FORGOTTEN CORNERS

[Whyperion]

Stanley, is that a natural hillside on the right hand side of your Oldham photo or a spoil heap? The modern houses tucked into that corner have what look to be outside toilets, surely not....they must be sheds (or huts as we would have called them).

There was a fad for adding external bathrooms out of a kind of pre-fab precast concrete in the Mid 1970s, sometimes done by the council, sometimes the householder, though they are normally a direct attachment to houses, Walthamstow had them double height as many of the properties were maisonettes.

[Stanley]

The shambles in Butts in 1982 before the stables to the right were demolished. This was where the Barlick butchers slaughtered beasts in the mid 19th century and the beck was a handy way to get rid of the waste. Those were the days!

[Stanley]

The bottom of Cavendish Street as it is now.



This is the forgotten corner. This was the bottom of Cavendish Street before the demolition of the houses on the South side of Wapping in the 1950s.

[PanBiker]

Surely your last picture is a lot lower down looking up Walmsgate?

[Stanley]

No. John Street back to backs on the right in the top pic but just off screen, there on the right in the bottom pic.

[PanBiker]

I see what you mean and stand corrected Stanley. My Aunt Margaret and Uncle Norman used to live in one of the houses on the left further up that was cleared. They moved to King Street from there.

[Whyperion]

talking to a friend yesterday (he does not like shopping in supermarkets so his sister does it for him), having been fairly used to Tescos in Burnley I find going back round mums Sainsburys some things seem to have disappeared - Rollmop Herrings in Jars, Matzos crackers ( the large upright packets for the double size , and the smaller Jacobs Cracker size), Sainsburys also have a minimal selection of Christmas Puddings (and have had for the last 4 years - anyone noticed if Colne is better ?), and finally whatever happened to Puffa Puffa Rice, and Puffed Wheat in the cereals aisles ?)

[Stanley]

An easy mistake to make Ian. This pic posted by Angus is even more confusing.



The corner of Calf hall road and Colne road, from Walmsgate, looking to Westgate. all the properties in the forefront have since been demolished. The buildings centre, are on Cavendish street, the facing shop Is A. Shaws, and the one on the left is Dawsons . Remember also that Clough Mill is behind Dawson's shop.
Ernie Roberts was brought up in the end house on John Street, a two up and two down back to back. He talks in the LTP about the shops and the people who lived there.

[Stanley]

I seem to remember that one of the Smith Brothers who took over Bracewell Hall in the 1930s and ran it as a country club was a photographer and lived in the bottom house in Cavendish Street. He ran his photography business from there and later had a studio in Wellhouse Road.

[Stanley]

As far as I know, County Brook mill and the other mills that straddled the brook but are long gone, Midge Hole and Wood End are reckoned to be in the Manor of Barnoldswick. The line of County Brook is part of the boundary.
County Brook always gets forgotten but is one of the oldest weaving sites in Barlick having been converted from a corn mill. In hard times it survived on collecting and distilling the vapours from stewing wood. The reason why many still know it as the Stew Mill. These condensed vapours gave valuable chemicals such as mordants for the dying industry. In later years the mill went back to weaving under the Mitchells and as far as I know is still weaving as Mitchell Interflex, long after the industry disappeared from the rest of Barlick.

[Stanley]

This morning's forgotten corner is an old one but we would do well to remember it. I was triggered by the name 'Wood End' which is the area on the Barlick side of County Brook. The end of which wood? We know from the evidence in the Bolton Priory papers that Barnoldswick Wood was the best source of large timber anywhere round here 700 years ago. Over the years they must have been felled out but if you've been looking at the old pics of Barlick and comparing with today you'll have noticed that the trees are returning. Far more today than a century ago. The big trees may yet return to the town!

[Stanley]

Today's forgotten corner is still there, The large red-brick building at the fire station than butts on to the Pioneer Car Park. What we tend to forget today is that this was the site of the first transformer in the town when mains electricity first arrived in the late 1920s. I think that the first supply came from Keighley but was soon followed by more coming in from Lancashire.

