FORGOTTEN CORNERS

[plaques]

I was reading the other day that the Seven Stars was home to the Lodge of the 'Three Graces', masonic movement. This was back in 1792 with an address in 'Main Street'. Barnoldswick. I've no idea if this is the same Seven Stars but its use by the Masons may be more than coincidental.

In the Tracing-Board of the Seventeenth Degree, or Knight of the East and West, there is the representation of a man clothed in a white robe, with a golden girdle about his waist, and around his extended right hand are seven stars. This is an apocalyptic degree, and seven stars representing the perfect number symbolize the true messengers of the Christ. "And he had in his right hand seven stars"… — ( Revelations 1:16 )

Something to research on Stanley.

[Stanley]

That's got to be the same one P. Can you remember where the reference was? Thanks for the heads up and I've noted it anyway and it's now in the index....

[plaques]

Main Street

Church Street.

You may have to scroll down to find each entry.

[Stanley]

That's brilliant P, Hard new information, thanks very much!

[plaques]

Another bit of info: on the Seven Stars, from the Nelson leader Jan 1, 1937. passed to me by Ken Ranson.

.

Seven Stars.jpg

[Stanley]

I recognise the name R Slater Windle from Barlick in that report.
It surprised me that from the other evidence you cited Freemasonry didn't return to Barlick until 1920 when it was almost certainly still meeting in in the Seven Stars pub. It was 1966 when they bought the Vicarage and moved in there. I know that the Vicarage was used as a lodging house for Rolls Royce workers for a long time after 1942, Eddie Spencer mentions it in his story about moving here.
I also know that there were always close ties between the Anglican Church and the Masons. When I was in the choir at St Paul's on Heaton Moor after the war, Alfie Jeff, the Rector, was a prominent mason and conducted services for them in the church at which we sang. I was fascinated by all these old blokes wearing ceremonial aprons and sashes.
Years later I got word from Eddie's daughter who lived in my house in East Hill Street. I've bumped the article about Eddie Spencer and how he came to Barlick. Another fascinating corner!

[Stanley]

It's probably as well that we tend to forget the bad times and see the past through rose tinted spectacles but the job of the historian is to remind us of the reality of the past because many a time what looked like a very dark cloud can prove to have a silver lining. We have a lovely example in Barlick in the story of the catastrophic decline of our major industry, textiles, from 1920 onwards. Perhaps now is a good time to remind ourselves of this.

WHEN THE VIKINGS INVADED BARLICK.

November 20th this year (2000) is the 60th anniversary of the Viking invasion of Barlick. No, I haven’t lost my marbles, these particular Vikings didn’t wear funny hats and drag longships around with them, they were fitters who worked for the Rover Car Co. whose logo, carried on all their radiators is a Viking Longship
Regular readers will remember me telling you about a surprise telephone call I got a couple of months ago from Eddie Spencer who used to live in the house where I am now. The good news about Eddie is that he has survived a serious operation and is now on the way to a full recovery but with a bit less lung capacity than he started out with! He rang me up the other day to remind me that November 20th this year is the 60th anniversary of the day he and his five mates came up from Coventry to inaugurate what was then The Rover Company’s but is now Rolls Royce’s association with the town. He wanted to tell the story for our readers but isn’t fully up to speed yet so I offered to tell his story for him. So what follows is Eddies account of Rover and Barlick.

