Step inside Bill Houghton’s shed and it feels like you’ve wandered into a storybook. There are shelves lined with smooth wooden animals, boxes full of tiny lorries and tools tucked into every corner.
In the middle of it all is Bill, a 79-year-old toymaker with square glasses, a white beard and a heart that seems to run on kindness.
He has spent years crafting hundreds of wooden toys for disadvantaged children in his hometown. Elephants and koalas with rounded edges. Small lorries perfect for tiny hands. Each one shaped, sanded and brought to life on the workbench he knows so well.
As he put it, he is “just doing my bit to help.”
Bill started giving toys to Daffodils Dreams, a local charity that provides clothes, bedding, toiletries and activity vouchers for vulnerable families referred through Wigan Council and other agencies.
He brings them a new stash every couple of weeks.
“At Christmas, I make absolutely loads,” he said, smiling at the thought of the holiday rush.
To the charity, his gifts are more than toys. A spokesman said Bill’s “continued kindness and generosity” has been truly valued and has made a “huge difference” in the lives of the children they support.
And some of those stories stay with him. “They were telling me, we had a little lad who come in through a referral a few months ago now,” Bill said.
The boy was turning three, and his family didn’t have the money to buy him anything for his birthday.
“So they gave him four of mine, made up I was,” Bill said.
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