The opening of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal stimulated development along its course. At the same time it was only one facet of a wider change in industry as the steam age dawned. This increased economic activity stimulated population growth and house-building and this in turn meant a demand for more paved streets in towns. The growing textile towns over the border in Lancashire had plenty of suitable local stone for house-building but needed a harder material for the stone setts which were the universal paving method right through the 19th century. The stone from the two quarries on Salterforth Lane was ideal for this, remember Jack Platt telling us it was twice as hard to saw than the equivalent stone from the top quarries? It didn't take long for this opportunity to be realised and addressed. Let's look at the ownership and history of these quarries.
If you kept the map from last week, have a look at Bashfield Farm just over the canal bridge at the Anchor Inn. Look westwards and you'll see Hall Spout mentioned and just to the east of it 'Hydraulic Ram'. At this time Gledstone Estate at West Marton owned a lot of land in the area and Harold Duxbury told me that the ram at Hall Spout was put in by the estate to pump water up the hill to supply their other holdings. These included the quarry on the north side of Salterforth Lane which was rented from them by the Sagar family who ran it until closure in about 1930.
The quarry on the opposite side of the lane was originally part of Park Close Farm. In the Leeds Mercury of Saturday November 7th 1818 there was a sale notice for 25 acres of pasture in Salterforth which included Park Close, at the time of the sale the occupier was James Hartley. I'm assuming that it was after this sale that Park Close quarry was started. In the electoral rolls for 1835 to 1859 Joseph Barritt is mentioned as living at Park Close. I have evidence that in November 1857 a mortgage was taken out on Park Close Quarry by John Lonsdale, Joseph Barritt and William Barritt. Shortly after this William (Billycock) Bracewell was appointed trustee under a deed of assignment for the benefit of the creditors of the former owner. (Lonsdale and the Barritts?) In this capacity he sold the property at auction in 1867 and subsequently purchased it himself in 1870. The next mention of the quarry is in 1887 when it was included in the sale of the Bracewell properties after the failure of the Bracewell partnership. The buyers at the sale were a new company called the Salterforth Stone and Brick Company with capital of £5000. We have a list of the promoters of the company and one of them is H Marsden of Salterforth, boat owner. By 1897 the quarry was being run by a partnership of George Sagar (mentioned previously at the Waterworks Quarries) and a Mr W Chew, this partnership dissolved that year when Mr Chew retired. I can't say how much longer George Sagar ran Park Close but Harold Duxbury told me that at some time after 1900 a pork butcher from Barlick called Witham went into partnership with a man called Bill Moss who was supposed to run the quarry. Unfortunately Moss failed him so Whitham sold his shop, moved up to live at the quarry and ran it himself. As far as I know Whitham was the last operator of the quarry.
Notice the name of the Salterforth Stone and Brick Company in 1887. Bricks come into the equation because by then a brickworks had been built below the quarry using offal, the waste from the stone-getting. I have no direct evidence but I suspect Bracewell started this during his tenure. Harold Duxbury told me that it survived well into the 1920s but the brick quality was poor and eventually it was shut down.
Right, sorry about all the detail but I think we've got the ownership of the quarries sorted out now! Lets get back to stone setts. Sometime early in the 19th century both the quarries on Salterforth Lane started to produce stone setts for street paving in the Lancashire towns. They both built narrow gauge tramways down to the canal where the setts were loaded onto canal boats for delivery, the trucks held about 25cwt and ran on ten inch flanged wheels. Sagar's tramway went across the fields to a wharf on the side of the canal where Kelbrook New Road crosses the canal today and Park Close had a shorter track down to the canal at a point directly below the quarry south of the Anchor Inn. Incidentally, there was a boatyard at the same point where canal boats were built. The tramways operated by gravity with horses pulling the empty trucks back up to the quarry. Billy Brooks once told me that Sagars had a small steam locomotive at one time, he could remember it being derailed at one time on the sharp bend just above the wharf near the road bridge. Billy also said that the trucks frequently jumped off the track because they tended to come down too fast. Both quarries had large steam cranes and used explosives for rock-getting.
The picture we have built up of the quarries show how important they were to the economic life of the village. They also resulted in boat ownership in the village, boat building and traffic to the Lancashire towns. They even became important in the 20th century when bulk broken stone was needed for the beds of new roads. Sagar's quarry produced a lot of waste and for many years this was tipped on the land below the quarry. When Kelbrook New Road was built this was handy material for raising the road bed to level it and Jack Platt also told me that thousands of tons were carted to the new road out of Skipton to Keighley beyond the end of Broughton Road.
The quarries had a down beat end to their careers. Sagar's became a car breaker's yard with a garden centre below and Park Close was used as a scrap yard by Gibson's, then as a tip and recently it was proposed that it be used for storing reclaimed stone but this was refused on the grounds that the lane wasn't suitable for heavy traffic. It's a good job that these regulations weren't in place around 1820! I couldn't even guess at how many hundreds of thousands of tons of stone came out of that small but very busy piece of the hillside.
I have a little story for you. Fred Inman once told me that a cousin of his father used to work for John Sagar who was generally reckoned to be a hard employer. He had a bull terrier and used to take it to work with him. John Sagar came cross him one day and accused him of using it as a watchdog because every time he came to him he was working. He said either the dog stayed at home or they both went. Parkinson's cousin refused so John sacked him. Fred said that old John Sagar was right, the dog used to whimper every time it heard him coming!
The Park Close boat loaded with setts and ready for the journey to Burnley. About 1900.
