Monday, 22 December 2025

There was a crooked man



There Was a Crooked Man is a 1960 British comedy filmdirected by Stuart Burge and starring Norman Wisdom, Alfred Marks, Andrew Cruickshank, Reginald Beckwith and Susannah York.[2] It is based on the James Bridie play The Golden Legend of Schults. The film was one of two independent films (the other being The Girl on the Boat (1962)) in which Wisdom appeared in an effort to extend his range, as British audiences strongly identified him with his Gump character.[3][4]

The film's title is taken from the English nursery rhyme "There Was a Crooked Man".

Plot

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A naïve explosives expert is tricked into working for a criminal gang.

Cast

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Production

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Hugh Stewart, who produced several of Wisdom's films for the Rank Organisation, stated that the film was financed by United Artists based on the success of The Square Peg (1959).[5]

Reception

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Box office

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Kinematograph Weekly called There Was a Crooked Man a "money maker" at the British box office in 1960.[6]

Critical

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The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "Out of the rut in its satiric conception but uneven in quality, this is very much a one-man show, with Norman Wisdom at last achieving a personally sharp and distinctive comedy identity. Though the film relies mainly on parody, the best episodes are the frankly slapstick ones: Norman sharing a shower unobserved with a financier, Norman caught in the machinery of the wool factory, above all the climactic orgy of destruction, helped by Andrew Cruickshank's refreshing switch from straight "heavy" to farce. Otherwise there is too much that is sluggish and inconclusive, and the style does not always fit the mood."[7]

The Radio Times Guide to Films gave the film 4/5 stars, writing: "Even some of those generally left cold by clown Norman Wisdom admit that this is one of his best films. This comedy allowed him to show more versatility, although he holds fast to his "poor but honest" persona, inspired by Chaplin. Released from jail, Wisdom teams up with crooks to outwit the venal mayor of a northern town. Alfred Marks as the gang boss and Andrew Cruickshank as the mayor are excellent foils."[8]

Leslie Halliwell wrote: "Semi-happy attempt to humanize a knockabout clown; good supporting performances and production."[9]

Release and home media

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The film was commercially unavailable for many years. It was aired by ITV on Boxing Day 1965[citation needed]. Wisdom biographer Richard Dacre wrote[citation needed] that he, Wisdom and director Stuart Burge were present when the Barbican Centre Cinema in London presented the next known public screening at a "Wisdom Weekend" in 1998. In 2008, it was shown in Darwen, Lancashire, where location shots had been filmed in 1960.[10]

The film was released on DVD on 8 May 2017[11] and as a Blu-ray disc on 30 April 2018.[12]


Darwen is a market town and civil parish in the Blackburn with Darwen borough in Lancashire, England. The residents of the town are known as "Darreners". The A666 road passes through Darwen towards Blackburn to the north, Bolton to the south and Pendlebury where it joins the A6, about 18 miles (29 km) north-west of Manchester. The population of Darwen stood at 28,046 in the 2011 census. The town comprises four wards and has its own town council.

The town stands on the River Darwen, which flows from south to north and is seen in parks in the town centre and next to Sainsbury's located in the town centre.

Toponym

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Darwen's name is Celtic in origin. In Sub Roman Britain it was within the Brythonic kingdom of Rheged, a successor to the Brigantes tribal territory. The Brythonic language name for oak is derw and this is etymologically linked to Derewent (1208), an ancient spelling for the River Darwen.[2] Despite the area becoming part of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Northumbria by the mid-8th century, its Brythonic name was never supplanted by an Old English place name.[citation needed]

History

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St Peter's church, the main parish church of Darwen

The area around Darwen has been inhabited since the early Bronze Age, and the remains of a round barrow from approximately 2000 BCE have been partially restored at the Ashleigh Barrow[3] in Whitehall. The barrow had ten interments, nine of which were Collared Urn burials. As well as human remains, items found at the barrow included a bronze dagger some 7.5 inches in length, a flint thumb scraper, a sub-plano-convex knife and a clay bead.[4] Copies of the Collared Urns may be seen at the Darwen Library.

The Romans once had a force in Lancashire, and a Roman road is visible on the Ordnance Survey map of the area. Medieval Darwen was tiny and little or nothing survives. One of the earliest remaining buildings is a farmhouse at Bury Fold, dated 1675.[5] Whitehall Cottage is thought to be the oldest house in the town, and was mostly built in the 17th and 18th centuries but contains a chimney piece dated 1557.[6][7]

Like many towns in Lancashire, Darwen was a centre for textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution. Samuel Crompton, inventor of the spinning mule, lived there for part of his life.[8] Rail links and the Leeds and Liverpool Canal arrived in the mid-19th century. The most important textile building in Darwen is India Mill, built by Eccles Shorrock & Company. The company was ruined, however, by the effects of the Lancashire Cotton Famine of the 1860s.[9] Cotton manufacture was an important industry, and by 1907, the Darwen Weavers', Winders' and Warpers' Association had more than 8,000 members in the town.[10]

In the early 1840s Eccles Shorrock created a large mill lodge (industrial reservoir) in what is now the lower part of Bold Venture Park by constructing a dam where Inverness Road now runs across the valley cut by Bold Venture Brook. In 1848, during a night of heavy thunder storms and torrential rain, water rushed down from the moors and the dam failed catastrophically. The water level dropped by 40ft almost instantly, and a wall of water swept down into the town centre, doing considerable damage and drowning a number of poor people who slept in cellars under shops and houses in the Market Street area.[11]

Much of the town was built between about 1850 and 1900; placenames, date stones in terraces, and the vernacular architecture of cellars, local stone, locally made brick, pipework and tiles and leaded glass, the last now mostly gone, reflect this. It was one of the first places in the world to have steam trams.[12]

Mahatma Gandhi in Darwen, 26 September 1931 with Mirabehn(Madeleine Slade).

