HAVE you ever heard of a Bolton firm called Snowfecta? No, neither have I! But according to Mrs Judith Prentice it existed in the 1920s/1930s.

Mrs Prentice has written to me saying that her great-grandmother, Isabella Vipond, left her native Cumberland and moved with her three children to Bolton, in the 1890s. She died in 1940, aged 83.

Mrs Prentice writes: "One of her daughters, Sarah, married a Bolton man, named Lawrence Wearden, and he worked for a time at a soap manufacturers whose trade name was Snowfecta.

"During my family researches, this name was also mentioned by a relative from Cumberland. I would love to know more about this company, and where it was located, etc."

Well, I could find no reference to it anywhere, and Mr Denis O'Connor, that fount of all knowledge on the industrial history of Bolton, has never heard of it either. I did, however, find in an old Bolton Directory that Lawrence Wearden, an iron driller, lived at 12, Sheriden Street, Bolton.

If anyone can help Mrs Prentice, please contact her at 13 Barrack Hill, Stockport, Cheshire, SK6 3BA (Tel: 0161 430 2042.