FORGOTTEN CORNERS

[Stanley]

If you had a mill like Westfield and built a house nearby this is the scale you built at and the quality you aimed at. This is Forest House on Gisburn Road and is ranked as the fourth most expensive house in Barlick.

[Big Kev]

There are some very nice houses in Barlick, friend of mine has just put his up for sale. It's very nice and I'd very much like it but it's a bit big for just two of us.
Not sure I'd be able to raise the £800,000 to buy it either

[Stanley]

Looking at that house Kev reminds me of the time when you could buy farms up on the hillside above Earby for £50 an acre including the buildings. Hardly seems credible now and definitely a forgotten corner.

[Big Kev]

Current average is £12000 to £15000 an acre now.

[Stanley]

I think I must be getting old Kev..... At the time me and father went to S Wales to look at a farm near Milford Haven that had river frontage, I think it was £4,500 asking price. I wonder what that's worth now.....



Sorry about the quality but this came to mind at Kelbrook.

[Stanley]

Club Row at Townhead. A very desirable row of cottages. In about 1950 my mate Ernie Roberts needed a house and bought one of these from John Capstick for £500 on 'Rental Purchase' because they were under threat of demolition by the council as part of a clearance scheme up Wapping. The price, the method of buying the house and the council scheme are all now long forgotten corners.

[Stanley]

I haven't got an image for today's forgotten Corner. It's the building which sits back from the road opposite Yarlside Farm at Bracewell. I don't know why but I have it in my head that it was the school that replaced the old one in the village which became the Village Institute. When it became redundant (sometime in the 1950s?) it was sold and became a private residence. In the early 1960s when I was picking up Bracewell Milk a man called Mr Toy lived there and my mate Ted Lawson told me he was a retired butler. Sorry about that, it came to mind and is a mystery.

[Wendyf]

It certainly looks like a school, but strangely it doesn't show on any of the old maps right up to the 1950s. Where is the access? Neither if those gates look used.

Screenshot_20210503-061839.png

[Stanley]

I found that image on Google Streets Wendy and the same thought struck me. If my memory serves me right the wall incorporated iron railings in the 1960s.
(We need a whizz kid like Kev or Ian to get an image off that! Hint, nudge nudge.... )

[PanBiker]

Not much different to Wendy's. Yarlside Cottage is on the sign, from Google Maps:

[Stanley]

This building is known locally as King Henry's Parlour and is in Bracewell. Rebuilt at some time as a barn, the left hand end is the only surviving remnant of the Medieval Hall which for many years was the seat of an important branch of the Tempest family. It has been dated as 14th century.



In the mid 19th century the brick Elizabethan hall at Bracewell had decayed to this and it was rebuilt by Hopwood later in the century as this.



This image is from the sale catalogue of 1874 when Hopwood sold.

[Stanley]

By 1950 the Hopwood build hall was being demolished by Briggs and Duxbury. After the Hopwood sale the hall had a chequered career as a boys school, a country club and in 1939 it was taken over by the Ministry of Aircraft Production and used as offices for the shadow factories, first under the Rover Company and later Rolls Royce. After the war it was abandoned and by 1950 the decision had been taken to demolish.

[Stanley]

Harold told me that the price they got for the high quality slates used to roof the Hopwood build paid for all the demolition expenses and B&D made a profit.

[Stanley]

This used to be a common sight in the countryside. The mole catcher leaving evidence he had done his job. I haven't seen it for years. I can remember that I regularly passed a farm on the way to Hebden Bridge over the tops from Nelson that hung a sign out 'Mole Chap Call' when the catcher was needed. I wonder if there are still people making money out of mole catching?

[Big Kev]

There's a mole catcher who advertises on the Foulridge Noticeboard Facebook page.

[Stanley]

Nice one Kev. I'm glad the noble profession is still being pursued in Foulridge!

[PanBiker]

My oldest traced ancestor on my paternal side was a Mole Catcher in later life after he retired from farming.

[Stanley]

Another nice example Ian.

[Stanley]

Carrprint at Coates Mill in 1985. A good firm and a good little mill. All gone now of course.

[Stanley]

In my childhood days in Heaton Norris in Stockport our milk was delivered by Dobson Brothers who ran a dairy at Didsbury. Years later in 1959 when I came to Barlick I found that the same firm ran a dairy at Coates Mill. See THIS article in the Commercial Motor magazine about the business. Barlick is mentioned in the article from 1944.



One of their electric floats for delivering bottled milk.

[Stanley]

Wendy mentioned Kelbrook Church clock. This is the clock at Carleton church and Horace Thornton told me that it was made by a local farmer. Johnny Pickles once visited and Horace showed him the clock, he was Verger at the church. Johnny commented that it had the earliest ratchet free wheel he had ever seen on a clock.
Johnny also told Newton that an interesting feature of Kelbrook church clock is that it has four faces, Evidently this is quite rare.

[Stanley]

The dam at Bancroft being filled in during the demolition in 1980 by N&R.
During the demolition I asked Norman about the 'Bancroft Mushroom'. This was a growth under the floor of the warehouse that over the years had pushed up the concrete floor in the warehouse and lifted a couple of the pillars carrying the tape room making it necessary to put large blocks of wood under the legs of both tapes to level them up. Nobody ever fully explained the white deposit under the floor that was the cause. Norman was interested and kept his eyes open. What he found was a peat bed under the floor and the bunker of the boiler house. He sounded it with a long girder Hung on the crane and said it was at least thirty feet deep. Water rising through the peat had deposited the minerals under the floor and this explained why the boiler at Bancroft had been installed 180 degrees from the ideal position. The engineers must have noted the mushroom and didn't want it disturbing the boiler and pipework.

[Stanley]

Eughtred and Sidney Nutter making up the wages at Bancroft in 1977. Hopelessly old fashioned now I suppose. Does anyone get a pay packet these days?

[Cathy]

If people do get paid like that these days, I’d say there was something ‘dodgy’ going on.

[Stanley]

Which illustrates nicely Cathy that it's a forgotten corner.