FORGOTTEN CORNERS

[Stanley]

This morning's forgotten corner is Queen Anne's Bounty. This was a fund financed by Queen Anne in the 18th century to support churches who had lost their tithes to the crown during the Dissolution. The fund bought farms and gave them to the church so they had the rent from them. Gill Church had several grants. First was Mill Close farm and land, this is the site of Victory Park now. This brought in £9 rent a year and included an allotment on Whitemoor added in 1820. The church sold it to BUDC in 1920 for £4,000.
Gill also had a farm at Starbotton from the same source and I have an idea that Hey Farm was QAB land at one time also.

[Nolic]

Never heard of QAB. Thanks for educating me again Comrade. Nolic

[Stanley]

She evidently had a conscience about the Crown appropriating the tithes during the Dissolution Comrade. There was more than one Bounty, the subsequent ones were known as Augmentations.
Another forgotten corner of church history is the 'Royal Peculiar'. (LINK)
This is a church directly responsible to the Crown and not the Bishop and Diocese. Barnoldswick is (or was) a Peculiar. This came about because it was directly under the control of Kirkstall Abbey until the Dissolution and that point the Crown took over all the abbey's possessions, rights and privileges and this included the Advowson (LINK) of Gill which was the right to present the priest in charge. If there was no evidence of law-breaking, the Crown was very aware of its responsibility for the fate of the monks when a foundation was dissolved. Due to the fact that they controlled many churches some of the monks could be ordained as priests (normally they didn't go through this procedure) and put in charge of the churches the foundation controlled. In the case of Barlick we have no direct evidence as the Diocesan records of the incumbents don't start until the 1590s but it is most likely that the monk in charge of Gill Church was already ordained and kept his post until death.
One feature of the Advowson is that it could be held on behalf of the Crown by a lay person and this explains why for many years the incumbent of Gill was chosen by different owners of the right. This was very handy if you had a son who couldn't inherit or go in the army and you had the Advowson of a church, you sent him to a university or other theological college, he was ordained and became a vicar!

[Stanley]

I've finished trawling through Warner and indexing whatever grabs me. In case you're wondering, yes, at times I duplicate cards already in the index but because I am doing it in more depth and in the light of present knowledge there will be new facts. I am doing the same now for JB Griffin's biography and here are a few interesting bits I found.



Jim Marsh (extreme left) and his clogger's shop at Dam Head. This pic is in Barnoldswick, a century of change and was brought to my attention by Rodney Birtwistle of Barnoldswick.
According to Griffin, Jim Marsh started his business in the cellar of his house in Rainhall Road. The wooden hut pictured above was evidently progress!
Griffin himself went to another clogger and shoe repairer as apprentice. This was Mr Shackleton who had a shop on Wellhouse road, he did the clogging helped by Albert Wilkinson and his son Smith Shackleton was the shoe repairer. Both were keen cyclists and Shackleton Senior always claimed he held the record for the Cowling to Colne road race.
Griffin mentions other businesses active before the Great War.
Two brothers, Tommy and Jackie Bailey had a dairy in Beech Street. I think this would be the same business run by Brush Dobson and his wife in the 1950s when I delivered their bottled milk and cream. 'Brush' got his nickname when he worked at Rolls Royce as his workmates never saw him doing anything but sweeping up.
He also mentions that the Post Office in Albert Road (Later Sneath's who was also a barber.) was run by Mr Baldwin, or rather it was owned by him but run by his son and daughter. Baldwin was also the Town Crier known as 'The Bellman'. (Later, Gordon Carr the printer at top of Butts started a weekly advertising paper called The Bellman)
He talked also about Garra Pickles (He calls him Garry but I have always known him as Garra and I occasionally had a drink with him in the Dog.