[Stanley]

At the bottom of Manchester Road there is a valve in the mains water supply from Whitemoor in the middle of the road. I am fairly sure that the water supplies have been rerouted since 1950 but I know that the valve was always cracked down to restrict pressure below that point. If there was a major fire, the Craven Water Board used to send a man to the valve to gradually open it up so that the brigade could get full flow. The pressure on the main was such that if opened suddenly it could create water hammer in the system and do a lot of damage.
Being above the valve, all the properties from Letcliffe down to the town had full pressure and very good supplies!

[Stanley]

Gisburn Old Track up the hillside to the moor at the top of Weets and then forward down Coal Pit Lane to Gisburn used to be an important route but became redundant when the turnpike was built from Blacko Bar to Gisburn. The stretch from Weets top across the moor soon fell into disuse and today is hardly passable. It's a forgotten corner.

[Stanley]

A similar thing happened to the old lane from Kelbrook to Foulridge when the turnpike road that is the modern route was put in. Mrs Tordoff who lived on stone row at Sough was very old and once told me she could remember when the road ended at the Stone Trough pub. That would make the turnpike after 1860. Could that be right? Or was she telling me what her mother had told her?

[Wendyf]

The Colne and Broughton Turnpike was built in 1824. The road appears on OS maps to stop dead at the Craven Heifer but actually goes through Kelbrook village on Church Lane and back onto its line before Sough Bridge then on to Earby. I don't know the date for the new stretch without looking it up but it's not there on the 1910 OS map and appears first on the 1938 edition. I believe there was some dispute over the land beyond the Craven Heifer which wasn't resolved until the 1920s but I'd need to check my facts.

[Wendyf]

The new bit beyond the Craven Heifer was officially opened in February 1929.

[Stanley]

Thanks Wendy. Mrs Tordoff must have been getting confused with what she was told. But she was very old!

[Wendyf]

Perhaps she was just getting the Stone Trough mixed up with the Craven Heifer.

[Stanley]

[Stanley]

This map shows Gill Quarry which was filled in by the Council using it for household waste and later it was capped when the new road was put in as it passed through part of it so it qualifies as a forgotten corner. This map shows the course of the old road. I can't remember when the new road was put in but can remember using the road through the locks in the late 1950s.

[PanBiker]

They were working on it in 1964 when we used to go to the baths at Skipton from school.

[Stanley]

I was commenting on the higher social orders in another place when I remembered a forgotten corner from the mid 20th century.... Occasionally on my travels round the byways round Marton picking up milk I would come across The Pendle Forest and Craven Harriers. I see from THIS that they are still functioning under the auspices of the Bannisters at Coniston Cold. In those olden days they were in kennels at Gisburn and the 'master' was Mrs Coulthard from Gargrave Hall who was a local magistrate and had a very clear idea of her status when sat on or off a horse. They had a nasty habit of sitting round milk stands while waiting for a hare to turn up (that was what they chased....). You should have seen the disdainful looks I got if I turned up and wanted access to the milk. It was very clear to me where I sat on the social scale....
Thank God, as far as I am concerned, a forgotten corner.

[Stanley]

In the days after WW2 it wasn't unusual for farms to have a live-in German prisoner of war as free labour. Cyril Richardson at Little Stainton had one called 'Yup' and he was there for a couple of years and got on well with everyone. This was when it was common to have an Irishman to help at haytime and it was common knowledge that Wallace Metcalfe up the road at Stainton House had hired an Irishman and only got one day out of him in the hay field so Wallace had him mowing thistles with a scythe all month.
On day Cyril and Yup were spreading bag fertilizer, this was before the days of automatic spreaders, you tipped the bags in a cart and then drove the outfit slowly across the field with a man in the cart spreading the bag muck with a shovel. Wallace was leaning on the wall and as Cyril drove past he had a word with him asking if this was the new-fangled stuff he had been hearing about. Yup shouted back "Yes Mr Metcalfe, is for thistles, cheaper than Irishmen".
The whole of that story is a forgotten corner.

[Stanley]

Wallace Metcalfe liked to think he was lord of the manor at Stainton and one of his ploys was to have more kits on his stand than either Earnshawe or Richardson his neighbours. So he used to put kits full of water on the stand with the excuse that they were there to be used for watering cattle in a distant dry field. I asked him to stop doing this as I had to open each kit to make sure I was taking milk. He ignored me so one day I took 3 kits of water in and left 3 of milk which meant he had to bring them into the dairy himself.
That cured him.....