FORGOTTEN CORNERS

[Wrinklie]

Part of Rainhall Road in 1983. Remember the Pram Shop?

That shot shows the house on York Street where I was born 85 years ago. Nurse Barlow i attendance
I keep bobbing in here from time to time to see if any of my contemporaries post something. Not seen any yet to date...
Surely I' m not the only one left???
Jimmy Howarth

Further to the above... That corner shop was originally a haberdashery owned by Gladys Metcalfe. Subsequently was a hairdressing salon owned by Maud Duckworth. The girl I married (Dorothy Smith) worked there.

[Stanley]

Thanks for that Wrinklie.



Was this the house you were born in? Is it number 2?

[Cathy]

Hi Wrinklie. Were you living in Fountain St 1954 - 1963 ?

[Stanley]

The directors of the Calf Hall Shed Company outside Crowtrees in Barrowford in 1895. I was pleased to see how many hits the CHSC minute books have had. Definitely a forgotten corner. These men got together and invested in Room and Power at exactly the right time and Barlick's prosperity in the late 19th century was largely based on their work.



Crowtrees was the home of the architect Atkinson and he was evidently hosting the gathering.

[PanBiker]

Prompted by Stanley post regarding the CoOp offices over in another thread. How many of the younger end in Barlick will know of the former use of the current Post Office in Barlick? Formerly the home of the Weavers Union and later the GMB rooms and Labour Party HQ when we had a fully functioning branch in the town.

The committee rooms in the building were similar to the offices over in the Cooperative building. A main meeting room with a small back kitchen and on the right hand side a partitioned corridor with a meeting and committee room. I used to run the offset litho in that room for producing the branch newsletter and election material. The large meeting table was ideal for knocking up the 5,000 sheets of A4 and stacking ready for feeding the propaganda machine. A process repeated daily during election campaigns. I spent hundreds of hours in there inking up, producing the latest leaflet then cleaning down the machine ready for the next session, 1.00am was a common finish time for a run. The room was where the currency exchange counter is now in the Post Office.

The main room where you que for the counters was where we had the branch meetings and other events. During election times it would be set up with trestle tables and laid out with the tally sheets for exit poll tracking from the number takers and running the knocking up teams. In my time I saw the transition from the old manual system to running the campaigns from computer. I was Barlick Branch Secretary and Technology Officer for the Constituency Party when we successfully ran Gordon Prentices' General Election campaign which was for the first time fully electronic across all branches in the Constituency.

When the GMB sold the building and before the branch vacated I "liberated" one of the original 1930's folding chairs from the meeting room which I still have. All our kids refer to it affectionately as the "weavers chair". It's still in regular use.

Picture shows Sally on the campaign trail outside the Weavers with our Jack who is just turning 30 this week. He's about two years old on this so it's 28 years ago. Candidate is Mike Hindley so it's the Euro Elections.



The group shot shows one of our branch meetings with some members and our guest speaker David Blunkett and Offa. Our Jack is a bit older here and we have Gordon on there as well so around 1994.

[Stanley]

That's a lovely forgotten corner.



I think this is about 1982?

[Tizer]

"I think this is about 1982?"
As a non-driver you probably haven't absorbed the details of how the present registration system works. The car on the left (a Golf?) has 04 in its reg and is therefore a 2004 model.

[PanBiker]

The sad thing about the union and socialist use of the building is that it remained unused for quite a few years after the GMB gave the local Labour Party branch notice to quit. Losing this facility for the branch played quite a big part in the effective demise of the party at a local level. Stanley's photo is an example, and as you say Tiz is after 2004 and about 5 years after we had lost use.

[Stanley]

Registration numbers mean nothing to me now....



One of my old Fulvias parked in Brook Street. It was near its scrapping date but still a wonderful little motor. I found a later model and put the engine and gearbox from this in it because even though it had done 120,000 miles it was a rally prepared engine and ran like a Waltham watch! Definitely a forgotten corner!

[Cathy]

I wonder where Wrinklie is ?

[David Whipp]

Picture on Brook Street looks like it was soon after Ivory Hall was demolished and the car park created. I'm guessing that was in the early '80s?

(Never mind the registration number...)

[plaques]

I got it from somewhere that it was 1982.
The wall round the Brook St car park has two plaques built into it. One from the Ivory Hall, with the top inch or so covered by the car park sign, and the other from Sagar's Chambers.
I have never seen a photo of Sagar's Chambers. Anyone got one?