This is Garra with his dog in this 1965 pic of Manchester Road before it was widened.
Griffin confirmed that he sold buckets of water at 1 1/2d each. He says that he also acted as a carrier to Colne and brought back groceries from the wholesaler (Probably Duckworth's) for shops in the town including the small one on Crow Row that I knew as Mrs Brown's but was originally Jack Slater's. (By-name 'Jack Tarty, don't ask me why!)
He also mentioned going to a shop run by Lofthouse on Rainhall Road for a cane for his schoolmaster. I always wondered where they got them!
He says that at weekend there was a small number of market stalls on the forecourt of the Cross Keys. I have seen pics of them on Church Street outside St James'. He said that two regulars at the Cross Keys were Lol Carrol and a Mr Norcross who both sold sweets.
Finally he talks about Mudd's Mineral Water Manufactory and bottling plant being on Moseley Street behind the then Wesleyan Chapel.
Only small things but they all add to what we know about the social history of the town.....

[Stanley]

More Griffin yesterday. He was talking about c.1920 and had this to say about Fred Windle.
He was son of Slater Windle (By-name 'Slate Plummer') and Fred and his father were tapers at Wellhouse Mill. Quite a high status job then.In the evenings Fred retired to a wooden hut in the Gas Works Yard where he repaired motor bikes. (Johnny Pickles respected him and when Henry Brown and Sons went bust Fred was one of the men who rallied round and lent him tackle to start on his own.)
Fred's family were growing up so he decided to go into the garage business full time. He got premises down Skipton Road at the end of Vicarage Road. Son Maurice was the mechanic, Jim set up the funeral business and Rachel was in charge of day to day running and admin.
Rachel had bright ginger hair and she once told me about having a joy ride in a plane that landed in Barlick in the mid 1920s or late 30s.
They were in business until the late 80s or 90s but by then they were getting on a bit. Not sure when they closed.
Maurice and Jim were famous for their short temper. Robert Aram once told me that he called in there once to check a flat tyre and as he was inflating it Maurice ran out with an axe and cut the air line in two. He didn't hang about to find out what was happening.....



Maurice at a wedding at Gill in 1976. When Maurice died his funeral service was attended by all the garage mechanics in the town dressed in clean overalls........

[PanBiker]

Maurice drove me to my wedding in Carleton in 1976. He had a trick of finding the firing sequence of HT leads from the distributor by sticking the plug caps on his fingers and getting someone to turn over the engine.

[Stanley]

He was a great advocate of spraying the underside of any vehicle with a mixture of waste oil and paraffin, he said a fitter's work bench never got rusty. I agreed with him and always did it with my cars.
Someone once asked me if he was still alive and I said I thought so, he was still in the front seat of the hearse. A few days after Maurice collared me in the Co-op car park and said he had heard what I said. He thought it was hilarious and he said that when people asked him how he was he used to tell them he was still in the front seat.....
Yesterday was more Griffin and he talks about the start of motor transport in Barlick after the Great War.
He says that Lance Bibby had an engineering shop on Bank Street on the site which later became the ambulance depot. Katie corner from that on the other side of Hill Street was George Naylor's garage. He ran a taxi service with a Ford Model T and later got a small flat bed wagon for general carrying. This had a charabanc body which was put on it at weekends for trips out with passengers. Griffin thought he might have been the first in Barlick to do this.
Talks about what an obstacle the steep slope up to the old Coates canal bridge was on Skipton Road. With the first charas passengers had to alight at the bottom and walk up. The hearse had to wait until someone at the top signalled the road was clear (Too narrow for two vehicles abreast) and then it took a run at hill at the gallop.
Birch and Allen ran a charabanc from Valley Road but the partnership didn't last long.
Cramp Hoyle at the Corn Mill had a flat bed wagon driven by a man called Barlow.
Bradley's at Bankfield mill had a larger wagon for cloth and yarn .
Wild and Hide formed a partnership running wagons from a depot on Colne Road above Bancroft Mill. Hide dropped out and Wild Bros started in the garage in Cobden Street which they used right up to finishing in the late 1960s or early 70s.
Premier Motors was a partnership of John Tempest, Jim Cowgill and JW Smith. Ran one of the first bus services to Skipton. Drivers were paid £2-10-0 a week, Single fare to Skipton was 9d and 1/5 return. The terminus in Barlick was outside the Conservative Club in Station Road.
Castle Motors was based in Skipton and was a partnership between Jim Wynn, John Rimmer and Bill Morris. The Barlick terminus was the forecourt of the Seven Stars pub and they ran Morris one ton motors with a 14 seat body on them. Eventually they were taken over by Ribble Motors.
E Laycock and sons took over Premier Motors and ran Barlick to Skipton and Earby.
Odd facts he mentions. Richard Mitton was a chemist on Church street and acted as a doctor and veterinary as well. Duke Slater had a pie shop on Church Street and was also a dealer in horses and later second-hand cars. He used to buy vehicles at Pemberton's Auction in Deansgate Manchester



