etc. The Wetherspoon’s pub named in his honour contain many fine examples of his writings in display cases and on the walls and the sign is a fine portrait of the great man, looking out on the town that never failed to inspire him. Arthur Chappell