FORGOTTEN CORNERS

[Stanley]

Two pics that demonstrate a forgotten corner connected with schools. The first is of the large ventilator on the roof of Gisburn Road Board School in 1979. This was removed shortly afterwards but is a reminder that when the school was built the miasma theory of transmission of disease was prevalent and the defence with all public buildings was to ensure adequate ventilation. Can you remember the small cast iron handles that looked like a hand grasping a bar on the walls of buildings? These were to control the amount of pull the ventilator on the roof had on the air in the room.
The second pic is of Hope Memorial Primary School in Stockport where I started my education. When built it had a bell for summoning the pupils in the morning and at dinnertime.



These bells were also a feature of many of the early mills and were used for the same purpose but they soon found that a steam whistle was more effective. Here's the one on Butts mill (1843). Mitchell's Mill (Clough) had one as well.

[Stanley]

The steam whistles used by the mills were often referred to as donkeys, I suppose because of the sound. I came across a funny story about the steam whistle at Long Ing Mill.
In the LTP Billy Brooks says that Calf Hall, Wellhouse, Butts and Long Ing all had steam whistles. They used to call them ‘donkeys’. Tells story of David Akrigg lighting fires at Long Ing one Sunday morning and then locking himself out of the boiler house. Unknown to him, the weight of the handle on the cock which supplied the steam for the whistle off the tape connection at the back of the boiler had dropped as the valve cooled down and came loose. As the pressure built up the whistle started moaning and gradually increased in pitch. All Barlick could hear it and in the end Billy’s great uncle Willie Brooks who was manager at Long Ing had to go down to open the boiler house and shut it off.

[Stanley]

At the top is the electric clock that used to be on the front of the Council Offices on Post Office Corner. Below is the replacement on top of the new bus shelter. The old clock was very reliable but I'm sorry to say that its replacement has not been as good. For months it has been stopped but recently was restarted. So far so good but unfortunately it was five hours adrift. It appears to be slowly correcting itself and is improving but at last sight was still three hours out.
That's the current situation but what triggered me in the first place is that the Council Office clock had some history behind it. In 1870 the General Post Office took over control of all existing private telegraph services on the grounds that the government had a monopoly on all forms of public communication. Apart from the railway telegraphs which were not affected, this meant that the PO had a monopoly on the daily time signal which was transmitted each day from Greenwich Observatory. From then on all post offices had a public clock that had to be visible from the street outside and this was the first time Joe Public had a means of setting their own clocks and watches accurately.
There was a problem, Railway time was derived from a different source and did not coincide with Post Office time. The mill engineers relied on the time relayed to them by the Manchester Men who travelled to the exchange in Manchester each day and they set their watches by Railway time. This led to a situation where the engineers were starting their engines before the workers had arrived as PO time was always behind railway time.
I have evidence from the CHSC minute books that the owners ordered the engineers to use PO time and not Railway time to correct the situation.
Today every household appliance, phone and radio has a built in clock so the public clocks are no longer essential. They have become a forgotten corner.

[Stanley]

The Turret Clock Johnny Pickles made for Riley Street Chapel in Earby as a memorial to his old master Henry Brown. When the chapel was demolished Johnny took the clock back and installed it at the Wellhouse works of Henry Brown Sons and Pickles. When that was demolished the clock was saved by Jack Gissing and is now on top of their offices in Wellhouse Road.



Johnny built the clocks for Trinity Church and the Catholic church and around 1950 when he wanted a bigger lathe to cut the gears for his turret clocks he built this big Ornamental Turning Lathe.



It now lives, fully refurbished in my shed. Which raises an uncomfortable thought, am I obsessed with Johnny or a laudable acolyte determined to preserve his legacy? I'll leave others to give a verdict on that but I get a warm glow whenever I use it!
Incidentally, one of the advantages of belt driven lathes is the fact they are a smooth drive and give a better finish if used properly with sharp tools. Even the best gear driven lathes have a trace of harmonics in the drive from the gearing, especially on face turning, you can detect a pattern in the cut on most of them. Modern lathes are better I think but I have no experience of the latest ones.