Andrew Carnegie financed a public library here; the town also had an art and technology college and a grammar school.[13]

In 1931, Darwen was visited by Mahatma Gandhi, he had accepted the invitation from Corder Catchpool, Quaker manager of the Spring Vale Garden Village Ltd, to see the effects of India's boycott of cotton goods.[14]

India Mill is now home to many companies, including Brookhouse (producers of aeroplane parts) and Capita Group, which runs TV licensing. Since the 1950s, the textile industry has strongly declined in the region, although many industrial buildings from the period survive, now used for other purposes. India Mill and its chimney have been sold in a £12 million deal.[15]

Among Darwen's other notable industries are Crown Paints, formerly Walpamur Paints,[16] the earliest British paint manufacturer, which named one of its paints 'Darwen Satin Finish'. Crown Wallpaper manufactured wallpaper, Lincrusta and Anaglypta in the town. ICI Acrylics (now called Lucite International) was where acrylic glass (Perspex for windows and signage, and Sani-ware or Lucite used for the manufacture of baths and shower trays) was invented; it is still manufactured in two separate plants within the town. Spitfire canopies and (later) coloured polythene washing-up bowls were first made here.[17] A Heritage Centre opened in 2016[18]

Governance

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The municipal borough of Darwen existed for ninety-six years, from 1878. The borough was merged with Blackburn in 1974 under the Local Government Act 1972. The town became part of the Lancashire non-metropolitan district of Blackburn, which was renamed Blackburn with Darwen in 1997, shortly before it became a unitary authority.

The population of the town declined from 40,000 in the 1911 census to 30,000 in the 1971 census.[19]

Locally, Darwen has been represented by Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat councillors in the main council wards for the town. In the 2008 local elections, the For Darwen Party picked up the majority of the wards in the town to put pressure on Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council for Darwen to have its own council again. In April 2009 Darwen Town Council was formed.[20]

There are five council wards within Darwen out of the 23 in the Borough of Blackburn with Darwen. These are:

Darwen had its own parliamentary constituency until 1983 when it became part of the present Rossendale and Darwen constituency. This seat is currently held by Member of Parliament Andy MacNae.

Coat of arms

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The coat of arms for Darwen should not be confused with the coat of arms used by the unitary authority of Blackburn with Darwen, which is the coat of arms for Blackburn.

Darwen coat of arms as depicted in a recovered stained glass window at Royal Blackburn Hospital
Coat of arms of Darwen as depicted on the main gates of Bold Venture Park

Darwen was granted its coat of arms on 7 August 1878.[22] At the foot of the coat of arms is the town motto in Latin Absque Labore Nihil, which translates as "Nothing without labour". The arms depicts three cotton bolls and the River Darwen which runs through the town. The cotton represents the cotton industry in which the town grew and prospered during the Industrial Revolution and the three bolls to represent the three main areas of Darwen – Over Darwen, Lower Darwen and Hoddlesden. At the helm of the coat of arms is a barred helmet representing nobility, and above it the torse in the town colours of blue and gold. At the crest a man stands shouldering a pickaxe, which refers to the town's motto and also represents the mining industry that was present to the east of the town at that time.[citation needed]

Education

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See also: List of schools in Blackburn with Darwen

After the passing of the Education Act 1870, many schools were established to serve the ever-growing population. Many were later demolished.

Darwen Aldridge Community Academy opened in September 2008 at the premises of the former Darwen Moorland High School on the outskirts of the town, which had closed in July 2008 to reopen as the academyafter the summer holidays. All pupils from Darwen Moorland transferred to the academy. Pupils have subsequently moved down to the new site, into a state-of-the-art £49m academy, with sixth form and modern facilities.[23]

Darwen Vale High School was temporarily moved to the old Moorland site whilst a new build was completed on the original site. The original school façade was incorporated into the new build, and Darwen Vale transferred back to the original site in 2012. However, the move had caused major issues with the management at the school, which led to the head leaving and a new head taking over in 2013. Later in 2013, Ofsted ruled that the school was failing and the government ordered the school's conversion to academy status, sponsored by the Aldridge Foundation, despite teaching staff and parents protesting governmental imposition on the school's management.[24][25][26]

In September 2013 Darwen Aldridge Enterprise Studio opened and in 2014 the school moved to its permanent home in the renovated former Model Lodging House on Police Street.[27]

In January 2022 Crosshill School completed a £2million move from Blackburn Central High School to the vacant Sunnyhurst Centre on Salisbury Road, with the move adding extra places at the school, Crosshill is part of the Champion Education Trust.[28]

Geography

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Location: Norwich, UK

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