FORGOTTEN CORNERS

[Stanley]

Jean Smith winding at Bancroft in 1977. The forgotten corner isn't so much the activity but the hierarchy in the mill. Winders saw themselves as being a cut above the weavers even though the weavers could make more money in a good week because they were on piece work. My mother was a beamer in a mill in Dukinfield and she said the same thing applied there and the beamers were seen as being superior to both weavers and winders. Of course the tacklers were the real cocks of the walk, oilers and sweepers at the bottom. In case you're wondering, engineers and firebeaters were so obviously important that they were above the fray in any competition for superiority!

[Stanley]

Jim Pollard the weaving manager with Sidney Nutter the office man at Bancroft in 1979. Sidney had an occasional helper, his cousin Eughtred but basically these two controlled the mill. We had a director, Peter Birtles, who came once a week.



I never saw him do anything significant except relay decisions made by Boardman at HQ in Stockport.
Robert Aram once told me about a private mill in Nottingham that was running at a small but regular profit with only two brothers in the office. They were taken over by Courtaulds who built a new office and installed modern management systems and staffing levels. Inside two years they closed down as they couldn't make a profit. Work it out for yourself. Jim Pollard once told me that Bancroft made a small profit each year right up to when it closed. He said the main reason Boardman kept the mill on his books was because by owning a mill in Lancashire he could put labels saying 'Woven in Lancashire' in all his goods including the ones imported from the sub-continent.
All a forgotten corner now....

[Stanley]

Another forgotten corner of the textile industry was the amount of cloth woven in Lancashire that went on a trip to Northern Ireland and came back to the Manchester merchants labelled Irish Linen which commanded a better price.
I never really knew if this was true but Doug Hoyle (LINK) told me he had come across the same scam.

[Stanley]

Another forgotten corner that I found out about, again, via Doug Hoyle who used to come to watch the engine occasionally, was the fact that Pakistani interests were buying Lancashire weaving mills, absorbing their merchant activities and then closing the mills and scrapping the machinery. Doug said that as far as he could make out they were looking ahead to a day when their weaving costs would be as high as ours and they wanted to eliminate the competition while they had the upper hand. He said he knew of over a dozen mills that had gone that way. It was him that told me that the firm that bought Ban croft from Boardman at Stockport was financed from the sub-continent and that we were going the same way. That was why Bancroft closed even though it was making a small annual profit.



This scene, weavers feeding the ducks on the Bancroft dam at dinner time was going to be a forgotten corner.

[Stanley]

This is one of my favourite forgotten corners from 1976 at Hey Farm. It says so much about my life then. Anyone who has ever washed for a family can tell immediately that this is a house with women and girls predominant! It encapsulates one of the happiest periods of my life and I still look back on it with deep contentment.

[Stanley]

My pic of the washing line reminded me of this one that Wendy posted....

[Stanley]

Stanley and his mate Ted Waite in the early 1960s at Hey Farm. A forgotten corner of course, days long gone and Ted died many years ago. Even so I haven't forgotten him. He was a bachelor, never married. I suppose we can speak of it now but he did have one child but never married the mother. Knowing Ted, she would get a nice nest egg when he died. He was a good man for me, lived in the orchard in a caravan, this became a Wendy House for the kids who all loved Ted. He was there as support for Vera when I was away tramping and helped me out with the livestock, there was a lot I didn't know and he kept me straight.
There aren't many Ted Waites in this world. If you are lucky enough to find one, look after him!

[Stanley]

The late Sid Demaine and his new barn in 1976. Young Sid and I always got on well as I did with his father, Old Sid and when he told me he had been refused planning permission to build a bungalow even though he had a right to do so because it was a viable agricultural holding because it was a dangerous exit to the road I sold him enough land and a right of way through Hey Farm yard if he needed it. He never forgot and neither did his daughter.
Note this was when we still had Bancroft mill intact and running.

