FORGOTTEN CORNERS

[Stanley]

Fernbank stack in 1982 when Lontex were occupying the mill.



30 years later it became a forgotten corner.

[Steeplejerk]

Looks familiar

[Stanley]

Thought it might Tom!



Poetry in motion.....

[Stanley]

An outbarn in the Dales in 1983. The system of farming in the Dales even as late as the 1980s in some instances, was to work with a series of small barns scattered around the holding. Each barn had a few milking cows associated with it and a field or fields. They were run like separate holdings and each morning and evening each barn was visited and the cows milked. In winter each barn had its own small herd of cattle sheltering in it and in effect they were each treated as a separate holding.
This is a forgotten corner because this method of farming has totally vanished now and we will never see it again. Outbarns are falling into disrepair all over the dales and the land is, in many cases, reverting to boggy pasture.

[Stanley]

Barnsey and Moss sheds in 1978. Barnsey is long gone....... In the latter days it was owned by Pickles' and run in conjunction with Long Ing Shed. If your interested, have a look at Newton Pickles' evidence in the Lancashire Textile Project.

[PostmanPete]

Fernbank stack in 1982 when Lontex were occupying the mill.



30 years later it became a forgotten corner.

Have a look here at the proposals for the former Fernbank Mill site.

https://fernbankbarnoldswick.co.uk/

[Stanley]

I don't see any mention of the infrastructure or services like shops and amenities. Just the usual house-building.....
Or am I just being too picky?

[PanBiker]

Strangely enough we got a card with the proposal and a return slip for any comments or concerns. I wonder why as we are at least a half mile from the site! Notifications are normally just sent to those in the immediate vicinity who it will impact the most.

A couple of claims from the Muller Property Group who are the builders:

90 Residential Dwellings (including affordable homes)

with a mix of housing types to address the needs those in the local area

Does this mean that the majority will not be affordable?

It should also me noted that the population of Barlick has only increased by 200 over the last 5 years and they already live somewhere in town.

Strengthen the local economy.

? Unless this is an expansion of the folk that will spend in the town (if they do).

Support and deliver new amenities to Barnoldswick to enhance the historic mill town

I would like to know if this is new Medical Centre or an extension to the Sewage Works or maybe lights or a roundabout, (don't think there is room for that) at the end of Fernbank onto Gisburn Road which is a bad junction to start with. The proposal could mean another 160 cars using the junction as there is no other egress unless using a single rat run through other established residential areas and double parked terraced streets.

Good that it's on Brown Field but I question the need unless it is all affordable social housing which I very much doubt. The same will apply to the proposal for Barnsey which is not just the former mill footprint but spills over onto Green Field (flood plane).

[Stanley]

I got that card as well Ian. The developer has spent all of an hour and a half cobbling together a statement of intent loaded with all the usual phrases and which in the end means nothing.
You are quite right, no additions to the capacity of any of the services simply more load on all of them. People will have to get in their car to go shopping, will it be in Town Square? How many of the tenants will have jobs in Barlick?
It's simply a money-making exercise all round......



Dick Lancaster and his farm man at Paradise Farm Horton in Craven in 1969 when I had brought a load of hay.
All long forgotten now.
(Loading eight courses on a flat and successfully transporting it was an art and I suspect that's largely forgotten these days also.)

[Stanley]

A midden closet in the days before the water carriage system became the universal standard. Note that if this system had been made standard there would have been no problems with sewage discharges in to watercourses.
One of the advantages of having different tastes in literature is that you come across publications that normally would not be seen as attractive One such is 'Report on certain means of preventing excrement nuisance s in towns and villages' privately published by Dr Buchanan who was the author of the report which was presented to Parliament in 1870. It is a survey of different approaches to using the dry earth or midden closet in various towns and cities. This plan of the method used in Manchester is typical of the coverage.
All this is a forgotten corner but if we ever have a severe shortage of water, something like this might have to be considered again.

[PanBiker]

A late Labour Party friend of ours built his own house in Colne and that was his choice of toilet.

[Stanley]

One thing is sure and certain, it saves a lot of water!



The remains of one of the biggest trees in Barlick. This stump of a very big ash tree stood in a garden on Colin Street. It was declared unsafe and cut down to this level. I once measured it and at it's narrowest point it was over 30 feet in circumference. I have quoted evidence many times of the fact that Barlick once had a lot of large trees and this is one survivor.