[Stanley]

Our back street in 2003. So what you may ask, why is this a forgotten corner?
Over 100 years ago when most of the housing in Barlick was built it was understood that all through houses, it didn't apply to back to backs of course, had a front and a back street. The back street was essentially a service street and only needed to be wide enough to allow the coal man, dust cart and the night soil men access to the houses. We tend to forget today that most modern housing developments don't need them so back streets, or alleys, are no longer needed.
In the case of East Hill Street, because it has a garden front with no vehicular access, the back street is actually the main route of access and car parking. This is even more true here because most of the houses on the right hand side are back to backs so this is the only way they can be accessed. This makes the street the main place where neighbours meet each other, all post is delivered down here and visiting workmen have to use it.
The dustmen still use the street but the coal chap and the night soil men are extinct of course.
One matter that governed activity was the fact that on Monday, which was traditionally washing day, it was common practice to string washing lines across the street and this effectively barred access. No point trying to deliver coal, empty the middens or take away the night soil on a Monday!
Another thing that happened was that as mains services like water and sewers were installed the back street was the obvious place to dig up. This is still true today for all services except electricity. Because you didn't need such deep and extensive excavations this was brought in via the front.
So, something that you see every day can be a forgotten corner.

[Tripps]

"Park at the Coop car park - go up the steps in the middle of the wall - go along Cooperative Street, turn right then left - and it's the green gate on the left"

Nice memory.

[chinatyke]

Incidentally, one of the advantages of belt driven lathes is the fact they are a smooth drive and give a better finish if used properly with sharp tools. Even the best gear driven lathes have a trace of harmonics in the drive from the gearing, especially on face turning, you can detect a pattern in the cut on most of them. Modern lathes are better I think but I have no experience of the latest ones.

A thought flashed through my mind: Would hydraulic drives be better? Are lathes with hydraulic drives already made?

OK, that's enough thinking for one day!

[Stanley]

It is with me David, I am currently using the Trippier vintage Worcestershire Sauce, sell by date February 2013...
Never thought about that China. You could be right but even so there might be pressure variations as the lobes on the pump engage and disengage..... You are quite right of course, some lathes did have hydraulic drives usually to give infinitely variable speeds.

[plaques]

The HEYLIGENSTAEDT Werkzeugmaschinen GmbH lathes had an infinite speed control but I can't remember if it was hydraulic or not, Link.

[chinatyke]

I thought I was on to a winner and going to make my first million!

[Stanley]

Nice one P. Noisy bugger though isn't it!
China I once invented Critical Path Analysis and was devastated when I was told others had got there first!



Today's forgotten corner is personal. 50 Years ago while I was walking down Colne High Street I spotted this Buddha in a shop window. I immediately fell in love with it and with Vera's permission, I went in and bought it. I forget the price but it was quite a sizeable chunk of a week's wage. I don't regard myself as superstitious but I must admit that I have always regarded it as a lucky mascot. There's something about it, I know that there is a mass of lore attached to these figures and the various poses and have often wondered whether I was just besotted or is there something special about it. He always makes me smile. He has ivory teeth and eyes but one is missing and I have often considered making him a replacement, I have some mammoth ivory in the treasure chests.
As I wrote that I realised that there is another forgotten corner embedded in it. Notice that I consulted Vera before I bought it. I have noted of late a lot of comment about married couples not discussing money matters and some men keeping their wages secret and only giving their wives enough money to keep the house going (if they're lucky!). It was always like that but Vera and I never had any problem. I gave her my wage packet unopened each week and we sat down and worked out the budget, at that time half my earnings went towards paying the loan off from the bank that bought Hey Farm. She was a very good manager. I used to get a small amount of pocket money and anything extra was made by ferreting for rabbits and selling them or odd jobs. In hindsight we had it just right and it served us well.

[PanBiker]

China I once invented Critical Path Analysis and was devastated when I was told others had got there first!

I have a cassette tape upstairs with a copy of the bespoke computer program I wrote for a friend. I was paid for developing it so it was effectively a commercial product. The cassette is dated 1982 and I decided to call the program "Windows" seemed a reasonable name for a program that created multiple editable text windows anywhere on the screen. It is written in BBC Basic with 6502 assembler routines. Sometime later, a bloke called Gates pinched the name. I have always reckoned a pound a copy would not be too much to ask

Regarding household finances, Sally has been our partnership accountant for the last 46 years. Apart from one item which we bought "on tick" to keep warm, a Canon Gas Miser fire and our now paid off mortgage we have never been in debt. The thing about the fire was that it was a 12 month contract that she paid off in 7 months. Governments don't take this unpaid accountancy and financial management into consideration when reneging on contracts and she still doesn't have her pension, £48,000 down and counting but we still don't owe anyone a bean. She could do a better job than the chancellor I reckon and pay all the WASPI's.