EDDIE’S STORY.
The week leading up to November 20th 1940 had been bad in Coventry, we had several twelve hour air raids and the city was getting knocked to bits. I was working for the Rover Company as a service fitter and since the beginning of the war we had been working flat out reconditioning Armstrong Siddely Cheetah aero engines which were used in Oxford trainers and Anson coastal defence aircraft. It was pretty obvious to everyone that the Germans knew exactly where the Rover works was and it was only a matter of time before it was completely flattened and essential war production ceased.
The government had foreseen this danger and the Ministry of Aircraft Production had scoured the country looking for out of the way places where there were empty factories and a local workforce who were used to factory work and could be re-trained. The Pendle area was perfect, plenty of empty mills and a reliable labour force so the MAP requisitioned some of them. They took Bankfield, Calf Hall and Butts in Barlick, Grove at Earby, Sough mill and Waterloo at Cltheroe. Overnight these were all designated Rover factories and turned over to war production. Of course, it wasn’t quite as simple as that!
The first we knew about it was when six of us, Bill Tilsley, Jimmy Johnson, Sid Shaw, Cyril Galby, Les Banks and myself were told to get ourselves up to a place called Barnoldswick and start working. A bus was laid on to take us but Les and I went up in his Singer Bantam car and after many adventures in the dark with no maps, no signposts, no street lighting and a slipping clutch we arrived outside Bankfield Shed in the early hours of the morning. Mrs King, who lived in a house at the end of the lane down to the shed, gave me and Les a pot of tea and a bacon butty at seven o’clock out of the kindness of her heart and this was our welcome to Barlick.
We set to straight away. We found a room, cleaned it out, scrounged some old benches and installed our toolboxes. This was the start of what was to be a lifelong association with the town for both me and the industry. Within a few days, the massive (in those days anyway!) RAF ‘Queen Mary’ lorries were delivering aero engines to us for reconditioning. We couldn’t get these wagons down the side of the mill so we had to unload them by hand and carry all the material into the mill.
In a very short time we had our act together and were turning good engines out. Conditions were primitive, no heating, no service machinery and we had to do test runs on a makeshift wooden cradle out in the road. If we were short of work at Bankfield we went up to Calf Hall to help with the conversion of that mill into what was to become our permanent home. I can still see the looms in the shed and the look on Mr Metcalfe’s face as we tore out the shafting and gearing to make room for our machinery.
Eventually we moved into Calf Hall and Bankfield started to concentrate entirely on the development of the jet engine. It was strange being in Barlick after the hell that was Coventry in those days. It seemed so quiet and peaceful, we could hardly believe there was a war on at all. I suppose that nowadays we’d be diagnosed as having post traumatic stress! All we knew then was that it was a definite improvement.
We were billeted in the Vicarage and the landlord and landlady were Jack and Eileen Usher. They were from Birmingham originally and Jack worked on crankshafts with me but his wife looked after the Vicarage. By this time we were full time at Calf Hall and I remember many a morning getting a lift on Town’s horse drawn coal wagon up into town on the way to work. Many girls who worked in the factories were billeted at the end of Greenberfield Lane in the building that is now the Rolls Welfare and Sports centre.
Our families were still in Coventry in the middle of the bombing of course and we did all we could to get back home to visit but this wasn’t easy. If we went by rail we had to leave for Skipton at six in the evening and we were lucky if we got to Coventry by eight the following morning. The trains were often delayed and were packed so we often had to stand all the way. Travelling by car was better but there was the problem of petrol rationing. Fortunately the RAF drivers always had plenty of spare fuel in jerry cans and we could buy them for the price of a pint so we managed!
Life wasn’t all doom and gloom, we managed the odd pint of beer and occasionally we had parties in the billets. We often walked down to Earby via Ben Lane carrying bottles of home made whisky which a man and his sister distilled in a farm not a million miles from the canal bridge. One of our co-workers, Tommy Rushton kept the Commercial so we were often in there as well. I remember we were having a party at the Vicarage just before Christmas 1941 and we ran out of beer so me and my mate went up town with a big enamel jug to get some. We had a couple of pints in the Commercial and set off down Wellhouse Road with the jug. Just before we got to Skipton Road we were stopped by a bobby who wanted to know what we were doing. We told him about the party and offered him a drink. He told us he couldn’t drink on duty, looked round, took his helmet off and lowered the level in our jug for us!
As time went on things got well organised. Gill Brow was built by the Ministry of Aircraft Production as an ancillary to Bankfield which was working on the development of the jet engine. Calf Hall was still doing the Cheetah engines and Butts was where the American Pratt and Whitney engines were overhauled.
By 1943 demand for the Cheetahs was falling but a new engine had been developed by Rolls for use as a tank engine, it was an un-supercharged version of the Merlin and was called the Meteor. A deal had been done between Rover and Rolls and we got the new tank engine while Rolls took over Bankfield and the jet engine. Production of the Meteor in Coventry at the rebuilt Rover factory was behind schedule and several of the old Coventry hands, me included were sent down to help out. We found out later that the main problem was union activity and, in effect, we had been sent down as strike-breakers. This wasn’t a happy time but at least we were with our families. I had met a lass in Barlick called Widdup who lived on Calf Hall Road and was now a family man myself.
Rolls Royce were now in charge at Bankfield and Gill brow but the other mills stayed in Rover hands until the end of the war when all the facilities were moved back to the Midlands. Rolls however stayed in Barlick and grew into the world class industry they are today.
After the war I wanted to stay on with Rover but we ended up having to live in a bed sit with a bad landlady and finally we decided to move back to Barlick. I bought the house that Stanley lives in now and started a small garage in Butts yard doing bodywork and paint spraying with a home made compressor. I played about with my motor bikes and cars and it was a happy time until by 1963 things were going downhill in Barlick. I visited my family in my home town of Holyhead which at that time was booming so we decided to move there. So, things have gone full circle, I was born in Holyhead and here I am back home again but I still have fond memories of the funny little town that played such a big part in my life. As soon as I am a bit fitter I shall be back for a visit.

