FORGOTTEN CORNERS

[Stanley]

Travel with Wild's for miles of smiles is a forgotten corner. Here are two of their AEC coached in Leeds in 1961 for a shopping trip to I think Apex Mill.



And here's Jack Platt's old Maudslay wagon from the days when he drove for Wild Brothers. Luckily it's been preserved.

[Stanley]

West Marton Dairy used to run a milk float like this doing domestic deliveries in Barnoldswick. Jack Brown used to run it and when he was off my friend Ted Lawson did the round. I remember that the dairy got a new float built and Jack Brown said it was too heavy for the horse and refused to use it. Shortly after that the dairy sold the round.

[Stanley]

We forget now how traumatic a visit to the dentist could be. Some people were absolutely terrified by the prospect. My mate Ted Lawson was one of these and his wife Joyce asked me to meet him and make sure he went to Mr Pinder on Park Avenue. Ted was doing the Barlick milk round at the time with the horse and float, Harry Tudor who did the job at the time was having a day off. I met Ted and got him into the dentists. When he eventually came out I asked Mr Pinder how it had gone. He said badly because they couldn't get Ted's mouth open without risking damaging his jaw. He said that once they got him under the influence of the gas he gritted his teeth and kept saying "Whoa you bugger!" I asked Ted and he said that the horse was very hard bitten and he had been shouting at it all morning.
We got him back in the chair later hat week and everything was fine.

[Stanley]

A boring picture of the end of Salterforth Lane where it meets the New Road. But look carefully at the houses at the far end of the row. They still have their cast iron railings on the garden wall. Most of these were commandeered for scrap in WW2. The only ones that escaped were those that were necessary for safety, to guard a drop to a basement area for instance. These can't be said to be that. I'll bet there's a story behind why and how they survived!

[PostmanPete]

A boring picture of the end of Salterforth Lane where it meets the New Road. But look carefully at the houses at the far end of the row. They still have their cast iron railings on the garden wall. Most of these were commandeered for scrap in WW2. The only ones that escaped were those that were necessary for safety, to guard a drop to a basement area for instance. These can't be said to be that. I'll bet there's a story behind why and how they survived!

I'd love to know the story behind the Salterforth iron railings. Being the Salterforth postman on many occasions, I either got my bag caught on the ****** railings or scratched my watch on them...!

[Stanley]

One thing is certain, there will be a story if only we could find it. Think of all the railings on garden walls and Iron gates in Barlick. You can see the scars to this day.

[Big Kev]

There are stories relating to a surplus of scrap iron being collected. There are unsubstantied accounts of railings, from London, being dumped in the Thames estuary and it affecting ship's compasses. Other than the safety reasons I can't find anything relating to why railings were left on some walls.

[Stanley]

The same stories circulated about the collection of aluminium pans for aircraft production Kev. I've never seen any definitive proof.

[Stanley]

No image today because I can't think of one that will illustrate today's forgotten corner. Something many of you might remember was that there was a market for used postage stamps and many charities encouraged people to collect them and donate them to the charity. I could never understand how the used stamps could be worth anything. The practice seems to have died out now so it's a forgotten corner.
On the same tack, can you remember people saving used aluminium milk bottle tops and donating them? I could understand that as the caps were easily recycled but even that has did the death.

[Big Kev]

Used stamps were being collected to raise money for the RNIB in Foulridge a couple of weeks ago.

[Stanley]

How can they have any value?

[Wendyf]

They are sold by weight at about £10 a kilo, dealers buy them to look for anything of value. All the big charities take them.

[Stanley]

Well there you are, you live and learn.....

[Stanley]

This is the Wilson Lathe that Newton took home with him when he retired and which I inherited when he moved from Vicarage Road into the small shed in the yard at Dam Head. He saved it when B&P was demolished because it was so accurate. I ran it for years and when I shifted to a smaller shed it went to Rochdale Electric Welding and I refurbished a lot of valves on it. In this pic it's at Addingham and I am cleaning up the standard for the new hand wheel I was making for the engine at Ellenroad. A good machine made in Keighley and a forgotten corner now!



Here's the new hand wheel on the standard at Ellenroad.

