THE FLATLEY DRYER

[PanBiker]

Fantastic work then Ken. Was tin bashing part of your job at any time?

[plaques]

My brother was an old school skilled tin basher who won a number of prizes for complex pieces. I guess a lot of his enthusiasm rubbed off. When cars took over from bikes if you didn't know how to weld them up then NO car. Spent years doing ex-WD cars up and either using them or selling them on. All now in the dustbin of history.

[PanBiker]

Just Googling Ken and I see that back in 1930 the Imperial 350 was retailed for around £36.15s.00. Worth a bob or two more now.

Seen clean examples of the Honda 500 Four I used to have at £16,000. I bought mine for about £650.00.

[Stanley]

We are lucky in that we have lots of good old images like this of Station Road some time after 1892 when the Liberal Club was built. The more you interrogate the image the more you learn. This morning what struck me was that the men weren't wearing clogs so it was most likely a Sunday, the girl with the straw hat looks to have deformed legs, rickets? There are no street lights. I could go on but the reason I went for this pic as the billboards on the corner.
Bill posting was how you advertised local attractions and as late as the end of the Great War, news was posted up as bills. After the war the print publishing industry exploded, the concept of the weekly popular magazine grew as well as news-papers; the name gives them away. There was another consequence, the invention of the news-agent. A person who specialised in transmitting news, in this case by newspapers and magazines. That's the Flatley Dryer country this morning. The means of transmission has changed, much of the print industry has died or is dying. The supermarkets sell the remaining papers, we have one serious newsagent left and he has had to do a reverse ferret and function as a general store in order to survive.

[Tizer]

One print area that still thrives is magazine publishing. You go into Smith's and find there are hundreds of titles, many related to heritage (eg. cars, boats, trains planes) and lots more on crafts and hobbies.

[Tripps]

we have one serious newsagent left and he has had to do a reverse ferret and function as a general store in order to survive.

I went into the shop only once - on my first pilgrimage. Lovely people very chatty - they told me about the Barlick tradition of 'living o'er't brush'

Fred Nutter.jpg

[PanBiker]

Moved on a bit from Fred now, he retired a few years ago David.

[Tripps]

Now you mention it, I think I vaguely knew that. Isn't it Singh's now?

Nice happy photo though.

[PanBiker]

Yes it is Singh's. Not changed much inside.

[Stanley]

Fred Nutter was the last person I knew in Barlick who could repair fountain pens.
There's a little known fact for you!

[Stanley]

For many years I used to be pestered by a man who wanted me to write a story for the BET about the 'mystery' of Gibson's money. This was the Gibson who owned Park Close Quarry. He was killed when his private plane crashed and rumours immediately started swirling around the fact that he didn't seem to be worth as much as people thought. The conclusion was that there was money hidden somewhere. Of course, just as likely an explanation could be the fact that he didn't have as much money as people assumed. Whatever, eventually the man stopped nagging me, either he had found the hiding place or given up!



Park Close Quarry in 1948.

[Tizer]

Probably spent it all buying a private plane and running it!

[Stanley]

It was a common item of gossip for years Peter but seems to have faded now.



Here's a good candidate for Flatley Dryer country! The Power Pak 49cc cycle motor of 1954. There were other cycle motors but I think the Power Pak was perhaps the most successful. It drove through a metal roller in contact with the tyre and could be lifted out of contact and the cycle ridden normally.
There was a rather eccentric Barnoldswick man working at Bristol Tractors in the late 1950s. He had a Power Pak on his bike. He was noted for using the engine coming downhill to work in the morning but lifting it out of gear and pedalling the cycle uphill on his way home. I asked him why and he said "It uses more petrol going uphill." No arguing against that!