That’s Eddie’s story as he told it to me. I’m sure he’s right, it’s a good thing to remind ourselves that due to an accident of fate, Hitler gave Barlick a lifeline at a time when the cotton industry was in sharp decline. People forget that many mills were closed before the war started. Where would Barlick have been without the aero engine industry? The strange thing is that this was not the result of some strategic economic planning, it was an accident of fate.

As a historian there’s an even stranger facet to this, when Barlick faced disaster in 1887 with the collapse of the Bracewell empire it was the Shed Companies who saved the day by investing in the town. It was these same mills that saved us again in 1940 by becoming an invaluable aid to war production. The cotton industry served us well for 100 years. The aero engine industry has been here for sixty years. As Eddie said to me, “Good luck to Rolls and the town.” But how long can they go on? What pulls us out of the mire next time round?

SCG/14 October 2000
1810 words

There is a sequel to Eddie's story in that when the shadow factories were returned to the owners after the war we had modernised factories standing empty at low rents and an available workforce, this was what triggered the revival of industry in the town, Carlson, Silentnight, Armoride and Bristol Tractors to name but a few.
What looked at the time like a disaster became, purely by accident, a vehicle for investment in the town that still serves us well today.
Who knows, the disruption of industry and the economy caused by the pandemic might prove to have surprising consequences and not all of them bad. Let's look on the bright side!

[Stanley]

Sorry about that, due to a mistake in filing I posted almost the same article twice. Not the end of the world but an error nonetheless.
My forgotten corner this morning is quite a big one. It's what was our 'normal' way of life. It's a strange time, an almost complete cessation of normal economic activity and so many people discouraged from even going out for a walk! Fairly obvious that this can't go on but very difficult to see how we get out of it.
On the positive side we see definite improvements in peace and quiet, air quality, clear skies with no vapour trails and a definite reduction in the background noise all this activity causes. The birds are singing louder and I get the impression that this calm and clarity has altered the weather as well, it looks to me like a good year for blossom and that will have a knock-on later in the year. We are already getting reports from further down the country that it's a very good year for fruit blossom and I saw apple blossom in an urban hedgerow in Barlick yesterday.
No point in worrying about the down-side, we just have to accept what we get. At the same time recognise the advantages and enjoy them whilst at the same time remembering that some are worse off than others.

[Stanley]

One thing I have noted during the current unpleasantness is that the old habit of conversations 'over the garden wall' is alive and well and seems to ne to be increasing. At the same time I can't help noting that so many people are erecting barriers between themselves and the outside world.



Here's a recent example in our back street. I don't like them. I'll admit to that. I like to be able to see out into the street, it's surprising how much information I get sat in my rocking chair in the kitchen! What intrigues me is the motive behind them. Is it to shut the outside world out? Or is it dislike of passers by seeing what is happening in your house, a combination of the two I suppose. There appears to be two opposing mind sets.
What I am sure of is that according to the police, thieves love them because once inside the barrier they can pursue their activities unobserved, at one time it used to be high privet hedges that were the problem. I wonder if that ever occurs to the occupants?
I remember once observing the same syndrome on the beach at Blackpool, families arrived and the first thing they did was erect wind breaks to make what was in effect a replica of their sitting room at home.
Chacun a son gout as they say but it's not for me....

[PanBiker]

I remember once observing the same syndrome on the beach at Blackpool, families arrived and the first thing they did was erect wind breaks to make what was in effect a replica of their sitting room at home.

I think the main reason to erect a windbreak at Blackpool is to do what it says on the tin, not necessarily to hide or replicate the front room. It's usualy nithering at the best of times.

[Tizer]

When we lived in the village someone moved into one of the old houses which had a lovely 3-foot stone wall between the front garden and the lane. They immediately put a 3-foot high fence, like the one in your photo, on top of the wall. People complained to the parish council that it was ugly, unfriendly and out of keeping with the `street scene' and the council was able to make the houseowners remove it.

