One of the nice things about talking about Kelbrook in the late 1950s is that very little has changed. In those days the steam trains were still running and the branch to Barlick was alive and well. There was no industrial estate on the bend above Sough and Berry's wood yard stood on the opposite side of the road. Sough Bridge mill was occupied by Bristol Tractors, Kelbrook Metal Products and the Forecast foundry and still had its chimney. The mill was a busy place and we had a constant stream of customers from there. In the morning Mother and I would make about fifty bacon butties on teacakes and we did a hot meal for about 25 in the back room every dinnertime.
One regular customer was Chris Demain from Foulridge who was the local bookie's runner. He popped in from time to time to ring his bets in. Another regular was Tom Ward who worked in the office at Bristol Tractors and later opened a tailor's shop on Rainhall Road where the new pharmacy is now opposite the health centre. Mother had a soft spot for Tom, she was always saying what a nice lad he was! A man called Billy Banks lived in Barlick and worked at the mill. He was a bit of an oddity and the word was that 'he was a very clever bloke but his brain had overheated'. I can't say anything about that but remember him for two reasons. He always came in mid-morning for a meat and potato pie which he called 'A Ten to One. Ten to one there was no meat in it.' same joke every morning. His other peculiarity was that he had what was a common thing in those days, a cycle with a 'Power Pak' driving the rear wheel. This was a small 49cc engine driving the back wheel by a ribbed roller you could lower onto the tyre. He was famous for the fact that he used the engine while travelling downhill from Barlick but pedalled up the hill at the end of the day. I once asked him why and he said that it used too much petrol going uphill. Logical I suppose but it seemed to me that it defeated the object of having the engine in the first place.
In those days the left hand bend out of Sough going towards Kelbrook was notorious for causing accidents due to the bad adverse camber. I think it was altered in the late 1950s and was a lot safer afterwards. Berry's wood yard on the right hand side above the bend fascinated me. Their trade was mainly everyday joinery and the workshop was a glorious place that looked as if it had 'just growed' over the years. All the machinery was belt driven and unusually, all the driving shafts were under the floor so the belts came up from underneath. The prime mover was a Crossley Gas engine in the shed at the back and what intrigued me about it was that the fuel was sawdust! The sawdust from the shop was burned, or rather smouldered, in a gas producer and the engine was started on town's gas but then switched over to running off the smoke. In later years the gas producer corroded badly and it was cheaper to run of town's gas. Unfortunately at some point the gas company fitted a new meter and they found that the gas bill went up to a painful amount! The old meter must have been ready for replacement.
Further up on the same side of the road was Fred Morphet's garage. He had a mechanic called Jack Thompson who was a good man, he had been in the Air Force working on Merlin engines during the war and his biggest adjustment when he came back to Civvy Street was that he had got used to high tensile bolts on the aircraft engines and kept over tightening stuff when he got back to cars. One of Fred's sidelines was that he ran a Guy eight wheeler on general haulage and I always admired it and envied the driver his job. Little did I know that this was the first pangs of the infection that eventually saw me earning my living for years on long distance haulage. A little further up the road and you were in the village. The first building on the right hand side was the Craven Heifer and this is where the story really starts!
Right, you know me well enough to know I'm going to start with the research. The first mention I have found of the pub is in the 1841 census when a man called William Halstead aged 45 lived there with his wife Mary and at least four children. His occupation is given as 'joiner' but this doesn't mean he wasn't the landlord as well. Many publicans had an occupation besides inn-keeping. He was still there in 1851 described as 'farmer and inn keeper' of the Scotsman's Arms. By 1891 Jacob Bell is noted as farmer and licensee of 'The Craven Heifer' so it had changed its name but perhaps not for the first time because I have a reference that describes Jacob as keeping 'The Grey Mare'. In 1911 Henry Bailey was the licensee and the next name I can give is Jimmy Talbot and his wife Gladys in the 1950s when I knew it. I was told once that he was nick-named 'Banana Jimmy' because at one time he sold bananas on the market. Gladys was the daughter of a man called Ayrton who was licensee of the Seven Stars in Barlick so she was brought up in the trade. They went from Kelbrook to keep the Station Hotel in Nelson in the early 1960s and I forget the name of the man who took it then. Bob King once told me that at one time a man called Alphonse, nicknamed 'Fonce' had the Heifer, he was noted for being miserable and having bad ale!
There was once a pub called 'The Half Way House' up Dotcliffe, so called because it was half way along the old green track from Elslack to the Cloth Hall at Colne. What is now Old Stone Trough on the old road from Kelbrook to Foulridge was a pub called The Wilson Arms but was replaced after 1824 with the present Stone Trough Inn when the new turnpike road was built, the present main road.
I feel better now I've got the history off my chest. Next week I'll tell you about the Heifer in the 1950s and some of the stories.
The Crossley gas engine that ran Berry's yard off sawdust.