Pennine Bus. c.1925.



Castle Motors bus. c. 1920.

[Stanley]

Griffin started moving about a bit in the late 1920s but I gleaned one or two facts.....
Pennine Buses were started in Barlick around 1925 by a Jim Windle, a different one than the garage I think. When I knew them they were a Gargrave firm owned by a Mr Simpson, later taken over by Ribble I think. They Bought Ezra Laycock's out in 1972.
The Wharfedale Bus Company ran out of a garage in Sackville street in Skipton Owned by a Mr Nelson. Ran a Dales bus service from 1922 to 1930 when they were taken over by the West Yorkshire Road Car Company.
Stephenson and Fotherby. Allan Stephenson ran buses on a Skipton to Bolton Abbey service from a garage in Firth Street Skipton but later moved to Court Lane. His dad ran Stephenson's taxi service but he left the district and the taxis were taken over by Lawson Hutchinson out of a garage in Albion Yard Skipton. Allan had a partner, a printer named Ernest Fotherby who owned the Albion yard premises, his printing business was on the top floor and the taxis below. One night an attempt to steal petrol by syphoning from the taxis went wrong and caused a fire which completely destroyed both businesses.
The Road Traffic Act of 1930 (LINK) modernised legislation on traffic and as far as buses were concerned led to the introduction of Traffic Commissioners and tighter regulation and inspection of the industry.
Facts like these wan indexed and entered into the main index fill out the picture of what society was like 100 years ago. It's tedious work gathering them but once done, connections can be made and a coherent picture emerges. Any flaws in memory eventually become evident if they don't fit in with the bigger picture. Until that happens you can trust them.

[Cathy]

Stanley could you keep a look-out for any reference to a William (Billy) Pollard please. He was a Men's Tailor in Barnoldswick.

[Stanley]

Cathy, the only Bill Pollard I have a card for was a weaver at Long Ing about 1900, his by by-name was Jim Dux and Billy Brooks mentions him in his LTP evidence. Billy wove at Long Ing at the same time....

[Nolic]

Colin Pollard used to have a Tailors shop near the Paragon Library in the 1960's. Nolic

[Stanley]

Yes Comrade, I thought of that and then forgot to mention it, thanks. He used to work at Bristol Tractors before he opened the tailor's shop and he and mother were as thick as thieves! We used to pull her leg about him, she thought he was a lovely lad!

[Cathy]

Just thought I would ask in the off-chance that you might read his name while trawling thru JB Griffin. You seem to be giving bits of info about a lot of people who lived in Barlick and had business 's etc.

[Stanley]

Good thought Cathy but no, nothing so far.

[Stanley]

The Notre Dame fire reminded me of this. Dotcliffe Mill after the fire of 2 May 1959. Never proved but thought to be another attack by the Fire Bug who was never discovered. I often think that whoever it was is probably still out there..... Gone but not forgotten....