[Stanley]

Thinking about the man with the Power Pak I remembered the theory that he was a brilliant lad who went to university but somehow his brain couldn't cope and he became 'eccentric'. That reminded me of the stories about the mad woman in the attic that you find in Victorian novels but then with a bit more thinking I remember a lad who went to Lancaster with me and successfully completed a three year degree course in Sociology but seemed to deteriorate when he got back home. Perhaps there is something in the brainstorm theory.
When I first started to go round the farms with the mobile shop I soon learned not to join in any gossip because everyone was related to everybody else! That led to another syndrome, many of the families had a member who was 'away in hospital' or couldn't work because he had 'a bad back'. I soon learned that these were euphemisms for unfortunate people who were mentally handicapped. I often wondered whether the fact that so few people travelled out of the dale to find a partner had anything to do with this.
This doesn't happen these days and so it's Flatley Dryer country.

[Stanley]

Anyone who frequented Windle's Vicarage Road garage will remember Jim and Maurice Windle and god knows I have plenty of stories about them bu the real power behind the throne there was their red haired sister, Shirley. The brothers would never admit it but she was the boss! On the back wall of the reception there was a poster of a red biplane. I asked Shirley about it and she said it had visited Barlick in the 1930s and given joy rides over the town and she had been brave enough to take one. That's Flatley Dryer country, the Second World War put paid to that.



Jim in 1977 at Gill.



Maurice in 1976.

[PanBiker]

He he, that car took me to Carleton when Sally and I got married in 1976.

[Stanley]

Then it really is deep Flatley Dryer country!

Somewhere in the archive I have a report from the late 1920s of a plane being given permission to take off from the new Kelbrook Road that was under construction at the time. I suspect that this was the joy-riding plane that Shirley went up in.

[Stanley]

Worth having a look at this Wikipedia article on TAX HORSEPOWER. Until after WW2 vehicle tax was charged on an RAC formula that was based on piston area. A small Austin would be 7hp, I remember seeing a Rolls Royce in about 1948 that was '44 RAC hp'
Changing road conditions with higher speeds meant that short stroke engines with 'over square' bores would be better but these would have attracted extra tax so weren't developed.
Eventually the tax basis was changed to straight engine capacity and engines were modernised.

[plaques]

Very true, remember the long stroke Panther motorcycle where the joke was it fired at every gas lamp. Compared with the short stroke in-line Motor Guzzi it was a generation behind. Beside the import cost the taxation made it very expensive.

[Stanley]

But we got the benefit of torque! Those old long stroke engines would pull rusty nails out of oak beams!

[Stanley]

You've reminded me of the fact that the engines and gear trains on those old wagons were so massive and slow that many had clutch brakes fitted to aid gear changing. When you dipped the clutch if you went a bit further you put a brake on the flywheel. This slowed the engine down faster than the wagon and enabled you to match the gears up and change gear. Without it it was almost impossible. Crazy as it seems some drivers went through their whole career without knowing what a clutch brake was, they simply forced the changes.

[Stanley]

Not the Flatley Dryer but the stone slopstone.



This is where many slop stones ended up, as containers for plants in gardens. Far more were simply broken up. I remember a man in Haworth, he had a yard close to the railway station and for many years slowly filled it with stone slopstones and chimney pots. He was regarded as an eccentric but of course had the last laugh. When he retired he sold his stock and made a considerable profit. I doubt if a stock of Flatley Dryers would have been as profitable.

[plaques]

A lot of the old slopstone basins were only a couple of inches deep but over the years had their front edge worn down with people sharpening knives on them. The final depth finished up at less than an inch. People without the convenience of a slop stone would sharpen their knives on the door step.

[Stanley]

Absolutely right Ken. Ernie Roberts told me about one man who made a living for years sharpening knives door to door. He used to take them round the corner and sharpen them on the best kerb stone he could find. Ernie reckoned he know where all the best ones were!

[Stanley]

There was a time when our quarries were an important part of the local economy. Only the largest ones survive today but it can still be instructive to walk round disused quarries and keep your eyes open.
These stones are in the quarry at the top of Noyna in Foulridge, they are plug and feather holes, evidence that large rocks were split with wedges even though the stone at Noyna is very suitable for splitting and slop stones were made there. It's always worth looking round because you'll often find 'wastrels', stones that cracked along faults as they were being made into something like a trough or mill stone and were the cause of a lot of wasted effort. There's a cracked mill stone at Noyna but I can't find my pic of it.