Joseph Buckley
of Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancashire
The most celebrated of all Samuel's children was Joseph, whose entrepreneurial skills have left quite a legacy. Joseph would have suffered a difficult upbringing in common with all working class children, being employed from the early age of seven or eight as a carrier in the local brickyard, possibly working with his father.
Joseph found fame however in Daisy Nook:
The small hamlet of Waterhouses, standing on the banks of the River Medlock in Ashton had been "popularised" through the writings of the Failsworth poet Ben Brierley. Some 30 years before Joseph and his family moved to Daisy Nook, Brierley had written a short story called "A Day Out". The tale was set in a fictitious village that Brierley named "Daisy Nook". It concerned the visit of a gentleman from Manchester out for a walk on 8.9.1855 in celebration of the fall of Sebastopol during the Russian Crimean War. On approaching the area he was told by a village maiden ("and no bad specimen neither") "cannot you see the smoke amongst the trees there?... Daisy Nook is just beyond". A well-known local artist, Charles Potter, is credited with guessing that Brierley's "Daisy Nook" was the hamlet of Waterhouses.
Such was the success of the story in attracting visitors to the area, that Waterhouses took the name "Daisy Nook" and remains so to this day. It has long been traditional to hold an annual Easter fun fair, on the land opposite the Hen Cote. An article reproduced at Appendix 4, taken from the Ashton Reporter of 8.4.1966, describes Daisy Nook and that for the thousands who flocked there at Easter it was a place to "escape from the drab reality of the workaday cotton world". A further article of 26.4.1946, about the first fair held since the return to peace reported "Record Crowds at Daisy Nook" and said that a visit to the fair was "almost a traditional pilgrimage".
Joseph clearly saw the commercial possibilities of the area and he set about converting three cottages in Daisy Nook into refreshment rooms and a photography business. According to his son Walter Buckley, writing some years later in the Ashton Reporter (see Appendix 6), Joseph rented the cottages at 5s 6d a week converting them into one, naming them "Owd Abs Cottage" after Brierley's pen name "Ab-o'th'-Yate". The row of houses became known locally as Ben Brierley Terrace and such was the success of the business that Joseph became known as "Owd Ab".