[Stanley]

Bob King had quite a lot of experience with the Firebug, I wonder if any of it survived the crash?
One of the things I noted when I was picking milk up was the number of barns that had their main roof timbers but that was all. I soon discovered they were all the result of barn fires, usually caused by spontaneous combustion of imperfectly dried hay being stacked in the mow.
I remember Lionel Gleed, the first farmer I worked with in Warwickshire telling me of the dangers. He remembered having to help to cut into a mow that was overheating to cool it down before it combusted. They used hay knives, a tool I later became familiar with because I had to use one every day in winter to cut silage from the outside clamp for the cattle. See THIS video of an American farmer trying one out.



This was the type I used and if you kept them sharp they did a good job, and I mean razor sharp! It was hard cutting but you could make a lovely job in solid silage and cut out square blocks that were easy to handle and feed to the cattle.
As for the main beams surviving, they were either Oak or Baltic Pine and once they charred on the outside they were almost fireproof and took so long to burn through that they remained intact if the fire brigade came to attack the main fire.
Later on when I was doing Ellenroad I made it my business to learn about fires, what caused them and what the relative strengths of various constructions were. An insurance assessor told me two things that struck me, he said that usually it wasn't buildings that catch fire but the contents which makes sense. Then he told me something that surprised me. Talking about which type of roof withstood fire best before collapsing he said that generally metal structure failed first because when red hot the metal lost its strength, concrete beams were a close second because they exploded and big timber beams lasted longest because as they charred they became in effect fireproof. He said that fire retardant paints were based on this principle, they char and in effect form an incombustible surface on whatever they were protecting.
A forgotten corner and useful information!

[Stanley]

The more I immerse myself in conditions in the town in the past the more obvious it becomes that one of the big improvements we have seen is the gradual improvements in overall cleanliness, in particular, food hygiene.
In 1900 most roads in the town were dry macadam, limestone dust in effect as a cap. In wet weather it turned to mud, in dry weather it became dust. The traffic on the streets included carts carrying manure from the stables, waste from the ash pits and the night soil carts carrying the contents of the dry toilets. Add to this the horse muck and any other nasty you care to imagine. The carts leaked and everything on the surface was mixed together,
Now consider the amount of food that was exposed unprotected for sale in the shops including meat fish bread and vegetables. Now add dry weather and a breeze and you have dust blowing everywhere (don't forget the flies....).
The consequence was that just about all food was contaminated and if you look at things like Medical Officers reports you will find that the most common ailment was a constant low level of diarrhoea and it seems obvious that this was a consequence of bad food hygiene.
Today we worry about the amount of packaging on our food but we should remember that the use of plastic packaging is our main defence against infection. I remember as a lad that milk went off very quickly, in hot weather the retailers delivered twice a day as the milk was sour in a matter of hours and even in winter you were lucky if it managed two days. Today our milk stays good for a week aided of course by domestic refrigerators, something that didn't exist then.
There is of course another aspect to this. If we were transplanted into a 1900 environment we would go down with severe diarrhoea immediately because our immune systems would be overloaded. It may be that our ancestors had better immune systems than us because they were exposed to all these nasties. It may also be that our cleaner environment is the seedbed for what we call the 'Western Diseases. More allergies and other ailments. It's a trade-off and we should be aware of it. This is one of the unseen but important forgotten corners.

[Stanley]