[Tripps]

When I was a paper boy, a long time ago - on a round with many steep front gardens with steps - in between cursing people with low and narrow letter boxes - I invented this, just in my head - though mine had four wheels on each side -

Step trolley

I realised of course it was just fanciful, and would never work in real life.

[Stanley]

Exactly my experience Ian.
David, some wheelchairs have the same mechanism.
Re. hydraulic drive. It was the Rivett toolroom lathe I was thinking about. Have a look at THIS video made by Keith Rucker.....



Today's forgotten corner is an obscure one. Look at this pic of the houses in King Street. Does anything strike you about the doorways into the houses? You can see a similar thing in some of the older properties in Church Street.



It was this one on the right that first alerted me to what was different about these doors also because it was the place where Billycock Bracewell first started his putting out business in Barlick when he invaded us from Earby. It's the width of the openings. These houses all have doors that are wider than what came to be almost a standard in later builds which were higher and narrower.
The usual facile observation you'll hear is that people were shorter in those days but were they also fatter as well? I think the reason is that all these houses had to have easy access for bales of yarn and cloth, in the Church Street example because that was Bracewell's stock in trade. In the case of King Street because these houses were used by handloom weavers and spinners. If you keep your eyes skinned you'll find these wider doors in many older properties and the same may be true for some which were corner shops.
Another thing about shops is that they often had a cellar as well as a stock room and in some cases these were also accessed by openings in the pavement now either filled in or covered with grills.



This example in Hill Street is a case in point. It used to be a shop, the door is wider and you can see the access to the cellar in the pavement outside. None of the other houses have a cellar.

[plaques]

Some of your logic may be correct but a lot of the older houses had wider doors because furniture was a lot bigger in those days. Our house has 35 inch wide outer doors and 33" wide inner doors. In what may be termed 'low cost' houses where the staircase was very narrow some of the upper windows were removable to get the furniture into them.

[Stanley]

The same thought has occurred to me P but I was keeping it simple. Then there is the question of coffins.....
When we lived at Hey Farm I was always puzzled by the fact that some of the upstairs rooms had large stones that projected into the room high in the wall. Many years later as I learned about textiles I realised that they were to support one side of a handloom and steady it.
By the way, your comment in another topic about having the coffin next to the window reminded me of the evidence I got doing the LTP. Another influence was having ventilation. Something that was mentioned quite frequently was that the support for the coffin had hanging draperies down to the floor and that a bucket full of disinfectant was placed underneath. Understandable when funerals were almost always on Saturdays and in some cases there was little if any embalming. One of the small facts of life we don't have to deal with these days.
In that regard, Harold Duxbury once told me that B&D were the first undertakers in the district to have a Chapel of Rest and at first there was little demand for it but as the advantages were realised it soon became a preferred method of dealing with the delay until the interment.
Like so many other things, we sanitised the process of death and in the process distanced ourselves from the realities.

[plaques]

Before the chapels of rest took hold most people were laid out in the front room until the burial. Mum and dad and myself, then about 12 years old and considered old enough to take part in such rituals, went to pay our respects to my oldest aunt who was well into her 80s . One of her sisters commented "she makes a lovely corpse". I thought it was hilarious but the rest of the family all nodded with approval.

[Stanley]

There's quite a lot in the LTP about death and funerals. Harold Duxbury told me he was the first person in Barlick to do a course on embalming and offer the service from Butts when they were major players in the funeral game in Barlick. Funnily enough the other firm was Windle's whose main job was running their garage at Vicarage Lane but started into undertaking as a sideline in the 1930s the same as B&D. Before that it was largely a DIY job helped by a few people who helped with the laying out and the transport for a fee. Singleton's ran a carriage hire service out of Commercial Street and they were the main source of transport and a hearse.
Harold told me that in the days of horse drawn cortèges, which persisted well into the 1930s, the steep hill at Coates bridge meant that mourners had to dismount and walk up to the top as a full carriage was too much for one horse.



Jim Windle on wedding duty at Gill in 1977.



Maurice, his brother, in 1976. For many years they provided a limousine hire service from Vicarage Road. Someone once asked me how Maurice was and I said he must be OK because he was still riding in the front of the hearse. He heard about it and grabbed me in the Co-op one morning, he thought it was hilarious!

