Browse Sections

• Rochdale 150
• Useful information
• Nostalgia 
• Looking back
• Rochdale canal
• Web links
• Family notices
• Property price guide
• Traffic cameras
• Travel news
• Speed cameras
• Rochdale expats
• Obituaries

Mr Whippy helped keep winter at bay

Dave Appleton
12/ 1/2008

EVEN on the darkest of winter nights it is not unusual to hear the approach of an ice cream van, its loudspeaker brassily announcing its arrival.

Nearly 40 years ago the vans were also out on the streets, but for a very different reason.

It was December 1970 – the year Rochdale, like most of the country, shivered its way through a series of power cuts.

And at least one community-minded individual was doing his best to make sure emergency power supplies to hospitals were not affected and his name was ... Mr Whippy.

For the ice cream character came to the aid of Rochdale hospitals when generators, normally used for keeping ice cream cold, were switched to supply essential electricity.

Both Wolstenholme Hospital and Rochdale Children’s Hospital suffered power cuts after receiving advance warning from the supplier, Norweb.

Hospital group officials met the situation by sending an SOS to Norris Refrigerated Products of Manchester, owners of Mr Whippy.

And within an hour a Mr Whippy van, laid up for the winter, had been made roadworthy, had reached Wolstenholme and was being wired-up by a hospital electrician to the plant which supplied the Norden hospital with central heating and hot water.

The same day a similar arrangement was made for the children’s hospital nearby.

Then the next day the two Mr Whippy vans were transferred to Springfield Park and Marland hospitals in case they were affected by the power cuts.

The hospitals were not alone in being hit by the 1970 power cuts – and once again ingenuity showed its way.

Power went off at Leavengreave Primary School, Shawforth, just as kitchen staff were cooking the children’s lunch.

Undeterred, headteacher Roy Finnegan took the cheese and onion pie and a pan of potatoes in his car to Lloyd Street School where the staff finished cooking the meal on their gas cookers.

At Buersil, garage proprietor Bill Hanson decided the power cuts were not going to stop his petrol sales.

When his service station was switched off by Norweb, he switched on the headlights of a line-up  of lorries. Then he pumped petrol to customers by hand, pumping 500 gallons in a single day.