I hear constant discussions in the media about the effects of screen time on our young and what, if any, are the effects. I am an inveterate people-watcher. I am always trying to guess people's life histories simply by observing them. One thing I see time and time again is teenage lads who look as though a day's hard work would kill them, spindly arms and legs and poor upper body development. I wonder how good they would be if they had the life I had. Could they stand hard physical work?
Is one of the downsides of screen time the loss of the physical exercise we got roaming the country, tree-climbing, dam building in becks and later of course cycling all over the Peak District. Add the fact that we were driven to the libraries for mental stimulation and many of us grew up as inveterate readers. My first job on the farm threw me into a life of early rising, long hours, heavy lifting and hardest of all, harvest work. This was my life until my early 40s. Today's kids have the added disadvantage that they do not always go straight into work when leaving school. I remember a doctor once telling me that he could see just from looking at me that I had spent my early years working and eating like a horse. He said that promoted bone formation and the benefit from that was more bone marrow which is the manufacturing centre for the elements of our immune system. He told me that I would benefit as I got older and looking back I think he was right. I seem to have resisted and survived quite a lot of physical challenges, Botulism, cancer and all the nasties I ingested in between.
Contrast that with our modern youth. Do they get the same advantages? Are they going to have the same benefits as they grow and what are the implications of this for health in later life and longevity. We are told already that the gradual extension of life expectancy my generation saw has slowed down and added to this we have a generation that can't expect to see what we did, an improvement in our prospects compared to our parents.
The under-developed kids I see may be geniuses when it comes to electronic gadgets but is there a hidden price to pay. Is this a forgotten corner?

[plaques]

One thing I see time and time again is teenage lads who look as though a day's hard work would kill them, spindly arms and legs and poor upper body development

I think you are being a bit too hard on them. If you look round there are more joggers, mountainbike riders. fitness gyms, football and running venues than you can shake a stick at. The only underlying problems appear to be that parents have to push them into activity and that these things tend to stretch the budget, Yes there are a lot of kids wandering about with their Ipods trying to keep up with the ever changing fashions.

[Stanley]

You're probably right David and the world has changed but I still wonder about the effects of kids not going straight into the discipline of work straight from school like we did. Then of course there is the question of National Service.... How active we are in early life when we are grown but still developing has such a profound effect later in life, I see evidence of this in many of my contemporaries.
I realise that this is 'old man' syndrome, they aren't doing it like we did so it must be wrong! However I suspect there is a nugget of truth embedded in there.....



1976, fit as a butcher's dog and very strong, we didn't need to bother about Gyms then, we were doing our exercises every day and got paid for it. Amazing the damage 43 years can wreak on us!

[plaques]

Looking back at my old school days. It was impossible to assess someones physical capabilities just by their appearance. The smallest, thinnest lad could win the cross country races without breaking into a sweat. One 'lardy' lad could shotput yards farther than anyone else. A quite ordinary lad could do press ups til the cows came home. My pal with muscles on his eyebrows, later to become British weight lifting champion, was as stiff as a crutch and was totally useless at anything that required flexibility. I could go on. but I think everyone knows what I'm getting at.

[Stanley]

I suspect you are right P and more tolerant than I am. I must be turning into the archetypal 'Grumpy Old Man'.



I was playing with an image of the railway station and level crossing in about 1965 and was surprised to find that I could pull this image out without losing too much resolution. There's a lot of information here if you interrogate the image carefully.

[Wendyf]

I've been having a Forgotten Corner moment of my own, linked to Barnoldswick only by the fact that on Friday Rustique on Rainhall Road were offering a railway map for sale on their Facebook page. The map is an original working drawing of " Low Moor number 5" showing points and signals operated from Signal Box 5 at Low Moor near Bradford. Now I'm from Wyke which is near Low Moor, and I have contacts in the local history group there since my Mum's "Wartime Walk Through the Woods" letter was turned into a woodland trail a few years ago. The map was dated 24th August 1916 and this rang a bell..... on the 21st August 1916 there was a fire at the Low Moor Munitions works followed by numerous explosions destroying not only the munitions factory but a neighbouring paint works, a gas works and parts of an iron foundry. The railway also suffered damage and a signal box was destroyed. 38 workers and firemen died.

http://www.bradfordhistorical.org.uk/lowmoor.html

t looks as if the map could have been drawn as part of the evidence provided to an enquiry held soon after the disaster. I bought it yesterday and will donate it to the Low Moor History Group who are very excited about the find!

[Big Kev]

Nice one Wendy, there were a few other old maps Paul has up for sale (not railway related). I'm considering buying them purely for their decorative value.

[chinatyke]

I worked at Wyke for 17 years at AH Marks. I have happy memories of my time spent in Wyke.