[Stanley]

I promised Mick a Tom Dixon story. Here it is from the first volume of me memoirs. (Still available from Lulu.com. Look for 'Stanley's Story')

I have a story for you. At the time I bought the recorder I was a regular customer at the Hole I’t Wall pub in Foulridge. The landlord was Tom Dixon and I’ll admit that one of the attractions was his daughters. Tom was a man of many parts and amongst other things had a small business making ice cream and selling it from ‘stop me and buy one’ vans in the neighbouring towns and villages. He made the ice cream in a converted barn above the pub on the corner of the junction with the main road. Being an entrepreneur he sold the ice cream vans to people on hire purchase and the idea was that they paid him back out of the profits from selling Dixon’s Ice Cream.
I called in to the pub one night early doors, I was on my way back from Nelson after delivering a load of bottled milk for the dairy. I was the only customer and Tom asked me if I knew anything about tape recorders because he had borrowed one from one of his ice cream men and wanted to have a play with it. We went in the back room and I showed him how to use it and make recordings, he was all for having a go straight away but I told him we should check that there was nothing on the tape because otherwise we’d erase it. I wound the tape back and set it on to play. The first words that came out of the recorder were “That bloody Dixon’s all right as long as you’re selling his ice cream!” It soon became obvious that the recorder had been set up to record music from Radio Luxembourg while the man and his son were having their tea but the microphone was badly placed and was recording their conversation instead. I went to turn it off but Tom restrained me, “Let it play, I want to hear what these buggers are saying about me!”
I won’t bore you with what followed but the gist of their conversation was a long diatribe against Tom Dixon and all his works. It included slanderous statements about his alleged criminal activities in the black market during the wars and a reference to ‘biscuit tins full of fivers under the bed’. At this point Tom wanted it turning off! He asked me if we could erase the conversation because he didn’t want the man and his son to know that he had heard what they said. He added that it wouldn’t be so bad but they were almost six months behind with the payments on the van. I said the best way to do this was to wind the tape back and record over it. We did this and played about by recording his pet budgie saying “Put that bloody cat out!” when Tom put the cat on top of its cage. And yes, you’re right, we shouldn’t have done it but we took simple pleasures in those days.
I went back into the tap room and as it was Friday night I soon became engrossed in playing darts with my mates and telling very questionable stories. In those days the tap room was an all-male preserve and I have to admit that the language was fairly ripe. By about nine o’clock the pub was heaving, the best room was full and Tom’s daughters were working flat out in the bar. Unknown to us they had set the tape recorder up in the bar and had been recording us in the tap room. The tape must have reached its end so they wound it back about half way and played it to see what they had captured. You’ve guessed it, what came out of the speaker at full blast was definitely what we would now call ‘post watershed’. The lasses screamed and panicked, they ran out of the bar and the ten bob millionaires in the front room were treated to Hartley Spencer, myself and one or two others in full flight. I remember that one particular story was about a local man who had been caught hiding in a wardrobe in very suspicious circumstances. That was what did it! The customers in the front melted away into the night and by the time Tom had got wind of what was going on and got to the bar to stop the entertainment he had an empty pub.
Mr Dixon was not best pleased. The only people that he could vent his spleen on were his tap room customers so we left as well. I heard afterwards that Tom had burned the tape, returned the machine to his salesman and issued an edict that he would never have one of those infernal devices in his house again! Not a great event in global terms but we were laughing about it for months afterwards and give him his due, time heals all wounds and Tom laughed as much as any of us, particularly about the bloke in the wardrobe because it was news to him.