[Stanley]

Ian, they put them up even on good days.
Tiz, what a sensible attitude. I approve but would never complain about it, if they feel the need, their loss. I like the back street life, interesting how some participate and some don't... One thing that promotes contact is that many of the houses are back to backs and so don't have the option of using a different door, they have to walk up the dead end street.
I remember that when I was doing the interviews for the LTP I found that in some areas there was a strict etiquette for contact and visiting people's houses. Meal times were strictly observed, curtains were used as signals when visitors were welcome and people were very careful not to advertise the fact they could afford anything superior to their neighbours.
This wasn't universal. I remember once being at my mate Ted's house when Joyce's mother who lived on Crow Row Row came in all of a lather. It was quite acceptable to walk into a good friend's house without knocking and Joyce had just walked in on a friend of hers in a compromising situation on the kitchen table with an old bloke who lived on the row. What made us all laugh was the main thing that was exercising her was the fact that the man still had his straw hat on!
Another incident comes to mind. I was once visiting Kath, Jimmy Thompson's wife, in West Marton village where he was the Smith. Jimmy came in all of a fluster. He had just been round to a neighbour's house to return something they had borrowed and found her ironing in the nude (as was her habit) in the kitchen. He dropped the tin of beans on the table and beat a swift retreat.
As they used to say in the Heifer, we may be poor but we have seen life!

[Stanley]

One of the most common sights in our streets used to be the coal chap. In those days everyone had an open coal fire and the coal was delivered weekly in one hundredweight bags. In Barlick most of the coal holes were accessed from the back street and this could pose problems of access at times. Mondays were a bad day for back street deliveries because of the common practice of stringing clothes lines across the street. In some cases this applied to front streets as well.



This very old clothes line hook survives to this day in Wellhouse Street.
All coal men had a back leather. This was a very heavy leather 'apron' with cross bands of leather fastened with copper rivets. I say apron but it was worn on the back and very often was reinforced by a clean sack worn as a hood to protect the back of the head. The bags were very heavy and filled at the coal yard, each one had to have a metal disc riveted in the top corner certifying that it contained 112lbs, a hundredweight. If a delivery was multiple bags it was the practice to throw the empty bags on the floor at the point of delivery so that the householder could count them to assure themselves they had a correct delivery.
All this is a forgotten corner now. Very little coal is delivered in bags. I see a wagon in Barlick from the Settle Coal Company occasionally.

[Stanley]

Seventy five years ago today we had an interesting day at St Thomas' School in Heaton Chapel. Part way though the day Mr Bowers, our headmaster, called all classes together and announced that the war was over and we all had the rest of the day off. We all went out into the playground and danced round shouting "The war's over!".
We had spent six years in danger of first bombing, then fear of invasion and after that daily news of death and conflict. Then there was rationing! I think we all thought that sweet rationing would end immediately but that had to wait until 1953 with a lot of the other rationing as well.
I have heard experts saying that we kids didn't really understand what was happening. They weren't there and they are wrong, of course we knew! There was still the war in the Pacific of course but that was a long way away and didn't seem to matter as much.



It was August 1945 before we had our Victory over Japan street party and I can still remember it. Someone had enough sense to take this photograph at the junction of Newby Road and Bankfield Avenue Heaton Norris. You wouldn't believe how much food there was, our mothers must have been saving up all year.
All a forgotten corner now but not for some of us.......

[plaques]

I was just relating to Mrs P. That down our neck of the woods on the edge of Burnley there was a cinder path between the allotments and hen pens leading to a wooden bridge over the canal. Next to this was a wooden block house that the home guard occupied presumably to stop U-Boats coming up the canal. VE day was celebrated by burning the block house down that is after the pen chaps had liberated the best of the timber.

[PanBiker]

Just seen your picture Stanley shown on the national news, they were doing a feature about a socially distanced VE Day celebration in Stockport and there you were as an example of how it was back in the day albeit a VJ Day party

[Stanley]

Yes I saw it and I won't argue about VJ or VE, I always thought it was VJ in August and the weather supports this but there you are.... I think I remember the lass who was waiting to grab the cake. I wonder how many of the others are still alive? There were three roads, Norris Avenue, Bankfield Avenue and Newby Road, the celebration was a shared one.
It raised a doubt about my recollection of VE day but I think we would have been on the summer holidays in August and not at school.
Whatever, nice to see it remembered and who knows, OG might have been the trigger, the pic is on Google Images....
So, not a forgotten corner!

