Coney Weston village sign (detail)

Image: © Adrian S Pye Taken: 15 Apr 2007

In the sky above St Mary’s church are aircraft from the 388th Bomb Group at USAAF Nettishall and would have been a common sight in the 1940s. The young lad playing the tin penny whistle is Robert Clarke, a farm labourer who, made his own original tin penny whistle in 1843. Robert with his son and a barrow of their belongings walked to Manchester, where he'd heard there were opportunities, making and selling whistles as he went to pay his way. When Robert reached Manchester he set up his factory in a shed and soon became a successful manufacturer. He called his tin whistles ‘Megs’, a Victorian nickname for a halfpenny, as this is how much he charged for them. He eventually made so much money that he was able to build two houses, a factory and a church in the nearby village of New Moston. He went back to Coney Weston and bought up the farm that he had previously lived in, using gold sovereigns which he carried in a Gladstone bag. https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/4291587

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