[Stanley]

It's 1977 and Jim Pollard is in the office at Bancroft Shed using the electric calculator to do his weaving calculations. This simple adding machine was probably 1950s vintage and at the time at the cutting edge of office technology. 25 years later it was still in use. Look at the size of it! Nowadays its functions could be contained in something the size of a small postage stamp.
A forgotten corner.

[Stanley]

Jim Sutton in the engine house at Bancroft Shed in 1977. A hard man, Jim was the father of Charlie Sutton my flue cleaner and was a man of great experience. He could have run the engine quite happily. I liked to get him talking about the old days. He could remember seeing people starving to death on the streets of Nelson.....
Charlie and the grandsons called him Louis but woe betide anyone else who used that by-name!
Men like Jim are a forgotten corner now.

[Stanley]

Judging heavy horses at Sutton Coldfield Show in 1976. The showing and judging of heavy horses is not a forgotten corner but the commercial use of the animals is and in many ways I am glad. The use of heavy horses for the heaviest tasks like timber getting could be cruel hard work and many were injured.
Incidentally and a little known fact for you.... A horseman once told me that the reason why heavy horses roll on the ground when being put to pasture after a day's work was 'to straighten their puddings out' as they were displaced by heavy pulling.

[Stanley]

This is an example of the long term relationship I had with many of the beasts I carried during my time as Richard Drinkall's driver. I picked this pedigree Red Devon bull up as a calf in 1971 in the West Country and took it north to Hughie Anderson's farm at Clinchyard, Strathaven in Scotland. I did this pic in 1977 when I was visiting Hughie and Nancy as part of a holiday I was having in Scotland.
It would surprise many of the critics of cattle transport if they knew about this. To them it was animal cruelty.......
(Fat lot they knew!)

[Stanley]

When I was in California I met a genuine Hell's Angel known as Chainsaw who wouldn't let me do a picture of him but allowed a snap of his badges..... I knew he was a genuine hard case because he was in court the following day on a murder charge.... (He got away with it)
I sincerely hope he is a forgotten corner, he worried me!

[Stanley]

Park View Terrace at Salterforth. What intrigues me about this row of houses is that somehow their cast iron railings survived WW2!

[Stanley]

Daniel Meadows' image of Bancroft Shed when it was running. He shows perfectly how the shed was built into the hillside in such a way as to ensure it was, by normal standards, damp. This was because that was best for weaving. Cotton warps hate being dry, this is why the weavers had to get used to cold damp sheds for most of the year because that is how the management wanted it. It was also perfectly oriented in that the 'North Light' roof actually did face true north and so never had direct sunlight but perfect neutral daylight, what every artist wants in his or her studio.

[Stanley]

July 1932, 92 years ago this month when Barlick had its flood. I was looking at this image and it struck me that this was of course before the air raid shelter was built in the corner of the mill yard. And is that a steam wagon in the yard?
Very few people remember the flood these days but it's as well to remind ourselves occasionally what the weather can do to us. The one thing that is certain is that there will be another event like this some day and we would do well to remember it and be ready.....

[Stanley]

It's 1978 and a Smith Rodley steam crane moulders away in a quarry at Slaidburn. It was used there in 1932 to extract stone for the building of the nearby Stocks reservoir. When the reservoir was finished it was abandoned..... I wonder if it is still there or has somebody perhaps rescued it.....

[Stanley]

Green End Shed at Earby.

[Stanley]

Over a century ago Newton Pickles had an uncle named Wilkinson who was an engineer. In those days you couldn't afford to buy tools, you had to make your own. Here are two of Mr Wilkinson's tools, a large square and a pair of dividers. Newton gave them to me and I used them when I was working on boilers at Rochdale Welding. I still keep them clean and rust free.... They are beautifully made and accurate.

[Stanley]

John Kelly (with beard) and his pit boss in 1991 as we were nearing completion of the Whitelees pit. We had started pouring the concrete in the base. Everyone has forgotten what a massive job this was. John and his men were masters of their craft. (The pit boss had jacked in on the Channel Tunnel contract because he thought it was too dangerous.)

[Stanley]

The Weir steam boiler feed pump at Ellenroad. Apart from being very large, this pump id different because it has three supporting columns under the cylinder. I was intrigued and did some research. I found that the pump was one of a pair made by Weir Pumps at Glasgow for Imperial Chemical Industries to a special design because they were for pumping concentrated acid. The parts exposed to the acid are made from materials such as stainless steel that can withstand the chemical action. Ellenroad bought one of the pumps after WW2 when ICI were cutting back on production and selling surplus plant.
All this is documented in the Ellenroad archives but I wonder if anyone has remembered thirty years later?