[Whyperion]

This week is the last week of Stanley's View as we know it.
I don't intend to stop writing and my intention is to continue with a series of occasional articles but it remains to be seen how I will manage these without the discipline and deadline of a publication date! I'm not getting any younger.

I wonder if more than the written word is needed. I have been part binging on 'The History Guy' channel on youtube. It is american but I have not noted any bias of tone or content to get picky about , just a one face speaking to camera, and he has improved with age the speech and presentation, there is more than one contributor to the channel content although only Mr (and of late) Mrs History Guy front to camera with a ident them and logo, of some of the more obscure history of rulers, battles, epidemics , industry and the general stuff that makes the past shape the present.

[Stanley]

More on the VJ party on Bankfield Avenue. I spoke to my sister yesterday and she confirmed it was VJ day in August. She reminded me as well that by that time we had moved house to Heaton Moor and that explains why I was at St Thomas' school in Heaton Chapel at the time.

[Whyperion]

I didnt think VJ day got that much of celebration, but I suppose any reason for a party is useful. Reading today that part of Japan not fighting on was Stalin and Russia doing bit of invading, when Japan had expected some support from Russia. As in WW1 though forces were retained overseas, in Far East and other parts of the dying British Empire after 1945, a mix of the new National Service and those who had been conscripted during the later months of the war.

[Stanley]

At the moment we have a lot of forgotten corners, hopefully most of them only temporary but who knows what the future will bring?



This is a forgotten corner on many levels, the Wakes Week crowds waiting to board the train for a seaside holiday, very likely Blackpool. The steam railway is a permanent loss of course but social distancing means that a crowd like this is for the moment, impossible. There is another forgotten corner. We are all aware of the change in holiday habits, gone are the days when the town virtually shut down for the annual holidays. At the same time the advent of cheap air travel made foreign holidays accessible to many and they took advantage. The annual exodus to a favourite boarding house in a Blackpool back street on the bed and cruet system faded into the past and people chased guaranteed sun in the Costas. Now we have the possibility of a reversal with the collapse of air travel and the prospect of spacing out of passengers making higher prices inevitable. This means only one thing, holidays on mainland Britain are going to become popular again, already, many home destinations are reporting enquiries for bookings later this year. It may be that a revival of domestic holidays could be an unforeseen consequence of the Covid pandemic.
These are strange times and forecasting how things will change is dangerous but we can be fairly certain that there will be some surprises. We would do well to be aware of this and in particular support anything that is local. One thing that will have become obvious to many who habitually commuted by car to work, many to Manchester, is how expensive that commute was. Who knows, they may start thinking about car expenses and this in itself could have an affect on the associated services that supported that car use. There may be some more very surprising consequences and not all of them bad.

[Whyperion]

It will still rain in Blackpool, if everyone goes by Car (or camper van) its not going to be very much fun. The summer holiday was always going to be Septemberish anyway for me if we get time, maybe in Mid Lincs but might just be either a day trip to Macclesfield or some log cabin in North Yorkshire. Otherwise the deck chair in the back yard is ok and book in four days of food deliveries.

[Stanley]

Sorry for the flare out, this wasn't one of my pics. However there's enough detail there to see that this Harrison Brothers Bedford wagon has a full load of bottles stacked five crates high. This is 1956 and the wagon is almost new, it had a big petrol engine and when it was running all you could hear was the cooling fan. This load of bottles went out in late morning each day to Moorside Dairy in Bradford where the man in charge was 'Cowboy' Jack Dennison, he got his by-name because he always wore a Stetson hat.
This load had a history. There was a well known family in Bradford, the Fattorini's, they made their money in Ice Cream and later had a very successful jewellery business. In the early days perhaps even prior to 1920, they took advantage of depressed prices in farming and bought farms out beyond Clitheroe around Chipping and Chaigley to supply the milk for their ice cream but for retail as well. Harrisons had the contract to pick the milk up and deliver it in kits to Moorside but by the 1950s the retail bottle trade had outstripped the ice cream and it was more economical to bottle the milk at Marton. That was when Harrisons bought this wagon and put a Bayko Flitch in the chassis to lengthen it by six feet. That was when it got its name, the Queen Mary. At first they loaded it six crates high but it was obvious this was too much as the chassis took a visible bend! Common sense prevailed and the load was cut to five high but even so was at the limit. The wagon was designed for 5 tons, increased to seven and we were putting ten tons on it which was just inside the fourteen ton overall weight limit. It picked up the Chaigley milk in the early morning and delivered the Bradford load afterwards. Bradford was 27 miles away and as the Milk Marketing Board paid transport costs it was very profitable as it came in the 26 to 50 mile revenue band.
Eventually reorganisation in the dairy industry meant that Moorside became an Express Dairy branch and the connection was severed with the Chaigley farms. This coincided with the MMB taking over milk transport with their own wagons and the transport was managed by West Marton Dairies and that was when we lost the dairy work and Harrison Brothers became a one wagon firm, me with a TK Bedford and an 'A' Licence. That was when I was forced out on the tramp but that's another story.
There were many funny incidents connected with this wagon and I'll have a look at them tomorrow, all forgotten corners!