[Stanley]

We were talking about pubs earlier and this came to mind....
"Round about this time I started drinking quite a bit. Nothing serious and it was all beer but I was spending more time in the Craven Heifer at Kelbrook than was good for me. The landlord was Jimmy Talbot and his wife was called Gladys, they kept a good old-fashioned pub and the regulars were fascinating. It turned out that Jimmy was as bent as a nine bob note, he followed me into the gents one night early in our acquaintance and made ‘advances’ but soon backed off when I told him he was in great danger of having his lights put out! This aside, he was a good landlord and kept a clean house, it was Jimmy who showed me the right way to clean a table top. You should always wipe under the edge of a table when you have done the top, if you don’t, any beer that has spilled dries on under the edge. Next time you are in a pub, run your finger under the edge of the table and I’ll bet a pound to a penny that you feel little lumps of dried beer under there!
The regulars were a delight. There was ‘Dobbin’ Berry and Charlie Lancaster, both farmers in the village. They were always together and had a lovely life. They went to market at Skipton and Gisburn twice a week and both smoked black twist. I smoked a pipe and Dobbin gave me a handful of lumps of black twist one night. He’d been up at Skipton and after giving away twist for years he decided to ask all his mates for a piece. He came back with his raincoat pocket full and thought it was a great joke. I remember them going to Gisburn Races one year. This was an amateur steeplechase run by the Craven Harriers, the local hunt. I saw them in the pub after they had returned and asked them how they had gone on, Dobbin said that they’d had a good day, they’d backed every winner bar the last one and if they’d had any money left they’d have had that one as well! The point was that all the winners were short price favourites and Dobbin and Charlie were drinking the winnings faster than they could make them. They both drank halves of bitter and it was quite amazing how mush they could put away in a day! Years later I went for a walk round Kelbrook church graveyard and I was touched to see that they had been buried close to each other, very fitting and someone had used their head.
A forgotten corner if ever there was one!

[Stanley]

Here's another bit from me memoirs....

"In 1958 Eddie told me that Harrison Brothers were looking for a driver full time. During the summer you started at 02.00 in the morning and finished at dinnertime so it would fit in with my farm rounds and shop work if mother got some help in the mornings. By this time father had had his operations and though not 100% he was fit to serve in the shop so I set on for Harrison’s with an almost new Bedford S type diesel 7 ton flat wagon and was King of the Road. The wage was £8-10-0 a week for seven days, start when you like, finish when you can. Little did I know it but I had started what was to be a long career in road haulage. Looking back I am amazed by the fact that career changes weren’t sought, they just happened. I’m sure I’ll come back to this later because it was a continuing trend."



In those days, with no cell phones, a wagon driver was virtually his own boss. I enjoyed every day on the job and that lasted for almost twenty years, when it stopped being fun I got out and went to the mill. My comment about career changes still intrigues me. I see young people today mapping out their course and their lives and I always think of the old Jewish joke; "If you want to make God laugh tell him your plans." My career and life changes just happened. I must have been lucky because I always enjoyed my work, never had a bad job or a bad employer.

[Stanley]

Of all the wagons I drove, I think this was my favourite. The AEC Mercury tanker parked up at Hey Farm in 1968. I must have been on late load the following day because the lid is open and the tank therefore empty. It was a lovely clean job and I enjoyed tanking milk.
However, the reason it's a forgotten corner is the headlights. AEC used CAV equipment and these headlights were the old style, not sealed units. In consequence they gradually filled with water and had to be dried out. I think you can imagine how bad the light was from them and the funny thing is you got used to them and drove accordingly. The modern light sabres are so bright as to be almost a hazard in themselves if you are caught in high beam!
Dim headlights are now a forgotten corner!

[Big Kev]

The modern light sabres are so bright as to be almost a hazard in themselves if you are caught in high beam!

The legal requirement for headlamp bulbs is 55W, they become a problem when people change the bulbs for a higher wattage or LED. Both currently a driving offence and I wonder how many have come unstuck at MOT time.

[Stanley]

I was in the Co-op on Friday looking at the shelves of Olive Oil and a forgotten corner came to mind.
I can remember a time when Olive oil was something you bought in very small bottles from the chemist and kept on the mantelpiece so it was always warm. The only use for it was to treat ear ache.