P4060166AC.jpg

[PanBiker]

A question from me as well. Was the building now the Post Office, formerly GMB and before that the Weavers Union purpose built by the union? I was thinking that the number of operatives in the town would warrant a proper union branch building and wondered if Stanley had any record in the trade directories or recollection from his mill research? Upstairs used of course for the Cricket Club for a lot of years although that could have been some kind of lease arrangement.

[Stanley]

Ivory Hall in Brook Street in 1980 just before it was demolished (1982?). If you look at the LTP, Billy Brooks' evidence (78/AB/1) he says that William Sagar built both Sagar's chambers and Ivory Hall in Brook Street. I'm not sure which part of these buildings was Sagar's chambers. William Sagar was a builder and quarry operator at the end of the 19th century. He rented Tubber Hill quarries from the Roundells and I have multiple references to him from the CHSC minutes and trade directories. In 1890, as a Local Board Elector his address is given as Bancrofts and in 1902 Barrett as living at 1 Park Road. In company with Joe Standing and Proctor Barrett he built most of Albert Road.
As for the Weaver's Union offices. Go to Billy Brooks again, 78/AB/06 in the LTP where he says that around 1900 the Weaver's Union offices were in the building at the top of Butts that became Martin's Plumbers and is now an estate agents. Not sure on dates but they appear to have been there until after WW1 and in the later stages the office accommodated the other textile unions as well. It looks as though they needed larger premises and that triggered the relocation to Frank Street. I can't find the reference but have a memory that the amalgamated unions built that.



Billy Brooks. A very reliable informant. He was nudging 100 years old when I recorded him.

[PanBiker]

Thanks Stanley, I read all of Billy when we had the bother with getting him into the LTP as his transcript file was so big. I had forgotten the reference though.

[Stanley]

That's allowed Ian! I probably know the contents better than anyone else but even I am guilty of forgetting. Thank God I took the trouble to build the index!

[Stanley]

Here's a funny little forgotten corner for you. This corner house at the Wellhouse Road end of Wellhouse Street used to be Sunday paper central for Barlick. I think I did this pic in 1980 when it was being rebuilt to cure faults in the building. You can still see the change in the building line on the gable end. I have a memory that the lady in charge was Bunty who used to be in charge of the office at West Marton Dairy.

[David Whipp]

Mrs Davies - don't know if she was called Bunty...

[chinatyke]

These corner shops were a weak point on terrace rows. Over many years the row expanded due to the action of frost on water in the vertical mortar joints and eventually moved the gable wall slightly out of vertical. The shop windows formed a weak point at the corner. You often see misalignment at this point if you look carefully. Ties also failed with age.

[Stanley]

A good point China, I can think of several that have had to be rebuilt.

[PanBiker]

Our first house was a corner shop on York Street opposite the school gates, number 24, top house on the first row. We bought it because it was what we could afford and factored in the conversion costs. Dad was a builder by trade so no great shakes, I was general laborer. No slippage in the gable, one thing my dad looked at before we bought it. Good job, it was 96 course of Yorkshire points, which I became acquainted with a few years later when I picked all the mortar out ready for my dad to repoint. I did all the mixing, fetching and carrying on that job as well because my dad had just had his first hip replaced and only went up the ladder twice a day, once in the morning and then in the afternoon. I took the week off at Easter which thankfully turned out to be fine and sunny all week.

[Stanley]

I like pointing Ian and thanks to my experience with tall stacks I think I had a fairly good grasp of how to do it and what mix to use. It's amazing how you can improve a badly weathered wall if you cut back properly and point below the surface of the stone. What always struck me was how hard old lime mortar gets after many years. It can be like glass!
In contrast, some of the worst work I have ever seen is bad pointing. I saw one 'expert builder' smoothing a thin layer of sand/cement into inadequately cut back joints with his finger! I wonder how much he charged for that job....



Whoever did this job should have stayed in bed.

[Stanley]

Manchester Road in 1979.

[Stanley]

Masonry at Booth Bridge mill, Thornton in Craven. The criss cross pattern on the stone is because it has been cut out of an old millstone. Walls often tell long forgotten stories.....

[Stanley]

The view from Coates canal bridge in 1978.