[Stanley]

When I first knew the Queen Mary Harold Stone was the driver, a steady lad. One day while he was picking his can load up round Chaigley the near side back wheel bearing gave notice. We changed the bearing while he loaded in the bottle dock, imagine the reaction of H&S if you did something like that now! Off he went and about half an hour later there was a telephone call. Harold was approaching Niffany Bridge near Skipton when he noticed a strange thing, a pair of rear wheels and a hub overtaking him, bursting through the fence and rolling off into the fields. You've guessed it, we had slipped up and had to get Ferrands out to sort him out. He was only about two hours late at Bradford.
Another time when John Geldard was driving he got to Crickle Farm about half a mile from the dairy and came across one way working for road repairs controlled by a lollipop man. As he squeezed through the verge collapsed under his near side rear wheel and the wagon slowly subsided on its side. He walked back to the dairy and appraised us of his difficulty and we all piled into a couple of wagons and went down to the scene. The road was completely blocked of course. Miraculously there wasn't a single broken bottle, it had happened so slowly. The only damage was that many of the foil caps had bulged. We loaded the lot on the two wagons, freed the Queen Mary which wasn't damaged and went back to the dairy where we swilled all the bottles off and ran the lot through the capping machine again. Back on the wagon and off to Bradford, no damage done only time lost.
I mentioned the MMB rate earlier, we got the 50 mile rate for a 27 mile trip. There was also a premium to take account that the wagon had a petrol engine and burned more fuel. As fuel prices rose the brothers decided to replace the GMC petrol engine with a Ford 6D diesel engine. This was a good saving but the MMB were never informed. Only problem was that occasionally the MMB did a check run and when they came I had to do the run with my diesel wagon under the pretext that the Queen Mary was off the road for servicing. That meant I had to load six crates high to get somewhere near the full load. It was too much and I had to drive very carefully to Bradford.
Today all this would be seen as a 'cowboy operation' and we'd never get away with it but they were different times, you did what you had to do to get the job done. We never had an accident that caused injury. A forgotten corner....

[Stanley]

We weren't the only firm operating imaginatively. Before the 1968 Transport Act there were very few regulations. There was a man at Skipton, John S Counter, who built his own wagons from damaged vehicles bought from the scrap yard, he converted them to 4 wheeled tippers and had a thriving trade in aggregate from Skipton Rock quarry behind the caste.
There was a firm down the country, I forget the name, who went the opposite way. They bought used 4 wheel Commer tipping wagons and converted them to tractors which they used as power units for articulated trailers. The Commers had two stroke engines and were dreadfully underpowered being originally 5 ton capacity. Despite this I used to meet them all over the country hammering away manfully.
Gross weights were cheerfully disregarded, overloading was the general rule. Davies Bothers of Charlton were renowned for this. They had a lot of 'four in line' trailers, so called because of the configuration of the back axle which had two sets of widely spaced wheels. They loaded those trailers unmercifully, 5 tons over weight was moderate for them.
The 1968 Act under Barbara Castle brought about a sea change. Annual tests were brought in and every wagon was tested initially. Proper standards were brought in and each wagon was 'plated' with a maximum gross weight and this was only allowed if brakes reached a certain standard. We had an old Albion that we had been complaining about for years on account of its dreadful brakes. The new test found that the handbrake was inadequate but even so it was better than the footbrake! It had to be retired immediately.
New legislation is not generally welcomed but the 1968 Act was well received by the drivers who had had to put up with some really dangerous vehicles over the years. They were a thing from the past and together with the new, heavily policed regulations on permissible hours made our lives much safer. It ended the old joke about Slaters of Leeds. A child once asked her mother if Daddy was dead and was told "No Love, he works for Slaters".
Good riddance! A very welcome forgotten corner.