[Stanley]

Bethesda Church on Manchester Road. Shortly to be demolished and replaced by David Crossley House, a care home. Look in the site archives for the story of the links with the first Baptist chapel in Walmsgate, the North Street chapel and the story of the great schism in the Barlick Baptist congregation.

[PanBiker]

I used to go to "Sunday School" there when I was a lad.

[Stanley]

Just one clue to the interesting history of the Baptists, particularly the Rev. Bennett. This is from Old Barlick by William Atkinson (On the site) and describes one episode.
1860 At this juncture, Mr. Bennett, the Baptist Minister began business as a Manufacturer in a part of Clough Shed. A quotation from Mr, Lewis, Bethesda Baptist Church History, to whom the writer is indebted for this and several other items of information occurs at page 82 in the same historic work, thus; ‘In the year 1860 Mr. Bennett was prevailed upon by several prominent members of the Church to enter the Cotton Manufacturing Business in order to find employment for those who through depression in trade were leaving the town. This step unfortunately proved a painful one to him. Soon after the American war began, which produced such disastrous results in the Cotton Trade in Lancashire and North Cheshire that Mr. Bennett, in common with many other manufacturers, succumbed to the severe losses suffered.
Mr Lewis's book is also on the site. Worth pursuing because it's a mystery, involves a schism in the Baptist congregation and according to one witness, the death of Mr Bennett after being attacked on the street.

[Stanley]

This is a forgotten corner until Spring. In the last two weeks almost all the leaves have fallen, we need just one hard frost to finish them off.

[Stanley]

The original Barlick War Memorial was a wooden construction and we see it here in about 1919 on the site that was to become the extension of Matt Hartley's Majestic complex and now houses Steele's solicitors. In the ensuing years it was replaced by a permanent stone memorial and moved to several locations before it was finally installed where it is now. These earlier locations may have become forgotten corners but on November 11 2021 the present memorial is not forgotten.

[Stanley]

I think this is still the wooden memorial and is in Letcliffe Park a few years later. My understanding is that the permanent stone memorial was first erected on the park. Not the best place for it to be accessed by elderly people because of the steep hill.
Incidentally, when the Jubilee Fountain was moved from the top of Butts it too was installed in the park and remained there until it was brought back to Town Square when the central Co-op was demolished.

[PanBiker]

That is the current granite memorial Stanley as first installed at the park. You can see that it has all three sections.

At the time of course Letcliffe was the main recreational park in the town.

[Stanley]

One thing that's always puzzled me Ian is what the purpose was of the Memorial Garden opposite Harrison Street. Was the memorial there at one time? I can remember the Jubilee fountain being up on Letcliffe in the early 60s but I'm not sure about the memorial. I have a vague memory of an enclosed garden where the memorial is on that picture. I can place it because you can see the end of the 'men's shelter' to the right of it.

[PanBiker]

We have some history of the Memorial Gardens on the site. Our permanent war memorial has only ever been in two locations, Letcliffe where I think it was dedicated in 1923 and it's present location. From memory the Forces Memorial Gardens were established as a more central accessible area for remembrance after WWII as the veterans of WWI and WWII got older. Armistice Day remembrance services used to be held there until the War Memorial came down to its present location in 1983. The adjacent garden for the blind was originally provided by TocH I think it was. The land was gifted by the Broughton family for its usage and during it's most recent refurbishment there was some upset about infringement of boundaries when the rear entrance was opened up to provide a through route.

[Stanley]

Yes, I remember the kerfuffle about infringement of boundaries when the rear path was opened at the memorial gardens. I often thought that Letcliffe was a lousy place for a memorial, it was always a stiff walk up there.



I'm not sure but I think this was the Wesleyan church on Rainhall Road.



But then I look at this and I am unsure again.



I went for a furtle and found this on the web. So my top pic is wrong. Can anyone say which that is?

[Big Kev]

What was on the site of the current police station? I know there was a big house but don't remember seeing any pictures of it