[Stanley]

This used to be the West Marton Depot in Keighley. I used to unload nine tons of bottles here and load four and a half tons of empties. If Wilf my helper didn't turn up I had to do it myself. That's right and the worst part was getting up and down off the flat. Those were the days....
It was a sharp right hand turn at the end of the road and I have seen me leave blood all the way round the steering wheel in winter if my cracks had opened up. Lots of people think this is exaggeration, I can assure you it isn't. Thank God that's a forgotten corner.

[Stanley]

Good castings on the bench seven years ago. On present evidence this is a forgotten corner! I've never had such a run of bad castings in my life.

[Stanley]

Johnny Pickles with Jim Fort and a shell turning lathe for making six inch shells in WW2. We don't have small engineering shops that could tackle jobs like this today. Brown and Pickles could do the heaviest jobs and making machines like this for the war effort was all in the days work for them.

[Stanley]

If you had a smash like this and needed a new cylinder making and installing you knew what to do, call in Brown and Pickles who were just across the road from Crow Nest Mill where this happened. Instant response and a guaranteed outcome. That's a forgotten corner now. It would take weeks to fill in all the paperwork!

[Stanley]

Bowling hoops used to be a popular pastime. These lads are bowling bicycle wheels but originally the hoops and the hooks used to guide them were blacksmith made. I'm usually old enough to remember these things but I can never remember anyone bowling a hoop. I think it was also called 'trundling'.

[Stanley]

I remember that games used to go through phases of popularity. Marbles was all pervasive and then suddenly it was whip and top.



What I haven't seen mentioned is the fact that we used to use coloured chalk on the heads of the tops so as to get a pattern when they were spinning. The pattern of top in the pic was my favourite and the metal tip was a rough casting. I got him to take the top to work and get one of his turners to clean the point up and polish it. That made my top much better and I suspect other dads would get mithered to do the same.

[Stanley]

In the pic above the handle of the whip is an old fashioned pirn or bobbin used for winding yarn packages on to.
That reminded me of the picking stick, every Lancashire loom had two for driving the shuttle across the slay.



These found their way home when damaged or discarded as they were made of Hickory, a very tough and elastic wood and hence ideal for making tool handles and in particular, hammer shafts.



Two for the price of one this morning. I was looking for a better image of a picking stick and tripped over this in the long grass. I haven't seen a Speedweve darning loom for over 70 years. There used to be a man on Stockport market every week demonstrating these and selling them. You can buy one for less than £10, they are still being made. I had assumed they were a forgotten corner but evidently some ideas are too good to die. Time to start darning socks again?

[Stanley]

One advantage of being a weaver was that you always had a clean tablecloth at dinner break. Mary Wilkin at Bancroft in 1978.
Jim Pollard always said that if he had a shed full of weavers like Mary he could make a fortune....

[Stanley]

The best job in the world, nice engine and perfect freedom to run it as I saw fit. For a bit of light entertainment I would indicate it...... I should have paid them for letting me play with it.
Definitely a forgotten corner. I shall go and visit it on Sunday.....

[Stanley]

During WW2 the workers had to be looked after and so the owners at Bancroft installed a canteen. The equipment was still there 30 years later but not used.



In the 1960s and 70s when 'Britain's Bread hung by Lancashire's thread' the management had to coddle the workers a bit and so contracted Wild Brothers to lay on a bus each night to take the workers down into the town. This didn't work out quite as planned because the bus always came 15 minutes before finishing time and surprise surprise the weavers got on it and ten minutes before official stopping time at 17:30 the shed was empty!



This was the management's response eventually. They bought an old van and it was driven down into town every night by Ernie the cloth-looker. He didn't go out to unlock the van until after 17:30 and so the weavers got a few more picks in..... All forgotten corners now....

[Stanley]

My mother in the shop at Sough when we were open all hours 60 years ago. We could just about make a living for a family of five then but the signs were on the wall, things were deteriorating fast due to competition from the supermarkets. Our way of retailing hadn't changed much. We were still making up blue bags of sugar from bulk, knocking up butter that came in 56lbs boxes and weighing out spuds, dirt and all and tipping them straight into customers baskets or bags. Bread was unwrapped and if you look carefully on the counter you'll see loose tea in paper packs. I doubt if any of that would be allowed today! (We even had a chair for customers to use while waiting for their order to be made up.)