[PanBiker]

We had Jim and Maurice for our wedding at Carleton Church in 1976. Jim took my Best Man Paul and myself and Maurice transported Sally and her entourage.

[Stanley]

I have an idea that they did the same for Vera and I at Trinity in 1959.
The two brothers were definitely characters and famously fell out with each other from time to time. I remember my mate Robert Aram coming to Barlick one day. He had a slow puncture in one of his tyres and after filling up he asked Shirley if he could inflate the tyre, she directed him round the corner into Vicarage Road. He went round, found the air line laud on the floor and was seeing to his tyre when Maurice ran out with an axe and cut the airline in two. Robert didn't wait to find out why, he jumped in and drove off as fast as he could! I told him that this was quite normal behaviour.
Somewhere in my neg files I have a pic of Jim and Maurice squaring up to each other in Daniel Meadows' front room. He had invited his friends in to see an exhibition of Barlick pictures and for some reason Jim and Maurice came to blows.
Despite all this Maurice in particular was held in very high regard I always got on well with him. When he died the funeral service was at Trinity and I think every mechanic in the town turned up in a clean pair of overalls, unique in my experience and a nice touch. I have an idea that Maurice wound and maintained the clock at the church for many years but could be wrong.
Shirley was the power behind the throne in the family business. She was the only person who could control Jim and Maurice and frequently had to clear up after them!
All part of Barlick folk history that will never make its way into the text books but important I think.

[PanBiker]

Indeed,Maurice had a party trick of finding the firing order from a distributor by shoving his fingers in the plug caps and getting someone to turn the engine.

[Stanley]

Billy Harrison was immune to electric shock as well. His party trick was to ask someone to pass him a spanner while he had his fingers on the plug leads of an engine that was running. The unlucky helper got the benefit of 10,000volts or thereabouts!
Thinking back about electricity reminds me of what a change it must have been when we first got mains electricity in the 1920s. Electricity was not an unknown of course because many mills had their own generators run off the steam engine, Bancroft had DC power in 1920 when it was started and places like the Majestic and the Co-op had their own generating sets powered by gas engines. It was quickly taken up and in the early days was not metered but charged for on the basis of how many lights you had and leccy for power wasn't envisaged. This was the same system that was used when gas was first laid on, so much for each gas lamp or cooker. The system must have worked but meters were soon installed.
One of the things that always puzzled me at Bancroft was that despite the fact that electric light was used from the start, there was an enormous gas meter in the cellar which didn't appear to have ever been connected. It wouldn't surprise me if it's still there.
Incidentally, many of the original cables from that time must still be in use.....

[Tizer]

The Somerset village were we used to live didn't get electricity until quite late. There's a story about an elderly lady there who lived alone in her house lit by gas. One evening some boys took a battery torch and shone it through her kitchen window. She sent for the village policeman and told him the boys were trying to poison her food with electricity!

[Stanley]

That reminds me of people saying that the weather was affected by wireless waves.
That was the miracle of the 1930s, listening to a wireless without headphones, the reason why it was called wireless of course. If you look in the LTP Arthur Entwistle talks about seeing a bloke playing an early wireless to surrounding crowds and charging for it. That was at Kilnsey Show.
In those days the sets were battery powered and you needed two batteries, a high tension made up of a stack of the old large twin cell cycle lamp batteries in a long wooden box, to ensure you kept the voltage up you bought a new battery each week and put it at the head of the box, removing the end one and running it down completely in a cycle lamp. The low tension battery was a glass lead acid cell that needed charging. The local shops would do this for you but one enterprising engine tenter, Walt Fisher's father at Moss Shed, had a profitable sideline charging wireless batteries as he had a DC lighting plant. Walt says that he thinks he made as much from that as he did for running the engine. This must have stuck with Walt as Newton always said that when he and Walt were running Brown and Pickles he left all the electric work to Walt as he had an interest in it.
I've just remembered that if you were posh you could buy a purpose made HT battery which was a big square block of cells with multiple tap holes for the plug so you could move the voltage up as the battery degraded.

[PanBiker]

That was the miracle of the 1930s, listening to a wireless without headphones, the reason why it was called wireless of course.

Not quite correct there Stanley, the reason it is called wireless is the fact that a radio does not require a wired connection for reception like it's predecessor the telegraph. It's not the fact that it has a speaker rather than headphones.